Mill road south of Ministerial Swamp, 3 P. M. the cellar-holes are more numerous than the houses

January 27.

As I stand under the hill beyond J. Hosmer's and look over the plains westward toward Acton and see the farmhouses nearly half a mile apart, few and solitary, in these great fields between these stretching woods, out of the world, where the children have to go far to school;

•  the still, stagnant, heart-eating, life-everlasting, and gone-to-seed country, so far from the postoffice where the weekly paper comes, wherein the newmarried wife cannot live for loneliness, and the young man has to depend upon his horse for society; 

• see young J. Hosmer's house, whither he returns with his wife in despair after living in the city, –– I  standing in Tarbell's road, which he alone cannot break out, –– 

• the world in winter for most walkers reduced to a sled track winding far through the drifts, all springs sealed up and no digressions; 

• where the old man thinks he may possibly afford to rust it out, not having long to live, but the young man pines to get nearer the post-office and the Lyceum, is restless and resolves to go to California, because the depot is a mile off (he hears the rattle of the cars at a distance and thinks the world is going by and leaving him); 

• where rabbits and partridges multiply, and muskrats are more numerous than ever, and none of the farmer's sons are willing to be farmers, and the apple trees are decayed, and the cellar-holes are more numerous than the houses, and the rails are covered with lichens, and the old maids wish to sell out and move into the village, and have waited twenty years in vain for this purpose and never finished but one room in the house, never plastered nor painted, inside or out, lands which the Indian was long since dispossessed [of], and now the farms are run out, and what were forests are grain-fields, what were grain-fields, pastures;

•  dwellings which only those Arnolds of the wilderness, those coureurs de bois, the baker and the butcher visit, to which at least the latter penetrates for the annual calf, –– and as lie returns the cow lows after; –– whither the villager never penetrates, but in huckleberry time, perchance, and if he does not, who does?

•  where some men's breaths smell of rum, having smuggled in a jugful to alleviate their misery and solitude; 

• where the owls give a regular serenade; –– 

I say, standing there and seeing these things, I cannot realize that this is that hopeful young America which is famous throughout the world for its activity and enterprise, and this is the most thickly settled and Yankee part of it. What must be the condition of the old world! The sphagnum must by this time have concealed it from the eye. 

In new countries men are scattered broadcast; they do not wait for roads to place their houses on, but roads seek out the houses, and each man is a prince in his principality and depends on himself.  Perchance when the virgin soil is exhausted, a reaction takes place, and men concentrate in villages again, become social and commercial, and leave the steady and moderate few to work the country's mines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1852

The cellar-holes are more numerous than the houses. See November 30, 1851 ("My eye rested with pleasure on the white pines."); May 18, 1857 ("There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp. . . . In woods close behind Easterbrook's place. . . a wild apple tree in the old cellar there . . .Call it Malus cellaris, that grows in an old cellar-hole."); November 6, 1857 ("As for the yellow birch cellar-hole, Ephraim Brown told him that old Henry Flint (an ancestor of Clark's wife) dug it, and erected the frame of a house there, but never finished it, selling out, going to live by the river. It was never finished.")

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

\

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The cellar-holes are more numerous than the houses

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

Even the ox can be weary with toil.

December 26

 December 26, 2017

I observed this afternoon that when Edmund Hosmer came home from sledding wood and unyoked his oxen, they made a business of stretching and scratching themselves with their horns and rubbing against the posts, and licking themselves in those parts which the yoke had prevented their reaching all day.

The human way in which they behaved affected me even pathetically. They were too serious to be glad that their day's work was done; they had not spirits enough left for that. They behaved as a tired woodchopper might.

This was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring ox.

It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1851

To be glad that their day's work was done. See  June 22, 1851 ("After a hard day's work without a thought, turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day."); July 12, 1851 ("I hear a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day's toil"); June 25, 1852 ("Now his day's work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! "); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light."); See also John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869 ("A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.")

Even the ox could be weary with toil. See April 2, 1860 ("The ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave")

The darkness in the east, the crescent of night.

November 25.

This morning the ground is again covered with snow, deeper than before.

In the afternoon walked to the east part of Lincoln.

Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance.

Saw also quite a flock of the pine grosbeak, a plump and handsome bird as big as a robin.

When returning between Bear Hill and the railroad, the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gathering, which, as we had faced the west, we were not prepared for; yet the air was clear.

November 22, 2021

That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill.
Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.

When surveying in the swamp on the 20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls.

Hosmer said: “If you ever minded it, it is about the surest sign of rain that there is. Don't you know that last Friday night you heard them and spoke of them, and the next day it rained?”

This time there were other signs of rain in abundance. But night before last,” said I, “when you were not here, they hooted louder than ever, and we have had no rain yet.”

At any rate, it rained hard the 21st, and by that rain the river was raised much higher than it has been this fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1851

Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance. See November 27, 1857 ("Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut."); January 7, 1860 ("See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it.") See also November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education."); November 28, 1860 ("The rich man's son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man's, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut")

A flock of the pine grosbeak, a plump and handsome. See December 24, 1851 (“Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps, with red or crimson reflections.”);  December 11, 1855 ("When some rare northern bird like the pine grosbeak is seen thus far south in the Winter, he does not suggest poverty, but dazzles us with his beauty."); July 15, 1858 ("Saw two pine grosbeaks, male and female, . . .the male a brilliant red orange, —neck, head, breast beneath, and rump,—blackish wings and tail, with two white bars on wings. (Female, yellowish.) ")

The sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, . . yet the air was clear.  See November 25, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. . . . There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared");November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk."); November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.")

That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. See note to November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine."); November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to-night as the last."); See also November 25, 1858 ("You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, . . . to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines. . .through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.. . . and when I look round northeast I am greatly surprised by the very brilliant sunlight of which I speak, surpassing the glare of any noontide, it seems to me");

When surveying in the swamp on the 20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls. See November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot. Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl,-- hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo. . . .I heard it last evening. It is a sound admirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods.")

The light of the setting sun suddenly lighting up the needles of the white pine

November 22.

November 22, 2021

The milkweed pods by the roadside are yet but half emptied of their silky contents. For months the gales are dispersing their seeds, though we have had snow.

Saw E. Hosmer this afternoon making a road for himself along a hillside (I being on my way to Saw Mill Brook ).  He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently. There were many little galleries leading under the stone, indenting the hardened earth like veins.  (Mem. Turn over a rock in midwinter and see if you can find them.) That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately. I have frequently seen them lurking under the eaves or portico of a stone, even in midsummer.

At the brook the partridge-berries checker the ground with their leaves, now interspersed with red berries.

The cress at the bottom of the brook is doubly beautiful now, because it is green while most other plants are sere. It rises and falls and waves with the current.

There are many young hornbeams there which still retain their withered leaves.

As I returned through Hosmer's field, the sun was setting just beneath a black cloud by which it had been obscured, and as it had been a cold and windy afternoon, its light, which fell suddenly on some white pines between me and it, lighting them up like a shimmering fire, and also on the oak leaves and chestnut stems, was quite a circumstance. 

It was from the contrast between the dark and comfortless afternoon and this bright and cheerful light, almost fire.

The eastern hills and woods, too, were clothed in a still golden light.

The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine between you and it, after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon.

A sort of Indian summer in the day, which thus far has been denied to the year.

After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1851

The milkweed pods by the roadside are yet but half emptied of their silky contents. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood."); September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting."); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free"); October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting."); November 20, 1858 ("The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting.") 

Gone into winter quarters there apparently . . . That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately. See November 19, 1857 ("Turning up a stone on Fair Haven Hill, I find many small dead crickets about the edges, which have endeavored to get under it and apparently have been killed by the frost.") See also November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. "); November 11, 1858 ("Hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset."); November 12, 1853 ("The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might");November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters."); November 13, 1858 (Frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November (listening for the last cricket)

At the brook the partridge-berries checker the ground with their leaves, now interspersed with red berries. See November 16, 1850 (“The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries ?”);   November 19, 1850 ("The partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); November 27, 1853 ("Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now"); December 3, 1853 ("The still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine. . . .After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire. See November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to - night as the last."); November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.") See also  August 28, 1860 ("Just before setting, the sun comes out into a clear space in the horizon and a sudden blaze of light falls on east end of the pond and the hillside. At this angle a double amount of bright sunlight reflects from the water up to the underside of the still very fresh green leaves of the bushes and trees on the shore and on Pine Hill, revealing the most vivid and varied shades of green."); October 21, 1857 (" It has just come out beneath a great cold slate-colored cloud that occupies most of the western sky . . . and now its rays, slanting over the hill in whose shadow I float, fall on the eastern trees and hills with a thin, yellow light like a clear yellow wine, but somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors. "); October 28, 1852 (“Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.”); October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive, like a halo, a glory in which only the just deserved to live.. . . It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might have been performed. At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived."); November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year."); November 10, 1858 ("A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. "); November 17, 1858 ("We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. . . . The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. "); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”); November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces. See November 28, 1856 ("3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . . It is a true November phenomenon."); November 29, 1852 ("about 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything. "); November 29, 1853 (Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape. . . I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.""); December 25, 1858 ("Now that the sun is setting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-clad pond and strike the rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end. Though the bare rocky shore there is only a foot or a foot and a half high as I look, it reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct") 

After a cold gray day. See November 18, 1852 ("These are cold, gray days.")

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer.

May 30 .

May 30, 2020

P. M. – To Second Division. A washing southwest wind. 

George Melvin said yesterday that he was still grafting, and that there had been a great blow on the apple trees this year, and that the blossoms had held on unusually long. I suggested that it might be because we had not had so much wind as usual. 

On the wall, at the brook behind Cyrus Hosmer’s barn, I start a nighthawk within a rod or two. It alights again on his barn-yard board fence, sitting diagonally. I see the white spot on the edge of its wings as it sits. It flies thence and alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. This was unusual. Had it not a nest nearby? 

I observed that some of the June-grass was white and withered, being eaten off by a worm several days ago, or considerably before it blossoms. 

June-grass fills the field south of Ed. Hosmer’s ledge by the road, and gives it now a very conspicuous and agreeable brown or ruddy(?)-brown color, about as ruddy as chocolate, perhaps. This decided color stretching afar with a slightly undulating surface, like a mantle, is a very agreeable phenomenon of the season. The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. 

Front-yard grass is mowed by some. 

The stems of meadow saxifrage are white now. 

The Salix tristis generally shows its down now along dry wood-paths. 

The Juncus filiformis not out yet, though some panicles are grown nearly half an inch. Much of it seems to be merely chaffy or effete, but much also plumper, with green sepals and minute stamens to be detected within. It arises, as described, from matted running rootstocks. Perhaps will bloom in a week. 

A succession of moderate thunder and lightning storms from the west, two or three, an hour apart. 

Saw some devil’s-needles (the first) about the 25th. 

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood near Second Division, and while it was raining, I stuck three stout cat-sticks into the pile, higher than my head, each a little lower than the other, and piled large flattish wood on them and tossed on dead pine-tops, making a little shed, under which I stood dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1860

A nighthawk alights on the ground in his corn-field, sitting flat, but there was no nest under it. See June 1, 1853 ("Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me . .Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever.") and note to June 3, 1859 ("Nighthawk, two eggs, fresh. ")

The brown panicles of the June-grass now paint some fields with the color of early summer. See June 11, 1853 ("The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds.")

I took refuge from the thunder-shower this afternoon by running for a high pile of wood.  See May 30, 1857 ("When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before. .. .  This Cliff thus became my house. I inhabited it. . . I think that such a projection as this, or a cave, is the only effectual protection that nature affords us against the storm. ") See also  August 9, 1851 ("I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves which I hear in the woods."); June 14, 1855 (“It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, . . .  It is very pleasant to lie there half an hour close to the edge of the water and see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble”); July 22, 1858 ("Took refuge from a shower under our boat at Clamshell; staid an hour at least. A thunderbolt fell close by."); August 17, 1858 (“Being overtaken by a shower, we took refuge in the basement of Sam Barrett’s sawmill, where we spent an hour, and at length came home with a rainbow over arching the road before us.”); October 17, 1859 ("The rain drives me from my berrying and we take shelter under a tree. It is worth the while to sit under the lee of an apple tree trunk in the rain, if only to study the bark and its inhabitants. ")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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 © 2009-2021

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past

May 11. 

May 11, 2019

The river no lower than yesterday. 

Warbling vireo. 

2 P. M. — 77º. Very warm. To factory village. 

Redstart. 

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. 

I see at Damon’s Spring some dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres much more at Clamshell the 13th). It is ripe, then, several days, or say just before elm seed, but the mouse-ear not on the 13th anywhere. 

The senecio shows its yellow. 

The warmth makes us notice the shade of houses and trees (even before the last have leafed) falling on the greened banks, as Harrington’s elm and house. June-like. 

See some large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. 

The Ranunculus abortivus well out; say five days? 

Red cherry in bloom, how long? 

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. 

William Brown’s nursery is now white (fine white) with the shepherd’s-purse, some twelve to eighteen inches high, covering it under his small trees, like buck wheat, though not nearly so white as that. I never saw so much. It also has green pods. Say it is in prime. 

E. Hosmer, as a proof that the river has been lower than now, says that his father, who was born about the middle of the last century, used to tell of a time, when he was a boy, when the river just below Derby’s Bridge did not run, and he could cross it dry-shod on the rocks, the water standing in pools when Conant’s mill (where the factory now is) was not running. 

I noticed the place to-day, and, low as the river is for the season, it must be at least a foot and a half deep there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1860

 Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. See April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling");  May 5, 1859 ("Red-wings fly in flocks yet."). May 13, 1860 ("Red wings are evidently busy building their nests.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in  Early Spring

Dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres. See May 9, 1858 ("A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.")

The senecio shows its yellow. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July.")

Large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. See April 26, 1856 ("The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. Is not this the only birch which shows this colored froth?")

The Ranunculus abortivus [Kidneyleaf Crowfoot] well out; say five days? See May 16, 1859 ("Ranunculus abortivus well out (when?), southwest angle of Damon's farm.");May 25, 1858 ("See an abundance of Ranunculus abortivus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.'s house, going to seed and in bloom. The branches are fine and spreading, about eight or ten inches high.")

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. See May 16, 1853 ("Yellow violets  yesterday at least. "); May 18, 1856 ("E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets."); May 25, 1852 ("The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out"); 

Again see what the snow reveals.

January 4. 

January 4, 2020

P. M. — To second stone bridge and down river. 

It is frozen directly under the stone bridge, but a few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. 

These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet, except here and there a crack or space a foot wide at the springy bank just below the Pokelogan. 

It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. This proves that it is the swiftness and not warmth that makes the shallow places to be open longest. 

In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox — as I take it — that has run about a great deal. Next I come to the tracks of rabbits, see where they have travelled back and forth, making a well-trodden path in the snow; and soon after I see where one has been killed and apparently devoured. There are to be seen only the tracks of what I take to be the fox. The snow is much trampled, or rather flattened by the body of the rabbit. It is somewhat bloody and is covered with flocks of slate-colored and brown fur, but only the rabbit's tail, a little ball of fur, an inch and a half long and about as wide, white beneath, and the contents of its paunch or of its entrails are left, — nothing more. 

Half a dozen rods further, I see where the rabbit has been dropped on the snow again, and some fur is left, and there are the tracks of the fox to the spot and about it. There, or within a rod or two, I notice a considerable furrow in the snow, three or four inches wide and some two rods long, as if one had drawn a stick along, but there is no other mark or track whatever; so I conclude that a partridge, perhaps scared by the fox, had dashed swiftly along so low as to plow the snow. 

But two or three rods further on one side I see more sign, and lo ! there is the remainder of the rabbit, — the whole, indeed, but the tail and the inward or soft parts, — all frozen stiff; but here there is no distinct track of any creature, only a few scratches and marks where some great bird of prey — a hawk or owl — has struck the snow with its primaries on each side, and one or two holes where it has stood. 

Now I understand how that long furrow was made, the bird with the rabbit in its talons flying low there, and now I remember that at the first bloody spot I saw some of these quill-marks; and therefore it is certain that the bird had it there, and probably he killed it, and he, perhaps disturbed by the fox, carried it to the second place, and it is certain that he (probably disturbed by the fox again) carried it to the last place, making a furrow on the way. 

If it had not been for the snow on the ground I probably should not have noticed any signs that a rabbit had been killed. Or, if I had chanced to see the scattered fur, I should not have known what creature did it, or how recently. 

But now it is partly certain, partly probable, — or, supposing that the bird could not have taken it from the fox, it is almost all certain, — that an owl or hawk killed a rabbit here last night (the fox-tracks are so fresh), and, when eating it on the snow, was disturbed by a fox, and so flew off with it half a dozen rods, but, being disturbed again by the fox, it flew with it again about as much further, trailing it in the snow for a couple of rods as it flew, and there it finished its meal without being approached. A fox would probably have torn and eaten some of the skin. 

When I turned off from the road my expectation was to see some tracks of wild animals in the snow, and, before going a dozen rods, I crossed the track of what I had no doubt was a fox, made apparently the last night, — which had travelled extensively in this pitch pine wood, searching for game. Then I came to rabbit-tracks, and saw where they had travelled back and forth in the snow in the woods, making a perfectly trodden path, and within a rod of that was a hollow in the snow a foot and a half across, where a rabbit had been killed. There were many tracks of the fox about that place, and I had no doubt then that he had killed that rabbit, and I supposed that some scratches which I saw might have been made by his frisking some part of the rabbit back and forth, shaking it in his mouth. I thought, Perhaps he has carried off to his young, or buried, the rest. 

But as it turned out, though the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken. I had made him kill the rabbit, and shake and tear the carcass, and eat it all up but the tail (almost); but it seems that he didn't do it at [all], and apparently never got a mouthful of the rabbit.

 Something, surely, must have disturbed the bird, else why did it twice fly along with the heavy carcass? The tracks of the bird at the last place were two little round holes side by side, the dry snow having fallen in and concealed the track of its feet. It was most likely an owl, because it was most likely that the fox would be abroad by night. 

The sweet-gale has a few leaves on it yet in some places, partly concealing the pretty catkins. 

Again see what the snow reveals. Opposite Dodge's Brook I see on the snow and ice some fragments of frozen-thawed apples under an oak. How came they there? There are apple trees thirty rods off by the road. 

On the snow under the oak I see two or three tracks of a crow, and the droppings of several that were perched on the tree, and here and there is a perfectly round hole in the snow under the tree. I put down my hand and draw up an apple [out] of each, from beneath the snow. (There are no tracks of squirrels about the oak.) 

Crows carried these frozen-thawed apples from the apple trees to the oak, and there ate them, — what they did not let fall into the snow or on to the ice. 

See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. What if you could witness with owls' eyes the revelry of the wood mice some night, frisking about the wood like so many little kangaroos? Here is a palpable evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen, — such populousness as commonly only the imagination dreams of. 

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong, for the deed was done since the snow fell and I saw no other tracks but his at the first places. Any jury would have convicted him, and he would have been hung, if he could have been caught.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1860

A few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet See January 27, 1856 ("Walk on the river from the old stone to Derby’s Bridge. It is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. "); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. . . . It has been tight . on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th…That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.);


It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. See January 22, 1855 ("(What a tumult at the stone bridge, where cakes of ice a rod in diameter and a foot thick are carried round and round by the eddy in circles eight or ten rods in diameter, and rarely get a chance to go down-stream, while others are seen coming up edgewise from below in the midst of the torrent! "); July16,1859 ("By building this narrow bridge here, twenty-five feet in width, or contracting the stream to about one fourth its average width, the current has been so increased as to wash away about a quarter of an acre of land and dig a hole six times the average depth of the stream, twenty-two and a half feet deep, . . deeper than any place in the main stream ...Yet the depth under the bridge is only two and a half feet plus. It falls in four rods from two and a half to twenty-two and a half....This is much the swiftest place on the stream thus far and deeper than any for twenty-five miles of [the] other stream, and consequently there is a great eddy, where I see cakes of ice go round and round in the spring,")

The woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong. See November 11, 1850 ("Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” ) See also January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit.”)

The poet writes the history of his body.

September 29

September 29, 2019

Van der Donck says of the water-beech (buttonwood), "This tree retains the leaves later than any other tree of the woods." 

P. M. — To Goose Pond via E. Hosmer's; return by Walden. 

Found Hosmer carting out manure from under his barn to make room for the winter. He said he was tired of farming, he was too old. Quoted Webster as saying that he had never eaten the bread of idleness for a single day, and thought that Lord Brougham might have said as much with truth while he was in the opposition, but he did not know that he could say as much of himself. However, he did not wish to be idle, he merely wished to rest. 

Looked on Walden from the hill with the sawed pine stump on the north side. Scared up three black ducks, which rose with a great noise of their wings, striking the water. The hills this fall are unusually red, not only with the huckleberry, but the sumach and the blackberry vines. Walden plainly can never be spoiled by the wood- chopper, for, do what you will to the shore, there will still remain this crystal well. 

The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on its hilly shore is quite charming. They are unexpectedly and incredibly brilliant, especially on the western shore and close to the water's edge, where, alternating with yellow birches and poplars and green oaks, they remind me of a line of soldiers, redcoats and riflemen in green mixed together. 

The pine is one of the richest of trees to my eye. It stands like a great moss, a luxuriant mildew, — the pumpkin pine, — which the earth produces without effort.

The poet writes the history of his body. 

Query: Would not the cellular tissue of the grass poly make good tinder? I find that, when I light it, it burns up slowly and entirely, without blaze, like spunk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1851

The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on its hilly shore is quite charming. See September 25, 1857 ("A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar."); September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off."); September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."); October 3, 1856 (" Especially the hillsides about Walden begin to wear these autumnal tints in the cooler air. These lit leaves, this glowing, bright-tinted shrubbery, is in singular harmony with the dry, stony shore of this cool and deep well."); October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd"); October 8, 1852 (“Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water.”)


Scared up three black ducks, which rose with a great noise of their wings, striking the water. See September 24, 1855 ("See coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks . . . for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow"); September 30, 1853 ("Friday. Saw a large flock of black ducks flying northwest in the form of a harrow."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

The poet writes the history of his body. See August 19, 1851 ("The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind,"); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”);  April 8, 1854 ("The poet deals with his privatest experience."); October 21, 1857 ("Is not the poet bound to write his own biography?")

The eddy and wearing away of the bank at the stone bridge.

July 20. 

The little Holbrook boy showed me an egg which I unhesitatingly pronounced a peetweet's, given him by Joe Smith. The latter, to my surprise, declares it a meadow-hen's; saw the bird and young, and says the latter were quite black and had hen bills. Can it be so? 

Humphrey Buttrick says he finds snipes' nests in our meadows oftener than woodcocks'. 

P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. 

Abel Hosmer says that the Turnpike Company did not fulfill their engagement to build a new bridge over the Assabet in 1807; that the present stone bridge was not built till about the time the Orthodox meeting-house was built. (That was in 1826.) Benjamin says it was built soon after the meeting-house, or perhaps 1827, and was placed some fifty feet higher up-stream than the old wooden one. 

Hosmer says that the eddy and wearing away of the bank has been occasioned wholly by the bridge; that there was only the regular bend there before. He had thought that it was in consequence of the bridge being set askew or diagonally with the stream, so that the abutments turned the water and gave it a slant into the banks. I think that this did not create, only increased, the evil. 

The bank which it has worn away rises some sixteen feet above low water, and, considering the depth of the water, you may say that it has removed the sand to a depth of twenty-five feet over an area of a quarter of an acre, or say to the depth of three feet or a yard over two acres, or 9680 cubic yards or cartloads, which, at twenty-five cents per load, it would have cost $2420 to move in the ordinary manner, or enough to fill the present river for a quarter of a mile, calling it six rods wide and twelve feet deep. 

Beside creating some small islands and bars close by, this sand and gravel has, of course, been distributed along in the river and on the adjacent meadows below. 

Hosmer complains that his interval has accordingly been very much injured by the sand washed on to it below, — "hundreds of dollars" damage done to him. All this within some thirty-five years. 

It may well be asked what has become of all this sand? Of course it has contributed to form sand-bars below, possibly a great way below. 

Jacob Farmer tells me that he remembers that when about twenty-one years old he and Hildreth were bathing in the Assabet at the mouth of the brook above Winn's, and Hildreth swam or waded across to a sand bar (now the island there), but the water was so deep on that bar that he became frightened, and would have been drowned if he had not been dragged out and resuscitated by others. This was directly over where that island is now, and was then only a bar beginning under water. That island, as he said, had been formed within thirty-five years, or since the Eddy Bridge was built; and I suggest that it may have been built mainly of the ruins of that bank. 

It is the only island in the Assabet for two and a half miles. 

There is a perfect standstill in the eddy at Eddy Bridge now, and there is a large raft of grass, weeds, and lumber perfectly at rest there, against Hosmer's bank. The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. 

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. I see them at each of the small wooden bridges, and very likely they underlie the whole of that interval, covered with sand. 

Such is the character of a river-bottom, — the stones from a hen's egg to the size of your head dropped down to one level, the sand being washed away, and now found in one stratum. 

So completely emasculated and demoralized is our river that it is even made to observe the Christian Sabbath, and Hosmer tells me that at this season on a Sunday morning (for then the river runs lowest, owing to the factory and mill gates being shut above) little gravelly islands begin to peep out in the channel below. Not only the operatives make the Sunday a day of rest, but the river too, to some extent, so that the very fishes feel the influence (or want of influence) of man's religion. 

The very rivers run with fuller streams on Monday morning. All nature begins to work with new impetuosity on Monday. 

I see where turtles' eggs are still being dug up!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1859

The coarser materials — stones as big as a hen's egg — are dropped close by, but the sand must have been carried far down-stream. See July 16, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the stones are separated from the sand at the Eddy Bridge and deposited in a bar or islands by themselves a few rods lower down.")