Skating and ice fishing.

December 29

P. M. — Skate to Israel Rice’s. 

I think more. of skates than of the horse or locomotive as annihilators of distance, for while I am getting along with the speed of the horse, I have at the same time the satisfaction of the horse and his rider, and far more adventure and variety than if I were riding. 

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. Just compare him with one walking or running. The walker is but a snail in comparison, and the runner gives up the contest after a few rods. The skater can afford to follow all the windings of a stream, and yet soon leaves far behind and out of sight the walker who cuts across. Distance is hardly an obstacle to him. 

I observe that my ordinary track -- the strokes being seven to ten feet long. The new stroke is eighteen or twenty inches one side of the old. 

The briskest walkers appear to be stationary to the skater. The skater has wings, talaria, to his feet. 

Moreover, you have such perfect control of your feet that you can take advantage of the narrowest and most winding and sloping bridge of ice in order to pass between the button bushes and the open stream or under a bridge on a narrow shelf, where the walker cannot go at all. You can glide securely within an inch of destruction on this the most slippery of surfaces, more securely than you could walk there, perhaps, on any other material. You can pursue swiftly the most intricate and winding path, even leaping obstacles which suddenly present them selves. 

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual (over the middle of the river) but wholly a light yellow-brown. 

Just above south entrance to  Farrar Cut, a large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.

Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. 

It was a very handsome fish,— dark-brown above, yellow and brown on the sides, becoming at length almost a clear golden yellow low down, with a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water and tigers in the jungle. 

The shiner and the red finned minnow (a dace) are the favorite bait for them. 

What tragedies are enacted under this dumb icy platform in the fields! What an anxious and adventurous life the small fishes must live, liable at any moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish of moderate size can go sculling along safely in any part of the stream, but suddenly there may come rushing out this jungle or that some greedy monster and gulp it down.

Parent fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can they trust them abroad out of their sight? It takes so many young fishes a week to fill the maw of this large one. And the large ones! Heavy Haynes and Company are lying in wait for them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1858

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. See January 14, 1855 (“Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — . . . A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. . . . There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.”)

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual. See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball.”); February 14, 1857 ("The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.”)

A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river. See October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); December 29, 1856 (“By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”)


He had caught a pickerel, which weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. See July 4, 1857 (“We dropped back and found it to be a pickerel, which apparently would weigh four pounds, and . . We struck him three times with a paddle, and once he nearly jumped into the boat, but at last we could not find him. ”); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once, . . . which weighed four pounds. . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

What is the use, in Nature's economy, of these occasional floods in August?

August 25. 

 P. M. — To Hill by boat. Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself commonly again. Perhaps it is owing to the rain, spring like, which we have in August. 

I paddle directly across the meadow, the river is so high, and land east of the elm on the third or fourth row of potatoes. The water makes more show on the meadows than yesterday, though hardly so high, be cause the grass is more flatted down. 

I easily make my way amid the thin spires. Almost every stem which rises above the surface has a grasshopper or caterpillar upon it. Some have seven or eight grasshoppers, clinging to their masts, one close and directly above an other, like shipwrecked sailors, now the third or fourth day exposed. Whither shall they jump? It is a quarter of a mile to shore, and countless sharks lie in wait for them. They are so thick that they are like a crop which the grass bears; some stems are bent down by their weight. 

This flood affects other inhabitants of these fields than men; not only the owners of the grass, but its inhabitants much more. It drives them to their upper stories, — to take refuge in the rigging. Many that have taken an imprudent leap are seen struggling in the water. How much life is drowned out that inhabits about the roots of the meadow-grass! How many a family, perchance, of short-tailed meadow mice has had to scamper or swim! 

The river-meadow cranberries are covered deep. I can count them as they lie in dense beds a foot under water, so distinct and white, or just beginning to have a red cheek. They will probably be spoiled, and this  crop will fail. 

Potatoes, too, in the low land on which water has stood so long, will rot. 

The farmers commonly say that the spring floods, being of cold water, do not injure the grass like later ones when the water is warm, but I suspect it is not so much owing to the warmth of the water as to the age and condition of the grass and whatever else is exposed to them. They say that if you let the water rise and stand some time over the roots of trees in warm weather it will kill them. 

This, then, may be the value of these occasional freshets in August: they steam and kill the shrubs and trees which had crept into the river meadows, and so keep them open perpetually, which, perchance, the spring floods alone might not do. 

It is commonly supposed that our river meadows were much drier than now originally, or when the town was settled. They were probably drier before the dam was built at Billerica, but if they were much or at all drier than now originally, I ask what prevented their being converted into maple swamps? Maples, alders, birches, etc., are creeping into them quite fast on many sides at present. If they had been so dry as is supposed they would not have been open meadows. It seems to be true that high water in midsummer, when perchance the trees and shrubs are in a more tender state, kills them. 

It "steams" them, as it does the grass; and maybe the river thus asserts its rights, and possibly it would still to great extent, though the meadows should be considerably raised. Yet, I ask, why do maples, alders, etc., at present border the stream, though they do not spring up to any extent in the open meadow? Is it because the immediate bank is commonly more firm as well as higher (their seeds also are more liable to be caught there), and where it is low they are protected by willows and button-bushes, which can bear the flood? Not even willows and button-bushes prevail in the Great Meadows, — though many of the former, at least, spring up there, — except on the most elevated parts or hummocks.

The reason for this cannot be solely in the fact that the water stands over them there a part of the year, be cause they are still more exposed to the water in many places on the shore of the river where yet they thrive. Is it then owing to the soft character of the ground in the meadow and the ice tearing up the meadow so extensively? On the immediate bank of the river that kind of sod and soil is not commonly formed which the ice lifts up. Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? 

What is the use, in Nature's economy, of these occasional floods in August? Is it not partly to preserve the meadows open? 

Mr. Rice says that the brook just beyond his brother Israel's in Sudbury rises and runs out before the river, and then you will see the river running up the brook as fast as the brook ran down before. 

Apparently half the pads are now afloat, notwithstanding the depth of the water, but they are almost all white lily pads, the others being eaten and decayed. They have apparently lengthened their stems some what. They generally lie with more or less coil, prepared for a rise of the water, and perhaps the length of that coil shows pretty accurately to how great a rise they are ordinarily subject at this season. 

I was suggesting yesterday, as I have often before, that the town should provide a stone monument to be placed in the river, so as to be surrounded by water at its lowest stage, and a dozen feet high, so as to rise above it at its highest stage; on this feet and inches to be permanently marked; and it be made some one's duty to record each high or low stage of the water. Now, when we have a remarkable freshet, we cannot tell surely whether it is higher than the one thirty or sixty years ago or not. It would be not merely interesting, but often practically valuable, to know this. 

Reuben Rice was telling me to-night that the great freshet of two or three years ago came, according to his brother Israel, within two inches of one that occurred about forty years ago. I asked how he knew. He said that the former one took place early (February?), and the surface froze so that boys skated on it, and the ice marked a particular apple tree, girdled it, so that it is seen to this day. 

But we wish to speak more confidently than this allows. It is important when building a causeway, or a bridge, or a house even, in some situations, to know exactly how high the river has ever risen. It would need to be a very large stone or pile of stones, which the ice could not move or break. Perhaps one corner of a bridge abutment would do. 

Rice killed a woodchuck to-day that was shearing off his beans. He was very fat. 

I cross the meadows in the face of a thunder-storm rising very dark in the north. There are several boats out, but their crews soon retreat homeward before the approaching storm. It comes on rapidly, with vivid lightning striking the northern earth and heavy thunder following. 

Just before, and in the shadow of, the cloud, I see, advancing majestically with wide circles over the meadowy flood, a fish hawk and, apparently, a black eagle (maybe a young white-head). The first, with slender curved wings and silvery breast, four or five hundred feet high, watching the water while he circles slowly southwesterly. What a vision that could detect a fish at that distance! The latter, with broad black wings and broad tail, hovers only about one hundred feet high; evidently a different species, and what else but an eagle? 

They soon disappear southwest, cutting off a bend. The thunder-shower passed off to the southeast.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1856

Why is the black willow so strictly confined to the bank of the river? See August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. “); August 15, 1858 (“I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.”); August 19, 1858 (“I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river, though I noticed a few exceptions to my rule.”)

A partridge camoflaged as a post.

February 11

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond by river. 

Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter. Eb. Conant says as much, excepting the year when he was twenty-five, about 1803. 

It is now fairly thawing, the eaves running; and puddles stand in some places. The boys can make snowballs, and the horses begin to slump occasionally. I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning.  

See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, amid some alders. I shout and wave my hand four rods off, to see if it is one, but there is no motion, and I think surely it must be a post. 

Nevertheless I resolve to investigate. 

Within three rods, I see it to be indeed a partridge, to my surprise, standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post. 

It finally steps off daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and takes to wing.

It will indicate what steady cold weather we have had to say that the lodging snow of January 13th, though it did not lodge remarkably, has not yet completely melted off the sturdy trunks of large trees.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1856

Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter. Compare  February 11, 1852 ("Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate – at least that the snows are less deep than formerly – is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.")

See a partridge  which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post,.standing perfectly still, with its head erect and neck stretched upward. It is as complete a deception as if it had designedly placed itself on the line of the fence and in the proper place for a post. See January 31, 1855 ("They sit and stand, three of them, perfectly still with their heads erect, some darker feathers like ears, methinks, increasing their resemblance to scrags, as where a small limb is broken off. I am much surprised at the remarkable stillness they preserve, instinctively relying on the resemblance to the ground for their protection.”) See also February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard."); February 11, 1859 ("The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges. ") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A voyage up the Sudbury

September 14.

To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. Quite cool, with some wind from east and southeast. Took a watermelon for drink.

Now, instead of haying, they are raking cranberries all along the river. The raker moves slowly along with a basket before him, into which he rakes (hauling) the berries, and his wagon stands one side. It is now the middle of the cranberry season.

The river has risen about a foot within a week, and now the weeds in midstream have generally disappeared, washed away or drowned. Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.

This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more. 

Now that the pontederias have mostly fallen, the polygonums are the most common and conspicuous flowers of the river.  I see a stream of small white insects in the air over the side of the river.

At a distance, entering the pond, we mistake some fine sparkles, probably of insects, for ducks in the water, they were so large, which when we are nearer, looking down at a greater angle with the surface, wholly disappear. 

Crossing Fair Haven, the reflections are very fine, prolonged by the ripples made by an east wind just risen. 

Bidens cernua

Large-flowered bidens,

or beggar-ticks,

or bur-marigold,

now abundant by riverside.

September 19, 1851

The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). 

Full of the sun. It needs a name.

We see half a dozen herons in this voyage. Their wings are so long in proportion to their bodies that there seems to be more than one undulation to a wing as they are disappearing in the distance, and so you can distinguish them. You see another begin before the first has ended. It is remarkable how common these birds are about our sluggish and marshy river.

A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock,—a sailing (or skimming) flock, that is something rare methinks, — showing their white tails, to alight in a more distant place.

We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1854

To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, . .rowed about twenty-five miles to-day. See note to October 15, 1851 ("Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond . . . Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half." See also July 31, 1859 ("This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet.")

Took a watermelon for drink. See August 12, 1853 ("Carry watermelons for drink. What more refreshing and convenient! This richest wine in a convenient cask, and so easily kept cool!")

It is now the middle of the cranberry season. See September 26, 1857 ("I see far off the various-colored gowns of cranberry pickers against the green of the meadow.")

Now the weeds in midstream have generally disappeared, washed away or drowned. See September 5, 1854 ("This is a fall phenomenon. The river weeds, becoming rotten, though many are still green, fall or are loosened, the water rises, the winds come, and they are drifted to the shore, and the water is cleared.")

Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles See June 3, 1854 (“On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head). These last sometimes a minute before they burst.”); June 7, 1857 (“Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake, as if it were more sluggish or had more viscidity than earlier. Far behind me they rest without bursting.”)

This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more. See September 21, 1854 ("I hear many jays since the frosts began."); September 21, 1859 ("Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The polygonums are the most common and conspicuous flowers of the river. See September 18, 1858 ("The perfectly fresh spike of the Polygonum amphibium attracts every eye now. It is not past its prime. C. thinks it is exactly the color of some candy."); September 22, 1852 ("The Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre is a late flower, and now more common and the spikes larger, quite handsome and conspicuous, and more like a prince's-feather than any.");  September 27, 1858 ("The P. amphibium spikes still in prime. ")

We mistake some fine sparkles, probably of insects, for ducks in the water. See  September 20,1852 ("How sweet the phenomena of the lake! Everything that moves on its surface produces a sparkle.. . .The motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light;"); October 11, 1852 (" In this clear air and with this glassy surface the motion of every water-bug, ceaselessly progressing over the pond, was perceptible."); October 28, 1858 ("I can hardly distinguish the sparkle occasioned by an insect from the white breast of a duck")

The reflections are very fine, prolonged by the ripples. See October 7, 1857 ("There being a slight ripple on the surface, these reflections . . .were extended downward . . .forming sharp pyramids of the several colors, gradually reduced to mere dusky points. The effect of this prolongation of the reflection was a very pleasing softening and blending of the colors . . .The color seems to be reflected and re-reflected from ripple to ripple, losing brightness each time by the softest possible gradation, and tapering toward the beholder, since he occupies a mere point of view. This is one of the prettiest effects of the autumnal change. . . .The ripples convey the reflection toward us."); November 1, 1858 ("The reflection of Flint’s white house in the river, prolonged by a slight ripple so as to reach the reflected cloud, was a very distinct and luminous light blue."); November 4, 1857 ("Its [Walden's] surface is slightly rippled, and dusky prolonged reflections of trees extend wholly across its length,")

Great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present ... ii needs a name. See.September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, the first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds"); September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall, the most flavid product of the water and the sun. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brookss in autumn."); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold,now abundant by riverside")

Their wings are so long in proportion to their bodies that there seems to be more than one undulation to a wing as they are disappearing in the distance. See April 15, 1855 ("When the heron takes to flight, what a change in size and appearance! It is presto change! There go two great undulating wings pinned together, but the body and neck must have been left behind somewhere"); September 5, 1854 ("Now at sundown, a blue heron flaps away from his perch on an oak over the river before me, just above the rock."); November 1, 1855 ("I see the blue heron arise from the shore and disappear with heavily-flapping wings around a bend in front; the greatest of the bitterns, with heavily-undulating wings, low over the water, seen against the woods, just disappearing round a bend in front; with a great slate-colored expanse of wing, suited to the shadows of the stream, a tempered blue as of the sky and dark water commingled.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle. See May 31, 1854 ( It acts the part of a telltale."   "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe.";)  August 5, 1855 (" Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.” ); September 26, 1859 ("Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs. . . their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert."); October 20, 1859 ("Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe.")

September 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 14

Along the river

they are raking cranberries

instead of haying.

Bidens in the sun –

the flower and ornament

of the riverside. 

With their shrill whistle

yellow-legs sail in a flock

showing their white tails.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A voyage up the Sudbury

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540914

To Hubbard's Bath and Grove.

October 7.

Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.

Rice says that when a boy, playing with darts with his brother Israel, one of them sent up his dart when a flock of crows was going over. One of the crows followed it down to the earth, picked it up, and flew off with it a quarter of a mile before it dropped it.

I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. When I strike a limb, great numbers fall to the ground. They are a very dark hazel looking black amid the still green leaves, - a singular contrast.

Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted, an eighth of an inch. This when, on some trees, far the greater part have not yet fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1860

Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.See October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard.”)

Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted. . . See October 17, 1857 ("How soon they have sprouted! “); November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)

Now and for a week

the chip-birds in flocks on the

withered grass and weeds.