The forcible writer does not go far for his themes.

January 29

We must be very active if we would be clean and live our own life, and not a languishing and scurvy one. 

The trees, which are stationary, are covered with parasites, especially those which have grown slowly. 

The air is filled with the fine sporules of countless mosses, algae, lichens, fungi, which settle and plant themselves on all quiet surfaces.

Under the nails and between the joints of the fingers of the idle, flourish crops of mildew, algae, and fungi, and other vegetable sloths, though they may be invisible, – the lichens where life still exists, the fungi where decomposition has begun to take place. 

And the sluggard is soon covered with sphagnum. Algae take root in the corners of his eyes, and lichens cover the bulbs of his fingers and his head, etc., etc., the lowest forms of vegetable life. '

This is the definition of dirt. We fall a prey to others of nature's tenants, who take possession of the unoccupied house. 

With the utmost inward activity we have to wash and comb ourselves beside, to get rid of the adhering seeds. Cleanliness is by activity not to give any quiet shelf for the seeds of parasitic plants to take root on. 

If he cuts pines, the woodchopper's hands are covered with pitch.

The names of plants are for the most part traced to Celtic and Arabian roots. 

The forcible writer does not go far for his themes. His ideas are not far-fetched. IIe derives inspiration from his chagrins and his satisfactions.  His theme being ever an instant one, his own gravity assists him, gives  impetus to what he says. He minds his business. He does not speculate while others drudge for him. 

I am often reminded that if I had bestowed on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must still be the same and my means essentially the same. 

It still melts. 

I observed this afternoon that the ground where they are digging for some scales near the depot was frozen about nine inches where the snow has lain most and sixteen inches where the road was. 

I begin to see the tops of the grasses and stubble in the fields, which deceive me as if it were the ground itself. 

That point where the sun goes down is the cynosure which attracts all eyes at sundown and half an hour before. What do all other parts of the horizon concern us ? Our eyes follow the path of that great luminary. We watch for his rising, and we observe his setting. He is a companion and fellow-traveller we all have. We pity him who has his cheerless dwelling elsewhere, even in the northwest or southwest, off the high road of nature. 

The snow is nearly gone from the railroad causeway. 

Few are the days when the telegraph harp rises into a pure, clear melody.  Though the wind may blow strong or soft, in this or that direction, naught will you hear but a low hum or murmur, or even a buzzing sound; but at length, when some undistinguishable zephyr blows, when the conditions not easy to be detected arrive, it suddenly and unexpectedly rises into melody, as if a god had touched it, and fortunate is the walker who chances to be within hearing. 

So is it with the lyres of bards, and for the most part it is only a feeble and ineffectual hum that comes from them, which leads you to expect the melody you do not hear.  When the gale is modified, wlen the favorable conditions occur, and the indescribable coincidence takes place, then there is music. 

Of a thousand buzzing strings, only one yields music. It is like the hum of the shaft, or other machinery, of a steamboat, which at length might become music in a divine hand. I feel greatly enriched by this telegraph. 

I have come to see the clay and sand in the Cut. A reddish tinge in the earth, stains. An Indian hue is singularly agreeable, even exciting, to the eye. Here the whole bank is sliding. Even the color of the subsoil excites me, as if I were already getting near to life and vegetation. This clay is faecal in its color also. It runs off at bottom info mere shoals, shallows, vasa, vague sand-bars, like the mammoth leaves, –– makes strands. 

Perhaps those mother-o'-pearl clouds I described some time ago might be called rainbow flocks. 

The snow on the slope of the Cliffs is dotted with black specks, the seeds of the mullein which the wind has shaken out. When I strike the dry stalks, the seeds fall in a shower and color the snow black like charcoal dust or powder. 

The green mosses on the rocks are evidently nourished and kept bright by the snows lying on them a part of the year. 

Day before yesterday, I saw the hunters out with a dozen dogs, but only two pussies, one white and one lithe gray one, did I see, for so many men and dogs, who seem to set all the village astir as if the fox's trail led through it. 

And Stedman Buttrick, with whom I was walking, was excited as if in the heyday of his youth.

Heard C. lecture to-night. It was a bushel of nuts. Perhaps the most original lecture I ever heard. Ever so unexpected, not to be foretold, and so sententious that you could not look at him and take his thought at. the same time. 

You had to give your undivided attention to the thoughts, for you were not assisted by set phrases or modes of speech intervening. There was no sloping up or down to or from his points. It was all genius, no talent. It required more close attention, more abstraction from surrounding circumstances, than any lecture I have heard. 

For, well as I know C., he more than any man disappoints my expectation. When 1 see him in the desk, hear him, I cannot realize that I ever saw him before. He will be strange, unexpected, to his best acquaintance. I cannot associate the lecturer with the companion of my walks. 

It was from so original and peculiar a point of view, yet just to himself in the main, that I doubt if three in the audience apprehended a tithe that he said. It was so hard to hear that doubtless few made the exertion. 

A thick succession of mountain passes and no intermediate slopes and plains. Other lectures, even the best, in which so much space is given to the elaborate development of a few ideas, seemed somewhat meagre in comparison. 

Yet it would be how much more glorious if talent were added to genius, if there [were] a just arrangement and development of the thoughts, and each step were not a leap, but he ran a space to take a yet higher leap! 

Most of the spectators sat in front of the performer but here was one who, by accident, sat all the while on one side, and his report was peculiar and startling.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, January 29, 1852

The forcible writer does not go far for his themes.  See January 30, 1852 ("It is in vain to write on chosen themes. We must wait till they have kindled a flame in our minds. ");  February 3, 1852 ("The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experience. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person.") See also November 12, 1851 ("Write often, write upon a thousand themes"); February 3, 1859 ("The writer has much to do even to create a theme for himself . . . It is only when many observations of different periods have been brought together that he begins to grasp his subject and can make one pertinent and just observation.");Compare March 18, 1861 ("A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.")

The green mosses on the rocks are evidently nourished and kept bright by the snows lying on them a part of the year. See February 18, 1852 ("The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs."); March 4, 1852 ("The snow is melting on the rocks; the water trickles down in shining streams; the mosses look bright."); March 28, 1859 ("These earth colors, methinks, are never so fair as in the spring. Now the green mosses and lichens contrast with the brown grass, but ere long the surface will be uniformly green."); April 25, 1857 ("The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

I begin to see the tops of the grasses and stubble in the fields . . . When I strike the dry [mullein ] stalks, the seeds fall in a shower and color the snow black. See December 31, 1859 ("The mulleins are full of minute brown seeds, which a jar sprinkles over the snow, and [they] look black there; also the primrose, of larger brown seeds, which rattle out in the same manner"); March 24, 1859 ("They [goldfinches] are eating the seeds of the mullein and the large primrose, clinging to the plants sidewise in various positions and pecking at the seed-vessels."); see also January 30, 1853 ("The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. Sorrel is also very common, and johnswort, and the purplish gnaphaliums. There is also the early crowfoot in some places, strawberry, mullein, and thistle leaves, and hawkweeds, etc., etc.")

Perhaps those mother-o'-pearl clouds I described some time ago might be called rainbow flocks. See January 13, 1852 ("Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. . . .I see. . .in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write."); January 22, 1852 ("One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown."); See also December 18, 1852 ("Loring's Pond beautifully froze . . . it was so exquisitely polished that the sky and scudding dun-colored clouds, with mother-o'-pearl tints, were reflected in it as in the calmest water."); December 26, 1855 ("The sun is gone before five. Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none,"); December 27, 1853 ("I look far, but see no rainbow flocks in the sky."); December 30, 1855 ("Looking up over the top of the hill now, southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away."); January 9, 1854 ("Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon");  January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown. . . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us . . .There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs."); February 24, 1860 ("some [clouds]most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow.")

Green mosses on rocks

nourished and kept bright by the

snows lying on them 

Rowed about twenty-four miles.

October 15. 

Wednesday. 8.30 A. M. Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond with W. E. C. 

(But first 

• a neighbor sent in a girl to inquire if I knew where worm-seed grew, otherwise called “Jerusalem oak” (so said the recipe which she brought cut out of a newspaper), for her mistress's hen had the “gapes.” But I answered that this was a Southern plant and  knew not where it was to be had. Referred her to the poultry book. 
• Also the next proprietor commenced stoning and settling down the stone for a new well, an operation which I wished to witness, purely beautiful, simple, and necessary. The stones laid on a wheel, and continually added to above as it is settled down by digging under the wheel.
• Also Goodwin, with a partridge and a stout mess of large pickerel, applied to me to dispose of a mud turtle which he had found moving the mud in a ditch. Some men will be in the way to see such movements.)

The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. Some are as big as small hay cocks.

The river is still quite low, though a foot or more higher than when I was last on it.

There is quite a wind, and the sky is full of flitting clouds, so that sky and water are quite unlike that warm, bright, transparent day when I last sailed on the river, when the surface was of such oily smoothness.

You could not now study the river bottom for the black waves and the streaks of foam.

When the sun shines brightest to-day, its pyramidal-shaped sheen (when for a short time we are looking up-stream, for we row) is dazzling and blinding.

It is pleasant to hear the sound of the waves and feel the surging of the boat, — an inspiriting sound, as if you were bound on adventures. It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so angry and black.

We see objects on shore-trees, etc., — much better from the boat, — from a low point of view. It brings them against the sky, into a novel point of view at least.

The otherwise low on the meadows, as well as the hills, is conspicuous.

I perceive that the bulrushes are nibbled along the shore, as if they had been cut by a scythe, yet in such positions as no mower could have reached, even outside the flags. Probably the muskrat was the mower, for his houses.

In this cool sunlight, Fair Haven Hill shows to advantage. Every rock and shrub and protuberance has justice done it, the sun shining at an angle on the hill and giving each a shadow. The hills have a hard and distinct outline, and I see into their very texture.

On Fair Haven I see the sunlit light-green grass in the hollows where snow makes water sometimes, and on the russet slopes.

Cut three white pine boughs opposite Fair Haven, and set them up in the bow of our boat for a sail. It was pleasant to hear the water begin to ripple under the prow, telling of our easy progress. We thus without a tack made the south side of Fair Haven, then threw our sails overboard, and the moment after mistook them for green bushes or weeds which had sprung from the bottom unusually far from shore.

Then to hear the wind sough in your sail, — that is to be a sailor and hear a land sound.

The grayish-whitish mikania, all fuzzy, covers the endless button-bushes, which are now bare of leaves.

Observed the verification of the Scripture saying "as a dog returneth to his vomit.” Our black pup, sole passenger in the stern, perhaps made seasick, vomited, then cleaned the boat again most faithfully and with a bright eye, licking his chops and looking round for more.

We comment on the boats of different patterns, – dories (?), punts, bread-troughs, flatirons, etc., etc., — which we pass, the prevailing our genuine dead-river boats, not to be matched by Boston carpenters. One farmer blacksmith whom we know, whose boat we pass in Sudbury, has got a horseshoe nailed about the sculling-hole; — keeps off the witches too? 

The water carriages of various patterns and in various conditions, — some for pleasure (against the gentleman's seat?); some for ducking, small and portable; some for honest fishing, broad and leaky but not cranky; some with spearing fixtures; some stout and square-endish for hay boats; one canal-boat or mud-scow in the weeds, not worth getting down the stream, like some vast pike that could swallow all the rest, proper craft for our river.

In some places in the meadows opposite Bound Rock, the river seemed to have come to an end, it was so narrow suddenly.

After getting in sight of Sherman's Bridge, counted nineteen birches on the right-hand shore in one whirl.

Now commenced the remarkable meandering of the river, so that we seemed for some time to be now running up, then running down parallel with a long, low hill, tacking over the meadow in spite of ourselves.

Landed at Sherman's Bridge.

An apple tree, made scrubby by being browsed by cows. Through what early hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! No wonder it is prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend itself from such foes.?

The pup nibbles clams, or plays with a bone no matter how dry.

Thus the dog can be taken on a river voyage, but the cat cannot. She is too set in her ways.

Now again for the Great Meadows.

What meandering! The Serpentine, our river should be called. What makes the river love to delay here? Here come to study the law of meandering.

We see the vast meadow studded with haycocks. We suspect that we have got to visit them all. It proves even so. Now we run down one haycock, now another.

The distance made is frequently not more than a third the distance gone. Between Sherman's Bridge and Causeway Bridge is about a mile and three quarters in a straight line, but we judged that we went more than three miles.

Here the pipes (at first) line the shore, and muskrat-houses still.

A duck (a loon ?) sails within gunshot, unwilling to fly; also a stake-driver (Ardea minor) rises with prominent breast or throat bone, as if badly loaded, his ship.

Now no button-bushes line the stream, the changeable (?) stream; no rocks exist; the shores are lined with, first, in the water, still green polygonum, then wide fields of dead pontederia, then great bulrushes, then various reeds, sedges, or tall grasses, also dead thalictrum (?), — or is it cicuta? 

Just this side the causeway bridges a field, like a tall corn-field, of tall rustling reeds (?), ten feet high with broadish leaves and large, now seedy tufts, standing amid the button-bushes and great bulrushes.

I remember to have seen none elsewhere in this vicinity, unless at Fresh Pond, and there are they not straighter? Also, just beyond the bridges, very tall flags from six to eight feet high, leaves like the cat-tail but no tail. What are they ?? 

We pass under two bridges above the Causeway Bridge. After passing under the first one of these two, at the mouth of Larnum Brook, which is fed from Blandford's Pond, comes from Marlborough through Mill Village, and has a branch, Hop Brook, from south of Nobscot, — we see Nobscot, very handsome in a purplish atmosphere in the west, over a very deep meadow, which makes far up.

A good way to skate to Nobscot, or within a mile or two.

To see a distant hill from the surface of water over a low and very broad meadow, much better than to see it from another hill. This perhaps the most novel and so memorable prospect we got.

Walked across half a mile to Pelham's Pond, whose waves were dashing quite grandly. A house near, with two grand elms in front.
I have seen other elms in Wayland.

This pond a good point to skate to in winter, when it is easily accessible. Now we should have to draw our boat.

On the return, as in going, we expended nearly as much time and labor in counteracting the boat's tendency to whirl round, it is so miserably built. Now and then, — aye, aye, almost an everlasting now, — it will take the bits in its mouth and go round in spite of us, though we row on one side only, for the wind fills the after part of the boat, which is nearly out of water, and we therefore get along best and fastest when the wind is strong and dead ahead.

That's the kind of wind we advertise to race in.

To row a boat thus all the day, with an hour's intermission, making fishes of ourselves as it were, putting on these long fins, realizing the finny life! Surely oars and paddles are but the fins which a man may use.

The very pads stand perpendicular (on their edges) before this wind, — which appears to have worked more to the north, — showing their red undersides.

The muskrats have exposed the clamshells to us in heaps all along the shore; else most would not know that a clam existed. If it were not for muskrats, how little would the fisherman see or know of fresh-water clamshells or clams! 

In the Great Meadows again the loon (?) rises, and again alights, and a heron (?) too flies sluggishly away, with vast wings, and small ducks which seem to have no tails, but their wings set quite aft.

The crows ashore are making an ado, perchance about some carrion.

We taste some swamp white oak acorns at the south end of Bound Rock Meadow.

The sun sets when we are off Israel Rice's. A few golden coppery clouds, intensely glowing, like fishes in some molten metal of the sky, and then the small scattered clouds grow blue-black above, or one half, and reddish or pink the other half, and after a short twilight the night sets in.

We think it is pleasantest to be on the water at this hour.

We row across Fair Haven in the thickening twilight and far below it, steadily and with out speaking. As the night draws on her veil, the shores retreat; we only keep in the middle of this low stream of light; we know not whether we float in the air or in the lower regions.

We seem to recede from the trees on shore or the island very slowly, and yet a few reaches make all our voyage. Nature has divided it agreeably into reaches.

The reflections of the stars in the water are dim and elongated like the zodiacal light straight down into the depths, but no mist rises to-night.

It is pleasant not to get home till after dark, — to steer by the lights of the villagers. The lamps in the houses twinkle now like stars; they shine doubly bright.

Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1851

Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond . . .Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half. See September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least."); January 31, 1855 ("Skated up the river to explore further than I had been. I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles,. . .and walked three quarters of a mile further. It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth. "); July 31, 1859 ("This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet."); December 28, 1859 ("It is remarkable that the river should so suddenly contract at Pelham Pond. It begins to be Musketaquid there.")

Walked across half a mile to Pelham's Pond. See July 31, 1859 ("We could not now detect any passage into Pelham Pond, which at the nearest, near the head of this reach, came within thirty rods of the river")

What meandering! 

Study what makes the river 

love to delay here 

,

Early flowers, leaves and birds.

 

May 1. 

May 1, 2021

 Sunday.

A cold northwest wind.

Now, on my return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or landscape.

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill: 

• dandelion, 
• field horse-tail, 
• Antennaria plantaginifolia, 
• sweet-gale, 
• epigæa, 
• Populus grandidentata, 
• Salix tristis, 
• Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), 
• Potentilla Canadensis, 
• comptonia, 
• Thalictrum anemonoides, 
• Anemone nemorosa, 
• V. blanda, 
• P. balsamifera, 
• Aquilegia Canadensis, 
• Hedyotiscærulea, 
• andromeda, 
• Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
• Salix alba, 
• benzoin, 
• Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.

Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun: 

• Viola pedata, 
• Ostrya Virginica, 
• V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).

And Rumex Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.

The expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.

Other conspicuous green leaves are 

• the gooseberry, 
• currant, 
• elder, 
• the willows just beginning,
•  and alder, 
• and apple trees 
• and high blackberry, 
• amelanchier, 
• meadow-sweet,
•  beside many herbaceous plants.

Drosera (round leaved) leaves now.

Sedge-grass (early sedge) very abundant still.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.

These things observed on way To Cliffs.

The oak leaves on the plain are fallen.

The colors are now: 

• light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels); 
• landscape russet and greenish,
•  spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands, 
• with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and 
• dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.

It is greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong, invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.

It is like the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined with grass and edged with hypnum.

Channing has seen a robin's nest and eggs.

I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.

The shrub oaks are well budded.

The young ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.

Oaks and hickory buds just ready to open.

How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now! 

The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot on banks.

The skunk-cabbage leaves green the warm, springy meads.

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.

Columbine Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.

The columbines have been out some days.

How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves! 

The barn swallow is about.

Have we the Viola lanceolata?  [Yes. Vide Hubbard's] 

Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit? 

Channing says he has heard the wood thrush, brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.

This and last page for birds which I find come in the interval.

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1853

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here.  See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")

Dandelion: See April 18, 1860 ("Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom."); April 29, 1857 ("I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Sweet-gale.  See  April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.")

Epigæa. See April 9, 1853 ("The epigæa will not be out for some days."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata. See April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen

Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See  April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand");   May 5, 1859  ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen");  May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata ");  May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels. See May 4, 1853 ("He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea.")

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg. See June 20, 1856 (" A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest.")

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird. See May 4, 1853 ("The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday."); May 10, 1853 ("I hear , and have for a week , in the woods , the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow bird's . What is it ? Is it the redstart ? I now see one of these . The first I have distinguished . And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this."); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")

American Redstart

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

In some years it may thaw and freeze again.

 

March 30.

March 30, 2017

High water, — up to sixth slat (or gap) above Smith's second post. It is said to have been some nine inches higher about a month ago, when the snow first went off. 

R. W. E. lately found a Norway pine cut down in Stow's wood by Saw Mill Brook. 

According to Channing's account, Walden must have skimmed nearly, if not entirely, over again once since the 11th or 12th, or after it had been some time completely clear. It seems, then, that in some years it may thaw and freeze again.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1861

High water —nine inches higher about a month ago, See March 30, 1855 ("The river is but about a foot above the lowest summer level.")

R. W. E. lately found a Norway pine. See February 27, 1851 ("Saw to-day on Pine Hill . . . a Norway pine, the first I have seen in Concord. . . . It was a very handsome tree, about twenty-five feet high.")

 Walden must have skimmed nearly, if not entirely, over again once since the 11th or 12th. See March 11, 1861 ("C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, . . . This shows how many things are to be taken into account in judging of such a pond. I have not been able to go to the pond the past winter. I infer that, if it has broken up thus early, it must be because the ice was thin, and that it was thin not for want of cold generally, but because of the abundance of snow which lay on it.")  Compare March 30, 1856 ("These cold days have made the ice of Walden dry and pretty hard again at top. It is just twenty-four inches thick"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Get yourself therefore a name.

November 15

Here is a rainy day, which keeps me in the house.

Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer.

“Good Lord ” says he, “a man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe the man you work with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds.”

I am pleased to read in Stoever's Life of Linnæus (Trapp's translation) that his father, being the first learned man of his family, changed his family name and borrowed that of Linnæus (Linden-tree-man ) from a lofty linden tree which stood near his native place, “a custom,” he says, “not unfrequent in Sweden, to take fresh appellations from natural objects.”

What more fit than that the advent of a new man into a family should acquire for it, and transmit to his posterity, a new patronymic? Such a custom suggests, if it does not argue, an unabated vigor in the race, relating it to those primitive times when men did, indeed, acquire a name, as memorable and distinct as their characters.

It is refreshing to get to a man whom you will not be satisfied to call John's son or Johnson's son, but a new name applicable to himself alone, he being the first of his kind. We may say there have been but so many men as there are sur names, and of all the John-Smiths there has been but one true John Smith, and he of course is dead.

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all.

There was one enterprising boy came to school to me whose name was “Buster,” and an honorable name it was. He was the only boy in the school, to my knowledge, who was named.

What shall we say of the comparative intellectual vigor of the ancients and moderns, when we read of Theophrastus, the father of botany, that he composed more than two hundred treatises in the third century before Christ and the seventeenth before printing, about twenty of which remain, and that these fill six volumes in folio printed at Venice? Among the last are two works on natural history and the generation of plants. What a stimulus to a literary man to read his works! They were opera, not an essay or two, which you can carry between your thumb and finger.

Dioscorides (according to Stoever), who lived in the first century after Christ, was the first to inquire into the medicinal properties of plants, “the literary father of the materia medica." His work remains.

And next comes Pliny the Elder, and “by his own avowal (?), his natural history is a compilation from about twenty five hundred (?) different authors."

Conrad Gesner, of the Sixteenth Century, the first botanist of note among the moderns; also a naturalist generally.

In this century botany first “became a regular academical study.”

I think it would be a good discipline for Channing, who writes poetry in a sublimo-lipshod style, to write Latin, for then he would be compelled to say something always, and frequently have recourse to his grammar and dictionary. Methinks that what a man might write in a dead language could be more surely translated into good sense in his own language, than his own language could be translated into good Latin, or the dead language.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1851 

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. See Walking (1861 ("Travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.. . .So every man has an original wild name. . . . Our true names are nicknames."); August 19, 1851  ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal"); June 4, 1856 ("He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.")

Theophrastus, the father of botany, . . Dioscorides . . . Pliny the Elder.. .Conrad Gesner. See February 17, 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science.")

Nature prepared for an infinity of springs.

November 10

November 10, 2023

P. M. – Sail to Ball's Hill with W. E. C. 

See where the muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. 

Got some donacia grubs for Harris, but find no chrysalids. 

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily, already four or six inches long, at the bottom of the river, reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 10, 1854

Harris. Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: the librarian of Harvard University and one of Thoreau's professors. See  note to January 1, 1853 ("Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark.")

Got some donacia grubs for Harris. See January 19, 1854 ("[Dr, Harris] thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was. . . one of the Donasia (?).")

The muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. See November 11, 1853 ("There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they [muskrats]eat. I find the roots gnawed off."); December 26, 1859 ("So many of these houses being broken open, — twenty or thirty I see, — I look into the open hole, and find in it, in almost every instance, many pieces of the white root with the little leaf-bud curled up which I take to be the yellow lily root . . . Also I see a little coarser, what I take to be green leaf-stalk of the pontederia.")

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet. See October 15, 1858 ("The yellow lily in the brook by the Turnpike is still expanding fresh leaves with wrinkled edges, as in the spring. "); March 7, 1853 ("Find the yellow bud of a Nuphar advena in the ditch on the Turnpike on E. Hosmer's land, bud nearly half an inch in diameter on a very thick stem, three fourths of an inch thick at base and ten inches long, four or five inches above the mud. This may have swollen somewhat during the warmest weather in the winter, after pushing up in the fall. And I see that it may, in such a case, in favorable locations, blossom at very early but irregular periods in the spring."); March 28, 1852 ("The yellow lily leaves are pushing up in the ditch beyond Hubbard's Grove, hard-rolled and triangular, with a sharp point with which to pierce the mud; green at the tips and yellow below. The leaf is rolled in from both sides to the midrib. This is, perhaps, to be regarded as the most obvious sign of advancing spring."); June 29, 1852 ("The great yellow lily, the spatter-dock, expresses well the fertility of the river."). See also October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,"); December 2, 1852 ("There is a certain resonance and elasticity in the air that makes the least sound melodious as in spring. It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring."); January 12, 1855 (" Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

Nature prepared for 

an infinity of springs –

yellow lily buds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature prepared for an infinity of springs

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541110

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday.

May 22. 

May 22, 2015

Sunday. 

To Nobscot with W. E. C. 

This is the third windy day following the two days’rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season, methinks. 

The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the pleasant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. 

The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer. 

Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. 

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. 

With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. 

The lilac is scented at every house. 

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. 

We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. 

Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, – a rich lemon (?) yellow. 

Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “ D. H. 1716. ” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. 

Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai, — but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. 

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. 

The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. 

An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. 

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal, they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food. 

This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. 

This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm weather, waving rye, slight dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. 

The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the newspaper while his cows go through the bars. 

I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. 

A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond ! !

...

Our quince blossomed yesterday. 

Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1853

The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. See May 22, 1854 ("I hear also pe-a-wee pe-a-wee, and then occasionally pee-yu, the first syllable in a different and higher key emphasized, — all very sweet and naive and innocent") See also May 17, 1853 ("I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wai. The heat of yesterday has brought him on."); May 17, 1854 ("Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound."). And see A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields. See May 17, 1853 ("The air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms ( this is blossom week )"); May 20, 1854 ("Methinks we always have at this time those washing winds as now, when the choke-berry is in bloom, — bright and breezy days blowing off some apple blossoms”); May 25, 1852 (It is blossom week with the apples.”); May 27 1852 ("The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.”); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, . . . scattering the remaining apple blossoms.”)

Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergii (debilis of Bigelow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. See May 22, 1856 ("To Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree. See October 28, 1857 ("I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. ")

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet.

April 20. 

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. 

A warm day. Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. 

Moore tells me that last fall his men, digging sand in that hollow just up the hill, dug up a parcel of snakes half torpid. They were both striped and black together, in a place somewhat porous, he thought where a horse had been buried once. 

The men killed them, and laid them all in a line on the ground, and they measured several hundred feet. This seems to be the common practice when such collections are found; they are at once killed and stretched out in a line, and the sum of their lengths measured and related.  

It is a warm evening, and I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time. 

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush.

H. D.. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1860

The Salix purpurea in prime; began, say, 18th. See April 10, 1860 ("Salix purpurea apparently will not open for four or five days");. See also April 22, 1859 ("The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th.")

 Now begin to sit without fires more commonly, and to wear but one coat commonly. See April 16, 1855 ("A perfectly clear and very warm day, . . . and I have not got far before, for the first time, I regret that I wore my greatcoat"); April 17, 1855 ("I leave off my greatcoat, though the wind rises rather fresh before I return. It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat.");. April 19, 1855 ("Warm and still and somewhat cloudy. Am without greatcoat"); April 25, 1854 (" I swelter under my greatcoat. . . . (I have not left it at home yet),. . . For some time we have done with little fire, nowadays let it go out in the afternoon."); April 26, 1854 ("It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time.");April 30, 1859 (" The warmest afternoon yet. Sat in sun without fire this forenoon."); May 2, 1858 ("Sit without fire to-day and yesterday."); May 3, 1857 ("To-day we sit without fire.")

The men killed them. See  note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

I hear toads ring distinctly for the first time.  See  April 20, 1853 ("Saw a toad and a small snake.") See also April 5, 1860 ("I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. . . .. Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general. ");  April 25, 1859 ("[A] new season has arrived.  . . . It begins when the first toad is heard. Methinks I hear through the wind to-day . . . a very faint, low ringing of toads, as if distant and just begun. It is an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination").  Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads.

C. sees bluets and some kind of thrush to-day, size of wood thrush, — he thought probably hermit thrush. See April 19, 1858 ("Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? ");  April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..") and note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023