To Trillium Wood and to Nut Meadow Brook

March 20.

It snowed three or four inches of damp snow last afternoon and night, now thickly adhering to the twigs and branches. Probably it will soon melt and help carry off the snow. 

P. M. —To Trillium Wood and to Nut Meadow Brook to tap a maple, see paludina, and get elder and sumach spouts, slumping in the deep snow. 

It is now so softened that I slump at every third step. 

The sap of red maples in low and warm positions now generally flows, but not in high and exposed ones.

Where I saw those furrows in the sand in Nut Meadow Brook the other day, I now explore, and find within a square foot or two half a dozen of Paludina decisa with their feet out, within an inch of the surface, so I have scarcely a doubt that they made them. I suppose that they do not furrow the bottom thus under the ice, but as soon as the spring sun has thawed it, they come to the surface, — perhaps at night only, — where there is some little sand, and furrow it thus by their motions. Maybe it is the love season. 

Perhaps these make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs. 

Considering how solid and thick the river was a week ago, I am surprised to find how cautious I have grown about crossing it in many places now. 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.

For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound, after the chickadees and hens, that I think of. 

Set a pail before coming here to catch red maple sap, at Trillium Wood. I am now looking after elder and sumach for spouts.  Got my smooth sumach on the south side of Nawshawtuct. I know of no shrubs hereabout except elders and the sumachs which have a suitable pith and wood for such a purpose.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1856

Where I saw those furrows in the sand in Nut Meadow Brook the other day. See March 18, 1856 (“I see many small furrows, freshly made, in the sand at the bottom of the brook, from half an inch to three quarters wide, which I suspect are made by some small shellfish already moving.”)

Set a pail before coming here to catch red maple sap, at Trillium Wood. I am now looking after spouts. See March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap")

Full moon; by boat to Hubbard's Bend.

July 8

Saturday. P. M. – To Assabet Bathing Place. The 4th and 5th were the hot bathing days thus far; thermometer at 98 and 96 respectively. 

July 8, 2018

8 p. m. — Full moon; by boat to Hubbard's Bend. There is wind , making it cooler and keeping off fog, delicious on water.

The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars. I hear a few toads still. See a bat; how long? The bullfrogs trump from time to time. The whip-poor-wills are heard, and the baying of dogs.

The Rosa nitida I think has been some time done; the lucida generally now ceasing, and the Carolina (?) just begun . 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1854

The moon reflected from the rippled surface like a stream of dollars.  See June 13, 1851 (“I see reflections of the moon seeming to slide along a few inches with each wave before they are extinguished like so many lustrous burnished coins poured from a bag. ”)

The Rosa nitida I think has been some time done. See July 4, 1852 ("The Rosa nitida appears to be now out of bloom."); July 5, 1854 ("Rosa Carolina, apparently a day or two, Corner causeway; dull leaves with fine serrations, twenty-five to thirty, plus, on a side,  and narrow closed stipules."); July 11, 1854 ("The Rosa lucida still common.")' See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

July 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 8

The moon reflected

from the rippled surface like

a stream of dollars.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Full moon; by boat to Hubbard's Bend.

 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/hdt-540708

all hot and sweaty the air is muggy covered with bug dope and sweat. skin all itchy happy as punch at the top of the view watching a sunset  and clouds roll by the crows call a convention a junco comes to see us the black throated green and hermits happy as punch i go down to the clearing pick a handful of raspberries, offer them to jane, and eat.

I go down to the

clearing pick a handful of

raspberries and eat.

zphx July 8, 2013

Now happy as punch

we go down to the clearing

and pick raspberries

July 8, 2025