To see what was primitive about our Concord River.

September 19.    

Monday. [The Maine Woods]

I looked very narrowly at the vegetation as we glided along close to the shore, and now and then made Joe turn aside for me to pluck a plant, that I might see what was primitive about our Concord River.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1853 

See September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.") See also August 30, 1856 ("I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess in Concord"); September 2, 1856  ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, . . .  prepared for strange things."); July 31, 1857 ("A new plant, the halenia or spurred gentian, which I observed afterward on the carries all the way down to near the mouth of the East Branch,"); November 20, 1857 ("We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing."); November 23, 1860 ("I sail the unexplored sea of Concord")

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")

,

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

September 14.

September 14, 2022

A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones.

2 P. M. To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet.

The white oak which appears to have made part of a hedge fence once, now standing in Hubbard's fence near the Corner road, where it stretches along horizontally, is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way) two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing perpendicularly out of it eighteen inches in diameter.

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have petals, little cream pitchers.

Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, 

See October 2, 1856

(“Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white.

See August 17, 1851

("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, 

in damp ground, with red or purple heads.")

I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream before the strong cool wind, which here strikes it from the north.

The cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

Polygonum aviculare — knot-grass, goose-grass, or door-grass still in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1851

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields. See July 12, 1851 ("The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent."); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing."); September 5, 1851 ("A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself.")

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. See September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside! "); September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, – cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings."); September 24, 1851 ("Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); July 23, 1853 (" The rhexia is seen afar on the islets, — its brilliant red like a rose. It is fitly called meadow-beauty. Is it not the handsomest and most striking and brilliant flower since roses and lilies began? "); July 29, 1856 ("Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down."); August 1, 1856 ("They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow. Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over. We, dwelling and walking on the dry upland, do not suspect their existence.."); August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.") ;August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present."); August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea,");  August 23, 1858 ("The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime");   August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”); August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack."): September 28, 1858 ("Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia."); October 2, 1856 (“The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white. See July 4, 1853 ("Polygala sanguinea."); July 6, 1854 ("Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more."); July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out."); July 13, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea, some time, Hubbard's Meadow Path; say meadow-paths and banks. ");July 16, 1854 ("The Polygala sanguinea heads in the grass look like sugar-plums.");July 17, 1852 ("The caducous polygala has the odor of checkerberry at its root, and hence I thought the flower had a fugacious, spicy fragrance."); July 31, 1856 ("As I am going across to Bear Garden Hill, I see much white Polygala sanguinea with the red in A. Wheeler's meadow");August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, . . . etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?“); August 17, 1851 ("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads."); August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea,");  August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: . . . Polygala sanguinea, etc."); September 3, 1854 ("In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described."); September 3, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian."); September 13, 1851 ("The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. . . . Both this and the caducous polygala are now some what faded."); October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc."); November 8, 1858 ("Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream See April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. "); July 30, 1859 ("Trying the current there, there being a very faint . . . wind, commonly not enough to be felt on the cheek or to ripple the water, . . .my boat is altogether blown up-stream, even by this imperceptible breath. . . .It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill.")

tinyurl.com/HDTgrapesept14

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and the riverside.

March 25.

I forgot to say yesterday that several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. One in Trillium Woods was a favorite because it was so dense and regular, its outline rounded as if it were a moss bed; and another more than two miles from this, at Dugan's, which I went to see yesterday, was then being cut, like the former, to supply charcoal for powder. Dugan does most of this work about the town. The willow hedges by causeways are regularly trimmed and peeled. The small wood brings eight dollars a cord. Alders, also, and poplars are extensively used.

6 A. M. To Brister's Hill.

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. Sitting near together on an oak or pine in the woods or an elm in the village, they keep up a very pleasant, enlivening, and incessant jingling and twittering chill-lill-lill, so that it is difficult to distinguish a single bird's note, – parts of it much like a canary.

This sound advances me furthest toward summer, unless it be the note of the lark, who, by the way, is the most steady singer at present. Notwithstanding the raw and windy mornings, it will sit on a low twig or tussock or pile of manure in the meadow and sing for hours, as sweetly and plaintively as in summer.

I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree.

I thought I heard the note of a robin and of a bluebird from an oak. It proceeded from a small bird about as big as a bluebird] which did not perch like a woodpecker, uttering first some notes robin-like or like the golden robin, then perfect bluebird warbles, and then it flew off with a flight like neither. [Was it not the fox-colored sparrow?] From what I saw and heard afterward I suspected it might be a downy woodpecker.

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water.

When I saw the fungi in my lamp, I was startled and awed, as if I were stooping too low, and should next be found classifying carbuncles and ulcers. Is there not sense in the mass of men who ignore and confound these things, and never see the cryptogamia on the one side any more than the stars on the other? Underfoot they catch a transient glimpse of what they call toad stools, mosses, and frog-spittle, and overhead of the heavens, but they can all read the pillars on a Mexican quarter.

They ignore the worlds above and below, keep straight along, and do not run their boots down at the heel as I do. 

How to keep the heels up I have been obliged to study carefully, turning the nigh foot painfully on side-hills.

I find that the shoemakers, to save a few iron heel-pegs, do not complete the rows on the inside by three or four, — the very place in the whole boot where they are most needed, — which has fatal consequences to the buyer. I often see the tracks of them in the paths. It is as if you were to put no underpinning under one corner of your house.

I have managed to cross very wet and miry places dry-shod by moving rapidly on my heels. I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then.

The various lights in which you may regard the earth, e.g. the dry land as sea bottom, or the sea bottom as a dry down.

Those willow cones appear to be galls, for, cutting open one of the leafy ones, I found a hard core such as are often seen bare, the nucleus of the cone, and in it a grub. This gall had completely checked the extension of the twig, and the leaves had collected and over flowed it as the water at a dam. Perchance when the twig is vigorous and full of sap the cone is leafy; other wise a hard cone.


11 A. M. – To Framingham.

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday.

Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings's new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,-twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread.

Frank's place is on the Concord River within less than ten miles of Whitehall Pond in Hopkinton, one of [the sources], perhaps the principal source, of the river. I thought that a month hence the stream would not be twenty feet wide there.

Mr. Wheeler, auctioneer, of Framingham, told me that the timber of the factory at Saxonville was brought by water to within about one mile of where the mill stands. There is a slight rapid.

Brown says that he saw the north end of Long Pond covered with ice the 22d, and that R. W. E. saw the south end entirely open.

March 25, 2024

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside.

The winter rye greens the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1853

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. See March 22, 1859 (" I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow. . .. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. "); March 23, 1852 ("I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.");  April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers")  See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward . . . his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note See March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker."); March 25, 1856 (“There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. ”) See also note to March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring :The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

Several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower"); March 23, 1853 ("The alder catkins, just burst open, are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one revolution in the length of the catkin."); March 26, 1853 ("There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day."); March 26, 1857 ("The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water. See March 2, 1860 ("At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome."):  March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); March 4, 1859 ("I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up, and lie just above the surface of the water.  . . (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Brister's Spring

I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then. See July 25, 1853 ("I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually . . . One shoemaker sold us shoe strings made of the hide of a South American jack ass, which he recommended; or rather he gave them to us and added their price to that of the shoes we bought of him. But I could not see that these were any better than the old."); August 5, 1855 ("It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks.")

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. See March 24, 1859 ("C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this!"); March 27 and 28, 1860 ("Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside. See March 28, 1852 ("The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds."); April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops."); April 13, 1854 ('I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days.."); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, . . .and they are of so cheerful and lively a color.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The red maple buds 

already redden the swamps 

and the riverside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The red maple buds redden the swamps

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-530325

  

The river froze over last night.

 December 13

The river froze over last night, – skimmed over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1850

The river froze over last night, – skimmed over. See  December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over"):  December 13, 1856 ("The river is generally open again."); December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. . . . Going over black ice three or four inches thick . . . Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also."); December 16, 1850 ("The river is probably open again.") See also November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places."); November 30, 1855 ("River skimmed over behind Dodd’s and elsewhere. Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day."); November 30, 1858 ("The river may be said to have frozen generally last night."); December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow"); December 5, 1856 ("The river is well skimmed over in most places,"); December 6, 1856 ("The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. "); December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond"); December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance

October  6.

Monday. 12 m. — To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. 

Carlisle Reach

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. It is of a light sky-blue, alternating with smoother white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently, like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed, more gloriously and heavenly fair and pure than the sky itself.

It is something more celestial than the sky above it. I never saw any water look so celestial. I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln.

We have names for the rivers of hell, but none for the rivers of heaven, unless the Milky Way be one.

It is such a smooth and shining blue, like a panoply of sky-blue plates.

Our dark and muddy river has such a tint in this case as I might expect Walden or White Pond to exhibit, if they could be seen under similar circumstances, but Walden seen from Fair Haven is, if I remember, of a deep blue color tinged with green.

Cerulean?

Such water as that river reach appears to me of quite incalculable value, and the man who would blot that out of his prospect for a sum of money does not otherwise than to sell heaven.

George Thatcher, having searched an hour in vain this morning to find a frog, caught a pickerel with a mullein leaf.

The white ash near our house, which the other day was purple or mulberry-color, is now much more red. 

7.30 P. M. – To Fair Haven Pond by boat, the moon four-fifths full, not a cloud in the sky; paddling all the way.

The water perfectly still, and the air almost, the former gleaming like oil in the moonlight, with the moon's disk reflected in it.

When we started, saw some fishermen kindling their fire for spearing by the riverside.

It was a lurid, reddish blaze, contrasting with the white light of the moon, with dense volumes of black smoke from the burning pitch pine roots rolling upward in the form of an inverted pyramid.The blaze reflected in the water, almost as distinct as the substance. It looked like tarring a ship on the shore of the Styx or Cocytus. For it is still and dark, notwithstanding the moon, and no sound but the crackling of the fire.

The fishermen can be seen only near at hand, though their fire is visible far away; and then they appear as dusky, fuliginous figures, half enveloped in smoke, seen only by their enlightened sides. Like devils they look, clad in old coats to defend themselves from the fogs, one standing up forward holding the spear ready to dart, while the smoke and flames are blown in his face, the other paddling the boat slowly and silently along close to the shore with almost imperceptible motion.

The river appears indefinitely wide; there is a mist rising from the water, which increases the indefiniteness. A high bank or moonlit hill rises at a distance over the meadow on the bank, with its sandy gullies and clamshells exposed where the Indians feasted.

The shore line, though close, is removed by the eye to the side of the hill. It is at high-water mark. It is continued till it meets the hill.

Now the fisherman's fire, left behind, acquires some thick rays in the distance and becomes a star. As surely as sunlight falling through an irregular chink makes a round figure on the opposite wall, so the blaze at a distance appears a star.

Such is the effect of the atmosphere.

The bright sheen of the moon is constantly travelling with us, and is seen at the same angle in front on the surface of the pads; and the reflection of its disk in the rippled water by our boat-side appears like bright gold pieces falling on the river's counter. This coin is incessantly poured forth as from some unseen horn of plenty at our side.

(I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell.)

I do not know but the weirdness of the gleaming oily surface is enhanced by the thin fog.

A few water-bugs are seen glancing in our course.

I shout like a farmer to his oxen, — a short barking shout, — and instantly the woods on the eastern shore take it up, and the western hills a little up the stream; and so it appears to rebound from one side the river valley to the other, till at length I hear a farmer call to his team far up as Fair Haven Bay, whither we are bound.

We pass through reaches where there is no fog, perhaps where a little air is stirring.

Our clothes are almost wet through with the mist, as if we sat in water.

Some portions of the river are much warmer than others.

In one instance it was warmer in the midst of the fog than in a clear reach.

In the middle of the pond we tried the echo again. First the hill to the right took it up; then further up the stream on the left; and then after a long pause, when we had almost given it up, — and the longer expected, the more in one sense unexpected and surprising it was, — we heard a farmer shout to his team in a distant valley, far up on the opposite side of the stream, much louder than the previous echo; and even after this we heard one shout faintly in some neighboring town.
The third echo seemed more loud and distinct than the second.

But why, I asked, do the echoes always travel up the stream?

I turned about and shouted again, and then I found that they all appeared equally to travel down the stream, or perchance I heard only those that did so.

As we rowed to Fair Haven's eastern shore, a moonlit hill covered with shrub oaks, we could form no opinion of our progress toward it, — not seeing the water line where it met the hill, – until we saw the weeds and sandy shore and the tall bulrushes rising above the shallow water ( like ) the masts of large vessels in a haven. The moon was so high that the angle of excidence did not permit of our seeing her reflection in the pond.

As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection of every wood and hill on both sides distinctly. These answering reflections-shadow to substance-impress the voyager with a sense of harmony and symmetry, as when you fold a blotted paper and produce a regular figure, - a dualism which nature loves.

What you commonly see is but half.

Where the shore is very low the actual and reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot, and it is but a line that separates them, and the water and the sky almost flow into one another, and the shore seems to float.

As we paddle up or down, we see the cabins of muskrats faintly rising from amid the weeds, and the strong odor of musk is borne to us from particular parts of the shore.

Also the odor of a skunk is wafted from over the meadows or fields.

The fog appears in some places gathered into a little pyramid or squad by itself, on the surface of the water.

Home at ten.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1851 

To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. See September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line.") See also April 3, 1858 ("we paddle along all day, down to the Bedford line.")

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. See  April 1, 1852 ("Now I see the river - reach , far in the north . The more distant river is ever the most ethereal ,");April 10, 1852 ("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."):August 24, 1858 ("I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water")

The water and sky 

flow into one another –

 the shore seems to float.

The sheen of the moon 

constantly travels with us –

bright gold at out side.

tinyurl.com/HDT511006

The Concord River at Lowell

September 9.

In Lowell.-- My host says that the thermometer was at 80° yesterday morning, and this morning is at 52º. 

Sudden coolness.

Clears up in afternoon, and I walk down the Merrimack on the north bank.

I see very large plants of the lanceolate thistle, four feet high and very branching.

Also Aster cordata with the corymbosus.

Concord River has a high and hard bank at its mouth, maybe thirty feet high on the east side; and my host thinks it was originally about as high on the west side, where now it is much lower and flat, having been dug down.

There is a small isle in the middle of the mouth.

There are rips in the Merrimack just below the mouth of the Concord.

There is a fall and dam in the Concord at what was Hurd's factory, — the principal fall on the Concord, in Lowell, — one at a bleachery above, and at Whipple's, — three in all below Billerica dam.

  

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1860

The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.

June 3.

I visited this afternoon (June 3d) Goodman's Hill in Sudbury, going through Lincoln over Sherman's Bridge and Round Hill, and returning through the Corner. It probably affords the best view of Concord River meadows of any hill. The horizon is very extensive as it is, and if the top were cleared so that you could get the western view, it would be one of the most extensive seen from any hill in the county. 

The most imposing horizons are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of a river valley. The prospect even from a low hill has something majestic in it in such a case. The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon. 

There is a good view of Lincoln lying high up in among the hills. You see that it is the highest town hereabouts, and hence its fruit. 

The river at this time looks as large as the Hudson. I think that a river-valley town is much the handsomest and largest-featured, — like Concord and Lancaster, for instance, natural centres. 

Upon the hills of Bolton, again, the height of land between the Concord and Nashua, I have seen how the peach flourishes. 

Nobscot, too, is quite imposing as seen from the west side of Goodman's Hill. On the western side of a continuation of this hill is Wadsworth’s battle field.

Returning, I saw in Sudbury twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?) swallow under the eaves of a barn.

The republican or cliff swallow.
Their nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets' nests.

 They seemed particularly social and loquacious neighbors, though their voices are rather squeaking. Their nests, built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets' nests, enough so to prove a sort of connection. Their activity, sociability, and chattiness make them fit pensioners and neighbors of man — summer companions — for the barn-yard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1850

 The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon. See September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); June 25, 1852 ("The earth appears like a vast saucer sloping upward to its sharp mountain rim."); July 27, 1852 ("How beautiful hills and vales, the whole surface of the earth a succession of these great cups, falling away from dry or rocky edges to gelid green meadows and water in the midst, where night already is setting in!"); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, for the most part also unremembered, which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills."); August 5, 1852 (" From Smith's Hill beyond, there is as good a view of the mountains as from any place in our neighbor hood, because you look across the broad valley in which Concord lies first of all.");  March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim.");March 28, 1858 ("From this hilltop I overlook,. . . this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it,.") See also note to September 27, 1852 ("From Smith's Hill I looked toward the mountain line.")

Twenty-five nests of the new (cliff?) swallow under the eaves of a barn. See April 30, 1856 ("I was surprised by the great number of swallows—white-bellied and barn swallows and perhaps republican — flying round and round, or skimming very low over the meadow. . .There were a thousand or more of swallows, and I think that they had recently arrived together on their migration."); May 4, 1856 (“Among others, I see republican swallows flying over river at Island”); May 11, 1856 ("There are many swallows circling low over the river behind Monroe’s, — bank swallows, barn, republican, chimney, and white-bellied. These are all circling together a foot or two over the water, passing within ten or twelve feet of me in my boat."); May 20, 1858 (“Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. . .. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together.”); May 20, 1858 (“The cliff swallow, then, is here.”); May 21, 1855 (“Is that plump blue-backed, rufous rumped swallow the cliff swallow, flying with barn swallows, etc., over the river?"); May 29, 1859 “The republican swallow at Hosmer's barn just begun to lay.”

The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows.

April 7. 

April 7, 2020

6 A. M. — I did not notice any bees on the willows I looked at yesterday, though so many on the cabbage. 

The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning, dashing up the street, and two have already come to disturb the bluebirds at our box. 

Saw and heard this morning, on a small elm and the wall by Badger’s, a sparrow (? ), seemingly somewhat slaty-brown and lighter beneath, whose note began loud and clear, twee-tooai, etc., etc., ending much like the field sparrow. Was it a female F. hyemalis? Or a field, or a swamp, sparrow? Saw no white in tail. 

Also saw a small, plain, warbler-like bird for a moment, which I did not recognize. 

10 A. M. — Down river in boat to Bedford, with C. 

A windy, but clear, sunny day; cold wind from north west. 

Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. Another maple, all or nearly all female. The staminiferous flowers look light yellowish, the female dark crimson. These white maples flower branches droop quite low, striking the head of the rower, and curve gracefully upward at the ends. 

Another sucker, the counterpart of the one I saw the other day, tail gone, but not purpled snout, being fresher. Is it the work of a gull or of the spearer? Do not the suckers chiefly attract the gulls at this season? 

River has risen from last rains, and we cross the Great Meadows, scaring up many ducks at a great distance, some partly white, some apparently black, some brownish (?). 

It is Fast-Day, and many gunners are about the shore, which makes them shy. I never cross the meadow at this season without seeing ducks. 

That is probably a marsh hawk, flying low over the water and then skirting the meadow’s copsy edge, when abreast, from its apparently triangular wings, reminding me of a smaller gull. Saw more afterward. 

A hawk above Ball’s Hill which, though with a distinct white rump, I think was not the harrier but sharp-shinned, from its broadish, mothlike form, light and slightly spotted beneath, with head bent downward, watching for prey. 

A great gull, though it is so fair and the wind northwest, fishing over the flooded meadow. He slowly circles round and hovers with flapping wings in the air over particular spots, repeatedly returning there and sailing quite low over the water, with long, narrow, pointed wings, trembling throughout their length. 

Hawks much about water at this season. 

If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged. 

I am surprised to see how much in warm places the high blueberry buds are started, some reddish, some greenish, earlier now than any gooseberries I have noticed. 

Several painted tortoises; no doubt have been out a long time. 

Walk in and about Tarbell’s Swamp. Heard in two distinct places a slight, more prolonged croak, somewhat like the toad. This? Or a frog? It is a warmer sound than I have heard yet, as if dreaming outdoors were possible. 

Many spotted tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still, warm ditch cut through the swamp. They make a great rustling a rod ahead, as they make haste through the leaves to tumble into the water. 

The flower-buds of the andromeda here are ready to open, almost. Yet three or four rods off from all this, on the edge of the swamp, under a north hillside, is a long strip of ice five inches thick for ten or twelve rods. 

The first striped snake crawling off through leaves in the sun. 

Crossed to Bedford side to see where [they] had been digging out ( probably ) a woodchuck. 

How handsome the river from those hills! The river southwest over the Great Meadows a sheet of sparkling molten silver, with broad lagoons parted from it by curving lines of low bushes; to the right or northward now, at 2 or 3 P. M., a dark blue, with small smooth, light edgings, firm plating, under the lee of the shore. 

Fly like bees buzzing about, close to the dry, barren hill side. 

The only large catkins I notice along the river side are on the recent yellow-green shoots from the stump of what looks like the ordinary early swamp willow, which is common, — nearby almost wholly grayish and stinted and scarcely opening yet. 

Small bee-like wasps (?) and flies are numerous on them, not flying when you stand never so close. 

A large leech in the water, serpentine this wise, as the snake is not. 

Approach near to Simon Brown’s ducks, on river. They are continually bobbing their heads under water in a shallow part of the meadow, more under water than above. I infer that the wild employ themselves likewise. You are most struck with the apparent ease with which they glide away, - not seeing the motion of their feet, - as by their wills. 

As we stand on Nawshawtuct at 5 P. M., looking over the meadows, I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its river than ours. Now the sun is low in the west, the northeasterly water is of a peculiarly ethereal light blue, more beautiful than the sky, and this broad water with innumerable bays and inlets running up into the land on either side and often divided by bridges and causeways, as if it were the very essence and richness of the heavens distilled and poured over the earth, contrasting with the clear russet land and the paler sky from which it has been subtracted, — nothing can be more elysian. Is not the blue more ethereal when the sun is at this angle? The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows.

I think our most distant extensive low horizon must be that northeast from this hill over Ball’s Hill, — to what town is it? It is down the river valley, partly at least toward the Merrimack, as it should be. 

What is that plant with a whorl of four, five, or six reddish cornel-like leaves, seven or eight inches from the ground, with the minute relics of small dried flowers left, and a large pink (?) bud now springing, just beneath the leaves? [Large cornel (Canadensis).] It is a true evergreen, for, it dries soon in the house, as if kept fresh by the root.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1853

If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged. See August 24, 1852 (“The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each da ywhich, summed up, would be the history of the year,”); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.")

The white-bellied swallows advertise themselves this morning, dashing up the street. See April 8, 1856 ("The white bellied swallows have paid us twittering visits the last three mornings. You must rush out quickly to see them,"); April 15, 1855 ("Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water,"); April 15, 1856 ("The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside."); April 15, 1859 ("I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes")

Another sucker, the counterpart of the one I saw the other day, tail gone, but not purpled snout, being fresher. See April 4, 1853 (“Saw a sucker washed to the shore at Lee's Bridge, its tail gone, large fins standing out, purplish on top of head and snout”). See also May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!”); and note to March 28, 1857 ("When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring.”)

The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows. See  April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes.”); February 3, 1855 (“ It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, —or thirty in all, —by some twenty low wooden bridges, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long, shallow lakes divided into reaches.”); July 30, 1859 (“It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers.”)

Many spotted tortoises are basking amid the dry leaves in the sun, along the side of a still, warm ditch. See April 7, 1856 ("See a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch."); See also February 23, 1857 ("See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . .In your latest spring they still look incredibly strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants and contemporaries of yours. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow."); March 26, 1860 ("The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55, — thirty-three days") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)