How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow!

May 12. A glorious day.

 
P. M. —Walked round by Dennis’s and Hollowell place with Alcott. 

It is suddenly very warm. A washing day, with a slight haze accompanying the strong, warm wind. 

I see, in the road beyond Luther Hosmer’s, in different places, two bank swallows which were undoubtedly killed by the four days’ northeast rain we have just had. 

Puffer says he has seen two or three dead sparrows also. The sudden heat compels us to sit in the shade at the bars above Puffer's, whence we hear the first bobolink. 

How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end! How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! 

I see a cultivated cherry in bloom, and Prichard’s Canada plum will probably bloom to-morrow. 

The river is higher than yesterday, about the same as when highest before this spring, and goes no higher. Thus attains its height the day after the rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1856

A glorious day. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

 A washing day, with a slight haze accompanying the strong, warm wind. See May 10, 1857 ("It is a washing day. I love the wind at last."); May 17, 1852 ("Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day."); May 19, 1854 ("A washing day, — a strong rippling wind, and all things bright."); May 22, 1853 ("This is the third windy day following the two days’ rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this season"); May 30, 1852 ("Now is the summer come. A breezy, washing day.")

The sudden heat compels us to sit in the shade. See May 17, 1858 (" Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered.”)

We hear the first bobolink. See May 6, 1857 ("While at work I hear the bobolink.”);  May 10, 1853 ("All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”); May 13, 1855 ("As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, . . . the sound of the first bobolink floats to us from over the meadows."); May 16, 1854 ("The earth is all fragrant as one flower. And bobolinks tinkle in the air. Nature now is perfectly genial to man.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm. See May 7, 1852 ("The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once,");  May 8, 1857 ("Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together.")   May 10, 1858 ("It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Birds of May

I see a cultivated cherry in bloom, and Prichard’s Canada plum will probably bloom to-morrow. See May 5, 1855 ("Canada plum and cultivated cherry and Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.");  May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather.") 

May 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 12

How suddenly the

birds arrive after the storm –

a glorious day.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The note of the bobolink

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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560512

It is now good walking on the river.

January 20.

P. M. — Up river to Hollowell place. 

I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast. 

It is now good walking on the river, for, though there has been no thaw since the snow came, a great part of it has been converted into snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. 

The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter, but even when the snow lies very deep in the fields. It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and unpleasant track in the highways, the only practicable route. 

The snow never lies so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside being blown out of the river valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.

January 20, 2015

But what a different aspect the river’s brim now from what it wears in summer! I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower. That museum of animal and vegetable life, a meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it. 

Nut Meadow Brook is open in the river meadow, but not into the river. It is remarkable that the short strip in the middle below the Island yesterday should be the only open place between Hunt’s Bridge and Hubbard’s, at least, -—-probably as far as Lee’s. 

The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time. Ere long it wears its way up to the light, and its blue artery again appears here and there. 

In one place close to the river, where the forget-me-not grows, that springy place under the bank just above the railroad bridge, the snow is quite melted and the bare ground and flattened weeds exposed for four or five feet. 

A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, January 20, 1856

It is now good walking on the river... See 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. I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button- bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time."); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. “); March 4, 1852 ("Now I take that walk along the river highway and the meadow. The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings.”). See also July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); July 11, 1852 ("Now is the time for meadow walking")

In one place close to the river, where the forget-me-not grows, that springy place under the bank just above the railroad bridge, the snow is quite melted See January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”); January 24, 1856 (“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again”); January 26, 1856 (“ [The river is not open], excepting the small space against Merrick’s below the Rock (now closed), since January 7th, when it closed at the Hubbard Bath, or nearly three weeks, —a long time, methinks, for it to be frozen so solidly”); February 3, 1856 (River still tight at Merrick’s); February 22, 1856 ([T]he river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet . . . I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s, but it was too thick to be melted); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream …That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places. "); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); March 19, 1856 ("I noticed on the 18th that springy spot on the shore just above the railroad bridge, by the ash, which for a month has been bare for two or three feet, now enlarged to eight or ten feet in diameter.") See also January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed."); December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere."); January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st."); December 26, 1858 ("I walk over the meadow above railroad bridge, where the withered grass rises above the ice, the river being low. I notice that water has oozed out over the edge of this ice or next the meadow’s edge on the west, not having come from the river but evidently from springs in the bank")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet. See January 8, 1854 ("Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead !"): February 2, 1854 ("I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are encased in ice?

December 28

December 28, 2015

P. M. — Hollowell place and back near Hubbard’s Bridge. 

To-day and yesterday the boys have been skating on the crust in the streets, —it is so hard, the snow being very shallow. 

Considerable ice still clings to the rails and trees and especially weeds, though much attenuated. 

The birches were most bent— and are still—in hollows on the north sides of hills. 

See some rabbit’s fur on the crust and some (apparently bird?) droppings, since the sleet fell,—a few pinches of fur the only trace of the murder. Was it a hawk’s work? 

Cross the river on the ice in front of Puffer’s. 

What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are thus encased in ice?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1855

A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin

March 18

Fair in the forenoon, but more or less cloudy and windy in the afternoon.

P. M. — Round by Hollowell place 'via Clamshell. 

I see with my glass as I go over the railroad bridge, sweeping the river, a great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin which rises just above the water opposite the Hubbard Bath. When I get round within sixty rods of him, ten minutes later, he still stands on the same spot, constantly turning his head to every side, looking out for foes. 

Like a wooden image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look at; head, breast, beneath, and rump pure white; slate-colored wings tipped with black and extending beyond the tail,— the herring gull. I can see clear down to its webbed feet. But now I advance, and he rises easily, goes off northeastward over the river with a leisurely flight. 

At Clamshell Hill I sweep the river again, and see, standing midleg deep on the meadow where the water is very shallow with deeper around, another of these wooden images, which is harder to scare. I do not fairly distinguish black tips to its wings. It is ten or fifteen minutes before I get him to rise, and then he goes off in the same leisurely manner, stroking the air with his wings, and now making a great circle back on its course, so you cannot tell which way it is bound. 

By standing so long motionless in these places they may perchance accomplish two objects, i. e., catch passing fish  like a heron and escape the attention of man. 

Its utmost motion was to plume itself once and turn its head about. If it did not move its head, it would look like a decoy. 

Our river is quite low for the season, and yet it is here without freshet or easterly storm. It seems to take this course on its migrations without regard to the state of the waters. 

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. 

For the last two or three days very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow; which also has slightly swollen the small streams.

Notwithstanding the water on the surface, it is easier crossing meadows and swamps than it will be a month hence, on account of the frost in the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1855

Like a wooden image of a bird See March 16, 1860 ("I also see two gulls nearly a mile off . . . Thus they will stand for an hour, at least . . . like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.");   See also March 8, 1853 ("I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks."; March 16, 1859 ("We meet one great gull beating up the course of the river against the wind, at Flint's Bridge. (One says they were seen about a week ago, but there was very little water then.) Its is a very leisurely sort of limping flight, tacking its way along like a sailing vessel, yet the slow security with which it advances suggests a leisurely contemplativeness in the bird, as if it were working out some problem quite at its leisure. As often as its very narrow, long, and curved wings are lifted up against the light, I see a very narrow distinct light edging to the wing where it is thin. Its black- tipped wings. Afterwards, from Ball's Hill, looking north, I see two more circling about looking for food over the ice and water. "); March 18, 1859 ("Rice thinks that he has seen two gulls on the Sudbury meadows."); March 22, 1858 ("We see many gulls on the very opposite side of the meadow, near the woods. They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are."); March 23, 1859 ("I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice."); March 24, 1860 ("There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow . . .Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions."); March 27,1858 ("We hear a squeaking note, as if made by a pump, and presently see four or five great herring gulls wheeling about. Sometimes they make a sound like the scream of a hen-hawk. They are shaped somewhat like a very thick white rolling-pin, sharpened at both ends. "); March 27, 1859 ("I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? "); March 28, 1858 (" I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. . . . But when one kind of life goes, another comes. ");  March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); April 4, 1855") ("A gull is circling round Fair Haven Pond, seen white against the woods and hillsides, looking as if it would dive for a fish every moment, and occasionally resting on the ice."); April 4, 1857 ("Am not sure what kind of large gulls I see there, some more white, some darker, methinks, than the herring gull."); April 7, 1853 ("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. "); April 13, 1859 ("Saw a great bird flying rather low and circling more or less over the Great Meadows, which I at first thought was a fish hawk, having a fair sight of it from Ball's Hill, but with my glass I saw that it was a gull, but, I should say, wholly slate-color and dark at that, — though there may have been small spots which made no impression of another color. It was at least as large, maybe larger than the herring gull. Was it the saddle back gull ? "); April 15, 1855 ("It is remarkable how much light those white gulls . . . absorb and reflect through that sombre atmosphere, — conspicuous almost as candles in the night."); See also Weisner X, 

9:06 AM · Mar 18, 2024

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. See  March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); March 25, 1854 ("Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?"); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

Very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow. See March 16, 1858 ("I walk in muddy fields, hearing the tinkling of new born rills.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

A great gull standing 

far away on the top of 

a muskrat-cabin. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550318

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow

September 6.

 September 5, 2016

Warm weather again, and sultry nights the last two. The last a splendid moonlight and quite warm. 

6 A. M. —To Hill. 

The sun is rising directly over the eastern (magnetic east) end of the street. Not yet the equinox. 

In the afternoon, to the Hollowell place via Hubbard Bath, crossing the river. 

A very warm day, one of the warmest of the year. The water is again warmer than I should have believed; say an average summer warmth, yet not so warm as it has been. It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here.

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. 

The sarsaparilla leaves, green or reddish, are spotted with yellow eyes centred with reddish, or dull-reddish eyes with yellow iris. They have a very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay. 

The sessile-leaved bellwort is yellow, green, and brown, all together or separately. 

Some white oak leaves are covered with dull-yellow spots. 

I think I may say that large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red. 

9 P. M. — There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. It must be twenty miles off, at least. for I can hardly hear the thunder at all. The almost incessant flashes reveal the form of the cloud, at least the upper and lower edge of it, but it stretches north and south along the horizon further than we see. Every minute I see the crinkled lightning, intensely bright, dart to earth or forkedly along the cloud. 

  

The flashes are, in fact, incessant for an hour or more, though lighting up different parts of the horizon,— now the edges of the cloud, now far along the horizon, —showing a clearer golden space beneath the cloud where rain is falling, through which stream tortuously to earth the brilliant bolts. We feel the rush of the cool wind while the thunder is yet scarcely audible. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1854

The water is again warmer than I should have believed . . . It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here. See September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably"); September 5, 1854 ("Bathe at the swamp white oak, the water again warmer than I expected. I see much thistle-down without the seed floating on the river and a hummingbird about a cardinal-flower over the water’s edge."); September 12, 1854 ("Bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm."); September 24, 1854 ("The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. See September 12, 1858 (" The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither. How rich in its decay!"); September 25, 1859 ("The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

A very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay. See August 19, 1856 ("Now for spotted aralia leaves, brown pupils with yellow iris amid the green. "); September 20, 1857 ("The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis , , , are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis)

The sessile-leaved bellwort [Uvularia sessilifolia] See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

Large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red. See September 1, 1856 ("The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting . . .turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a pleasant sweetish taste."); September 11, 1859 (" The large clusters of the Smilacina racemosa berries, four or five inches long, of whitish berries a little smaller than a pea, finely marked and dotted with vermilion or bright red, are very conspicuous.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, False Solomon's Seal

Approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. See August 31, 1859 ("A thunder-cloud, . . . advancing rapidly across the sky . . . like an immense steamer holding its steady way to its port, with tremendous mutterings from time to time, a rush of cooler air, and hurried flight of birds") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

September 6.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 6

Incessant flashes

lighting up the horizon –

a rush of cool wind.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods

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/HDT9-6-1854

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge

February 10. 

Up railroad to Assabet and return via Hollowell place. The river has risen again, and, instead of ice and snow, there is water over the ice on the meadows. This is the second freshet since the snows. The ice is cracked, and in some places heaved up in the usual manner. 

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.

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

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge. See April 19, 1852 ("That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tempests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles");  December 22, 1852 ("A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them."); See also  March 25, 1853 ("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."); May 19, 1856 ("Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill . . . He was sawing a white oak log. . . Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not perceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them"); October 29, 1860 ("I am surprised to find on this[E. Hubbard’s ] hill (cut some seven or eight years ago) many remarkably old stumps wonderfully preserved, especially on the north side the hill, — walnuts, white oak and other oaks, and black birch. One white oak is eighteen and a half inches in diameter and has one hundred and forty-three rings. This is very one-sided in its growth, the centre being just four inches from the north side, or thirty - six rings to an inch. Of course I counted the other side.Another, close by, gave one hundred and forty-one rings, another white oak fifteen and a half inches in diameter had one hundred and fifty-five rings. It has so smooth (sawed off) and solid, almost a polished or marble-Like, surface that I could not at first tell what kind of wood it was. Another white oak the same as last in rings, i. e. one hundred and fifty-five, twenty-four inches in diameter. All these were sound to the very core, so that I could see the first circles. . . For aught that appeared, they might have continued to grow a century longer. The stumps are far apart, so that this formed an open grove,"); November 13, 1860 ("On the Moore and Hosmer lot, cut in’52 (I think), west of railroad, south of Heywood’s meadow, an oak stump fifteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety three rings; another, white oak, fourteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety-four rings . . .It was a good hundred years since that old stump was cut . . .A white oak standing by the fence west of Spanish Brook dam on Morse’s lot, circumference six feet and two twelfths at three feet."); Novemberf 28 28, 1860 ("On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.'s oaks, many oaks were sawed off about a year ago . . . One white oak, 17 inches diameter, has 100 rings.A second, 16 1/2 inches diameter, also 100 rings.")

Cutting old trees. See  January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods. ... It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?").

Old growth specimens. In 1860, as part of his study of forest succession HDT was to measure old trees in detail. See October 19, 1860 (" I can easily find in countless numbers in our forests, frequently in the third succession, the stumps of the oaks that were cut near the end of the last century. Perhaps I can recover thus generally the oak woods of the beginning of the last century." October 20, 1860 ("[At Hubbard's wood] the very oldest evidences of a tree are a hollow three or four feet across, - the grave of an oak that was cut or died eighty or a hundred years ago there."); November 1, 1860 ("Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land, about that now frosty hollow, cut ... four years ago. One, having 164 rings, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635"); November 13, 1860 ("A white birch (Betula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches circumference at three feet"); November 14, 1860 ("The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet"); December 1, 1860 ("Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet") ; see also January 27, 1856 ("The white maple at Derby’s Bridge measures fifteen feet in circumference at ground,").

See also November 10, 1860 (Inches Wood); November 5, 1860 (Blood's oak lot.) and November 2, 1860 (Wetherbee's old oak lot).

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10

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