The ice was very thin, and the holes were perfect disks.

November 19.

Old Mr. Joseph Hosmer, who helped me to-day, said that he used to know all about the lots, but since they’ve chopped off so much, and the woods have grown up, he finds himself lost.

Thirty or forty years ago, when he went to meeting, he knew every face in the meeting-house, even the boys and girls, they looked so much like their parents; but after ten or twelve years they would have outgrown his knowledge entirely (they would have altered so), but he knew the old folks still, because they held their own and didn't alter.

Just so he could tell the boundaries of the old wood which hadn't been cut down, but the young wood altered so much in a few years that he couldn't tell anything about it.

When I asked him why the old road which went by this swamp was so roundabout, he said he would answer me as Mr. __ did him in a similar case once, “Why, if they had made it straight, they wouldn't have left any room for improvement."

Standing by Harrington's pond-hole in the swamp, which had skimmed over, we saw that there were many holes through the thin black ice, of various sizes, from a few inches to more than a foot in diameter, all of which were perfectly circular.

Mr. H. asked me if I could account for it.

As we stood considering, we jarred the boggy ground and made a dimple in the water, and this accident, we thought, betrayed the cause of it; i.e. the circular wavelets so wore off the edges of the ice when once a hole was made.

The ice was very thin, and the holes were perfect disks.

But what jarred the ground and shook the water?

Perhaps the wind which shook the spruce and pine trees which stood in the quaking ground, as well as the little life in the water itself, and the wind on the ice and water itself.

There was a more permanent form created by the dimple, but not yet a shellfish.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1851 

Harrington's pond-hole in the swamp.(aka Harrington’s Mud-hole Harrington’s Pool) -- This boggy pool on the north edge of the Ministerial Swamp is/was notable for its uncommon bog plants – such as Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) and Black Spruce (Picea mariana) ~ Thoreau Place Names A Guide to Place Names in Concord and Lincoln, MA in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau compiled by Ray Angelo.  See November 24, 1851 ("Found on the south side of the swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen"); August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.")

From the factory dam to the powder-mills.

July 21. 

P. M. — To Assabet, above factory. 

July 21, 2019

For about one third the way from the factory dam to the powder-mills the river is broad and deep, in short a mill-pond. 

Harrington has what he calls his Elm Hole, where he thinks he finds the old bed of the river some ten rods from the present. The river in many places evidently once washed the base of hills, from which it is now separated by fifty rods of meadow. 

The pontederia on the Assabet is a very fresh and clear blue to-day, and in its early prime, — very handsome to see. 

The nesaea grows commonly along the river near the powder-mills, one very dense bed of it at the mouth of the powder-mill canal. The canal is still cluttered with the wreck of the mills that have been blown up in times past, — timber, boards, etc., etc., — and the steep hill is bestrewn with the fragments of the mills, which fell on it more than half a dozen years ago (many of them), visible half a mile off. 

As you draw near the powder-mills, you see the hill behind bestrewn with the fragments of mills which have been blown up in past years, — the fragments of the millers having been removed, — and the canal is cluttered with the larger ruins. 

The very river makes greater haste past the dry-house, as it were for fear of accidents.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1859

Harrington has what he calls his Elm Hole.See July 20, 1859 ("Hosmer says that when he digs down in his millet- field, twenty rods or more from the river, in his interval, at three or four feet depth he comes to coarse stones which look like an old bed of the river. ")

The pontederia on the Assabet is a very fresh and clear blue to-day, and in its early prime. See  July 18, 1852 ("The pontederias are now in their prime . . .They are very freshly blue. In the sun, when you are looking west, they are of a violaceous blue."); July 18, 1853 ("The fields of pontederia are in some places four or five rods wide and almost endless")

The steep hill is bestrewn with the fragments of the mills, which fell on it more than half a dozen years ago . See January 7, 1853 ("Timber six inches square and eighteen feet long was thrown over a hill eighty feet high.")

Powder-mills. Nathan Pratt purchased a  mill pond dam on the Assabet River and converted the former sawmill to a powder mill in 1835. The first explosion, in the first year the mills were operating, killed four men in 1836. The last three explosions in 1940 ended gunpowder production, and the dam at the original mill pond site is now being used to generate hydroelectricity for municipal Concord. The body of water created by the dam goes by the name Ripple Pond, and is located in Acton and Maynard.~ Wikipedea

What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his!

September 6. 

Sunday. P. M. – To Assabet, west bank. 

Turned off south at Derby's Bridge and walked through a long field, half meadow, half upland. Soapwort gentian, out not long, and dwarf cornel again. 

There is a handsome crescent-shaped meadow on this side, opposite Harrington's. A good-sized black oak in the pasture by the road half-way between the school house and Brown’s. 

Walked under Brown’s hemlocks by the railroad. How commonly hemlocks grow on the north slope of a hill near its base, with only bare reddened ground beneath! This bareness probably is not due to any peculiar quality in the hemlocks, for I observe that it is the same under pitch and white pines when equally thick. I suspect that it is owing more to the shade than to the fallen leaves. 

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts with long and slender legs on a grass stem, which are often concealed by their color. What green, herbaceous, graminivorous ideas he must have! I wish that my thoughts were as seasonable as his! 

Some haws begin to be ripe. 

We go along under the hill and woods north of railroad, west of Lords land, about to the west of the swamp and to the Indian ditch. I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit. 

C. says that they use high blueberry wood for tholepins on the Plymouth ponds. 

I observe to-day, away at the south end of our dry garden, a moist and handsome Rana halecina. It is the only frog that I ever see in such localities. He is quite a traveller. 

A very cool day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1857

Soapwort gentian, out not long. See September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now.");  September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown"); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

I see one of those peculiarly green locusts . . . which are often concealed by their color. See August 21, 1853 ("Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden . . . The wings are transparent, with marks somewhat like a letter."); August 23, 1856 ("A green locust an inch and three quarters long"); August 27, 1860 ("See one of the shrilling green alder locusts on the under side of a grape leaf. Its body is about three quarters of an inch or less in length; antennae and all, two inches. Its wings a . . . transparent, with lines crossing them.")

Rana halecina (Lithobates pipiens) – Northern Leopard Frog.  See August 22, 1854 ("There are now hopping all over this meadow small Rana palustris, and also some more beautifully spotted halecina or shad frogs."); June 17, 1856 ("Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox) . . . He distinguished the Rana halecina in the alcohol by more squarish (?) spots."); April 3, 1858 ("They were the R. halecina. I could see very plainly the two very prominent yellow lines along the sides of the head and the large dark ocellated marks, even under water, on the thighs, etc. . . .Their note is a hard dry tut tut tut tut, not at all ringing like the toad’s . . . and from time to time one makes that faint somewhat bullfrog-like er er er. Both these sounds, then, are made by one frog, and what I have formerly thought an early bullfrog note was this. This, I think, is the first frog sound I have heard from the river meadows or anywhere . . .")

Shall not I too resume my spring life?

February 27

The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.

Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a moderately, cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease.

Cross the river on ice. 

Near Tarbell's and Harrington's the North Branch has burst its icy fetters. This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. As I stand looking up it westward for half a mile where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up with a fine-grained silvery sparkle.

If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope?

To-night a circle round the moon.


H. D Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1852

The mosses now are in fruit. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green 

This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. . . .shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? See March 20, 1853 ("The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore.")

Bright and immortal

the unfettered stream sparkles

in the clear cool air.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shall not I too resume my spring life?

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 © 2009-2025

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