Pickerel of at least three different forms and color.

January 29.

To Walden.

Melvin calls the ducks which I saw yesterday sheldrakes; being small, then wood sheldrakes. [I judge from the plate they were velvet ducks, or white-winged coots.] He never shot any at this season.

Saw a woodcock last month; never before.

Killed a goshawk (which was eating a rabbit) and a cat owl lately.

Says I hear the cat owl.

Has got only three or four minks this year.

Never saw an otter track.

I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen. Headed downward, it was.

The ice is eight inches thick. It is full of short, faint, flake-like perpendicular cleavages, an inch or two broad, or varying somewhat from the perpendicular.

Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel.

Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon:

• first, a long and shallow kind most like those caught in the river, steel-colored with greenish or brownish lines, darker on the back and white beneath;

• second, a bright-golden fish with greenish reflections, remarkably deep, with a shorter head; both of these are mottled on the sides with an irregular network of dark-brown lines, often extending over the back, the meshes three fourths of an inch long, more or less, producing longitudinal stripes more or less distinct and continuous, very pure white beneath;

• third, shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark-brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific name of reticulatus would not describe this.

These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises.

The perch also, and indeed all the fishes which in habit this pond, are as much handsomer than ordinary, as the water is purer than that of other ponds.

Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties, at least, of most of them..

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1853

 Melvin calls the ducks which I saw yesterday sheldrakes. January 28, 1853 ("See three ducks sailing in the river behind Prichard's this afternoon, black with white on wings, though these two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed."); See also March 6, 1853 ("Stedman Buttrick calls the ducks which we see in the winter, widgeons and wood sheldrakes.")

Melvin has got only three or four minks this year. See December 19, 1859 ("Farmer . . . saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year."); March 13, 1859 ("Garfield . . . asked if I had seen any mink]. I said that I commonly saw two or three in a year. He said that he had not seen one alive for eight or ten years. [but] "I catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter.")

I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden.  See January 7, 1860 ("I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and. .. on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse.")

Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel. See Walden ("The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.")

Mevin never saw an otter track. See January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along.”);December 31, 1854 (“ On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning.”);December 6, 1856 (“The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks.”);  February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”) See also  April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.");March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!")  

Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon. See January 25, 1853 ("The pickerel of Walden!. . .I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, . . . handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty. . . they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stones. It is surprising that . . . in this deep and capacious spring, . . . this great gold and emerald fish swims") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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 ©  2009-2023

A red screech owl.

December 26.

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. This is now generally made the same with the nævia, but, while some consider the red the old, others consider the red the young. 

This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" like a hazelnut or dried hazel bur (not hazel). It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long. Feet extend one inch beyond tail.

Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the young.

How well fitted these and other owls to withstand the winter! a mere core in the midst of such a muff of feathers! Then the feet of this are feathered finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in winter; hawks, scarce.


It is no worse, I allow, than almost every other practice which custom has sanctioned, but that is the worst of it, for it shows how bad the rest are. To such a pass our civilization and division of labor has come that A, a professional huckleberry - picker, has hired B’s field and, we will suppose, is now gathering the crop, perhaps with the aid of a patented machine; C, a professed cook, is superintending the cooking of a pudding made of some of the berries; while Professor D, for whom the pudding is intended, sits in his library writing a book, a work on the Vaccinieæ, of course. And now the result of this downward course will be seen in that book, which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckleberry field and account for the existence of the two professors who come between D and A.

It will be worthless. There will be none of the spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a homely illustration, this is to save at the spile but waste at the bung.

I believe in a different kind of division of labor, and that Professor D should divide himself between the library and the huckleberry-field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1860

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect  Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. See May 7, 1855 ("I looked in, and, to my great surprise, there squatted, filling the hole, which was about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon-brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face."); May 12, 1855 ("One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs .. . .Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio) , — with which this apparently corresponds , and not with the mottled, though my egg is not " pure white, ” – that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.");,February 5, 1861 ("Horace Mann brings me a screech owl . . . This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.") Also   J. J. Audubon  ("The Red Owl of Wilson and other naturalists is merely the young of the bird called by the same authors the Mottled Owl,"))

Tracking Melvin

February 5

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

2 p. m., 40°. 

I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms. Also have eaten the frozen-thawed apples under the trees, tracking all the ground over there. 

February 1st, though so cold and the snow so dry, as it blowed pretty hard, was a day of drift behind northerly walls, and when those shell-like drifts were formed, as well as the wild drifts of Hubbard's meadow described on the 3d. 

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. The river is open eight or ten rods there, and I noticed their tracks all about the river and close to the edge of the ice, thin as it was, for a dozen rods above and below the bridge. At first, being at a distance, I thought them dog-tracks, but I might have known that no dogs would ever have run about so there, on that thin ice and so near the edge of it. 

They were generally each four being from fifteen to twenty-four inches apart. Occasionally the track was somewhat like a rabbit's. I saw where one had apparently dragged himself along the ice. They had entered the water in many places, also travelled along under the slanting ice next the bank long  distances. They were evidently attracted by that open water. There was no distinct sliding place. 

Coming home last night in the twilight, I recognized a neighbor a dozen rods off by his walk or carriage, though it was so dark that I could not see a single feature of his person. Indeed, his person was all covered up excepting his face and hands, and I could not possibly have distinguished these at this distance from another man's. Nor was it owing to any peculiarity in his dress, for I should have known him though he had had on a perfectly new suit. It was because the man within the clothes moved them in a peculiar manner that I knew him thus at once at a distance and in the twilight. He made a certain figure in any clothes he might wear, and moved in it in a peculiar manner. Indeed, we have a very intimate knowledge of one another; we see through thick and thin; spirit meets spirit. 

A man hangs out innumerable signs by which we may know him. So, last summer, I knew another neighbor half a mile off up the river, though I did not see him, by the manner in which the breath from his lungs and mouth, i. e. his voice, made the air strike my ear. In that manner he communicated himself to all his acquaintance within a diameter of one mile (if it were all up and down the river). 

So I remember to have been sure once in a very dark night who was preceding me on the sidewalk, — though I could not see him, — by the sound of his tread. I was surprised to find that I knew it.

And to-day, seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. There was a thin snow on the ice, and I observed that he not only furrowed the snow for a foot before he completed his step, but that the (toe) of his track was always indefinite, as if his boot had been worn out and prolonged at the toe. I noticed that I and my companion made a clear and distinct track at the toe, but when I experimented, and tried to make a track like this by not lifting my feet but gliding and partly scuffing along, I found myself walking just like Melvin, and that perfectly convinced me that it was he. 

We have no occasion to wonder at the instinct of a dog. In these last two instances I surpassed the instinct of the dog. 

It may always be a question how much or how little of a man goes to any particular act. It is not merely by taking time and by a conscious effort that he betrays himself. A man is revealed, and a man is concealed, in a myriad unexpected ways; e.g., I can hardly think of a more effectual way of disguising neighbors to one another than by stripping them naked.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February, 5, 1860

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. See February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep.”)February 8, 1857 ("The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. "); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 ("Up Assabet. See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday."); February 22, 1856 ("Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

Seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. See December 2, 1856 ("Saw Melvin's lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. . . . I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent . . . Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him."); December 3, 1856 ("I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.”)

A man is revealed

and a man is concealed in 

unexpected ways.

My friends are my rivals.

January 16.

Sunday. Cold, with blustering winds drifting the snow.

Yesterday the hounds were heard. It was a hunter's day. All tracks were fresh, the snow deep and light. I met Melvin with his bag full. 

Trench says that "'rivals,' in the primary sense of the word, are those who dwell on the banks of the same stream" or "on opposite banks," but as he says, in many words, since the use of water-rights is a fruitful source of contention between such neighbors, the word has acquired this secondary sense. 

My friends are my rivals on the Concord, in the primitive sense of the word. There is no strife between us respecting the use of the stream. The Concord offers many privileges, but none to quarrel about. It is a peaceful, not a brawling, stream. 

It has not made rivals out of neighbors that lived on its banks, but friends. My friends are my rivals; we dwell on opposite banks of the stream, but that stream is the Concord, which flows without a ripple or a murmur, without a rapid or a brawl, and offers no petty privileges to quarrel about.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1853

January 16  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

Nature's Moods

September 24. 

P. M. — To Melvin's Preserve.

Was that a flock of grackles on the meadow? I have not seen half a dozen blackbirds, methinks, for a month. 

I have many affairs to attend to, and feel hurried these days. Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. 

September 24, 2013

It is not by a compromise, it is not by a timid and feeble repentance, that a man will save his soul and live, at last. He has got to conquer a clear field, letting Repentance & Co. go. That 's a well-meaning but weak firm that has assumed the debts of an old and worthless one. You are to fight in a field where no allowances will be made, no courteous bowing to one-handed knights. You are expected to do your duty, not in spite of every thing but one, but in spite of everything. 

See a green snake. 

Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns. I stand on the elevated road, looking down into it. The trees are very tall and slender, without branches for a long distance. All the ground, which is perfectly level, is covered and concealed, as are the bases of the trees, with the tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. It is a very pretty sight, these northern trees springing out of a ground work of ferns. It is like pictures of the tropics, except that here the palms are the undergrowth. You could not have arranged a nosegay more tastefully. It is a rich groundwork, out of which the maples and pines spring. 

But outside the wood and by the roadside, where they are exposed, these ferns are withered, shrivelled, and brown, for they are tenderer than the dicksonia. The fern, especially if large, is so foreign and tropical that these remind me of artificial groundworks set in sand, to set off other plants. These ferns (like brakes) begin to decay, i. e. to turn yellow or brown and ripen, as here, before they are necessarily frost-bitten. Theirs is another change and decay, like that of the brake and sarsaparilla in the woods and swamps, only later, while the exposed ones are killed before they have passed through all their changes. The exposed ones attained to a brighter yellow early and were then killed; the shaded ones pass through various stages of rich, commonly pale brown, as here, and last much longer. The brown ones are the most interesting. 

Going along this old Carlisle road, — road for walkers, for berry-pickers, and no more worldly travellers; road for Melvin and Clark, not for the sheriff nor butcher nor the baker's jingling cart; road where all wild things and fruits abound, where there are countless rocks to jar those who venture there in wagons; which no jockey, no wheelwright in his right mind, drives over, no little spidery gigs and Flying Childers; road which leads to and through a great but not famous garden, zoological and botanical garden, at whose gate you never arrive, — as I was going along there, I perceived the grateful scent of the dicksonia fern, now partly decayed, and it reminds me of all up-country with its springy mountainsides and unexhausted vigor. Is there any essence of dicksonia fern, I wonder? Surely that giant who, my neighbor expects, is to bound up the Alleghanies will have his handkerchief scented with that. In the lowest part of the road the dicksonia by the wall-sides is more than half frost-bitten and withered, — a sober Quaker-color, brown crape! — though not so tender or early [?] as the cinnamon fern; but soon I rise to where they are more yellow and green, and so my route is varied. On the higher places there are very handsome tufts of it, all yellowish out side and green within. The sweet fragrance of decay! 

When I wade through by narrow cow-paths, it is as if I had strayed into an ancient and decayed herb-garden. Proper for old ladies to scent their handkerchiefs with. Nature perfumes her garments with this essence now especially. She gives it to those who go a-barberrying and on dank autumnal walks. The essence of this as well as of new-mown hay, surely! The very scent of it, if you have a decayed frond in your chamber, will take you far up country in a twinkling. You would think you had gone after the cows there, or were lost on the mountains. It will make you as cool and well as a frog, — a wood frog, Rana sylvatica. It is the scent the earth yielded in the saurian period, before man was created and fell, before milk and water were invented, and the mints. Far wilder than they.

Rana sylvatica passed judgment on it, or rather that peculiar-scented Rana palustris. It was in his reign it was introduced. That is the scent of the Silurian Period precisely, and a modern beau may scent his handkerchief with it. Before man had come and the plants that chiefly serve him. There were no Rosacea nor mints then. So the earth smelled in the Silurian (?) Period, before man was created and any soil had been debauched with manure. The saurians had their handkerchiefs scented with it. For all the ages are represented still and you can smell them out. 

A man must attend to Nature closely for many years to know when, as well as where, to look for his objects, since he must always anticipate her a little. Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another. I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sports man knows when to look for plover. 

Though you may have sauntered near to heaven's gate, when at length you return toward the village you give up the enterprise a little, and you begin to fall into the old ruts of thought, like a regular roadster. Your thoughts very properly fail to report themselves to headquarters. Your thoughts turn toward night and the evening mail and become begrimed with dust, as if you were just going to put up at (with ?) the tavern, or even come to make an exchange with a brother clergyman here on the morrow. 

Some eyes cannot see, even through a spy-glass. I showed my spy-glass to a man whom I met this afternoon, who said that he wanted to see if he could look through it. I tried it carefully on him, but he failed. He said that he tried a lot lately on the muster-field but he never could see through them, somehow or other everything was all a blur. I asked him if he considered his eyes good. He answered that they were good to see far. They looked like two old-fashioned china saucers. He kept steadily chewing his quid all the while he talked and looked. This is the case with a great many, I suspect. Everything is in a blur to them. He enjoys the distinction of being the only man in the town who raises his own tobacco. Seeing is not in them. No focus will suit them. You wonder how the world looks to them, — if those are eyes which they have got, or bits of old china, familiar with soap suds. 

As I stood looking over a wall this afternoon at some splendid red sumach bushes, now in their prime, I saw Melvin the other side of the wall and hailed him.

 "What are you after there?" asked he. 

"After the same thing that you are, perhaps," answered I.

But I mistook, this time, for he said that he was looking amid the huckleberry bushes for some spectacles which a woman lost there in the summer. It was his mother, no doubt. 

Road — that old Carlisle one — that leaves towns behind; where you put off worldly thoughts; where you do not carry a watch, nor remember the proprietor; where the proprietor is the only trespasser, — looking after his apples ! — the only one who mistakes his calling there, whose title is not good; where fifty may be a-barberrying and you do not see one. It is an endless succession of glades where the barberries grow thickest, successive yards amid the barberry bushes where you do not see out. 

There I see Melvin and the robins, and many a nut-brown maid sashe-ing to the barberry bushes in hoops and crinoline, and none of them see me. The world-surrounding hoop! faery rings! Oh, the jolly cooper's trade it is the best of any! Carried to the furthest isles where civilized man penetrates. This the girdle they've put round the world! Saturn or Satan set the example. Large and small hogsheads, barrels, kegs, worn by the misses that go to that lone schoolhouse in the Pinkham notch. 

The lonely horse in its pasture is glad to see company, comes forward to be noticed and takes an apple from your hand. 

Others are called great roads, but this is greater than they all. The road is only laid out, offered to walkers, not accepted by the town and the travelling world. To be represented by a dotted line on charts, or drawn in lime-juice, undiscoverable to the uninitiated, to be held to a warm imagination. No guide-boards indicate it. No odometer would indicate the miles a wagon had run there. Rocks which the druids might have raised — if they could. 

There I go searching for malic acid of the right quality, with my tests. The process is simple. Place the fruit between your jaws and then endeavor to make your teeth meet. The very earth contains it. The Easterbrooks Country contains malic acid. 

To my senses the dicksonia fern has the most wild and primitive fragrance, quite unalloyed and untamable, such as no human institutions give out, — the early morning fragrance of the world, antediluvian, strength and hope imparting. They who scent it can never faint. It is ever a new and untried field where it grows, and only when we think original thoughts can we perceive it. If we keep that on [sic] our boudoir we shall be healthy and evergreen as hemlocks. Older than, but related to, strawberries. Before strawberries were, it was, and it will outlast them. Good for the trilobite and saurian in us; death to dandies. It yields its scent most morning and evening. Growing without manure; older than man; refreshing him; preserving his original strength and innocence. 

When the New Hampshire farmer, far from travelled roads, has cleared a space for his mountain home and conducted the springs of the mountain to his yard, already it grows about the sources of that spring, before any mint is planted in his garden. There his sheep and oxen and he too scent it, and he realizes that the world is new to him. There the pastures are rich, the cattle do not die of disease, and the men are strong and free. The wild original of strawberries and the rest. Nature, the earth herself, is the only panacea. They bury poisoned sheep up to the necks in earth to take the poison out of them. 

After four days cloud and rain we have fair weather. A great many have improved this first fair day to come a-barberrying to the Easterbrooks fields. These bushy fields are all alive with them, though I scarcely see one. 

I meet Melvin loaded down with barberries, in bags and baskets, so that he has to travel by stages and is glad to stop and talk with me. It is better to take thus what Nature offers, in her season, than to buy an extra dinner at Parker's. 

The sumach berries are probably past their beauty. 

Fever-bush berries are scarlet now, and also green.  They have a more spicy taste than any of our berries, carrying us in thought to the spice islands. Taste like lemon-peel. 

The panicled andromeda berries (?) begin to brown. 

The bayberry berries are apparently ripe, though not so gray as they will be, — more lead-colored. They bear sparingly here. Leaves not fallen nor changed, and I the more easily find the bushes amid the changed huckleberries, brakes, etc., by their greenness. 

The poke on Eb. Hubbard's hillside has been considerably frost-bitten before the berries are one-third ripe. It is in flower still. Great drooping cylindrical racemes of blackish-purple berries, six inches or more in length, tapering a little toward the end; great flat blackish and ripe berries at base, with green ones and flowers at the other end; all on brilliant purple or crimson-purple peduncle and pedicels. 

Those thorns by Shattuck's barn, now nearly leafless, have hard green fruit as usual. 

The shrub oak is apparently the most fertile of our oaks. I count two hundred and sixty-six acorns on a branch just two feet long. Many of the cups are freshly empty now, showing a pretty circular pink scar at the bottom, where the acorn adhered. They are of various forms and sizes on different shrubs; are now turning dark-brown and showing their converging meridional light-brown lines. 

Never fear for striped squirrels in our shrub oak land.

Am surprised to find, by Botrychium Swamp, a Rhus radicans which is quite a tree by itself. It is about nine feet high by nine in width, growing in the midst of a clump of barberry bushes, which it overhangs. It is now at the height of its change, very handsome, scarlet and yellow, and I did not at first know what it was. I found it to consist of three or four branches, each nearly two inches thick and covered with those shaggy fibres, and these are twined round some long-since rotted barberry stems, and around one another, and now make a sizable-looking trunk, which rises to the height of four feet before it branches, and then spreads widely every way like an oak. It was, no doubt, indebted to the barberry for support at first, but now its very branches are much larger than that, and it far overtops and over spreads all the barberry stems.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1859

Great works of art have endless leisure for a background . . . Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. See September 17, 1839 ("If the setting sun seems to hurry him to improve the day while it lasts, the chant of the crickets fails not to reassure him, even-measured as of old, teaching him to take his own time henceforth forever. The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step. As the wise is not anxious that time wait for him, neither does he wait for it.") July 19, 1851 ("This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me?"); January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short"); May 9, 1852 ("Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons. It is impossible to remember a week ago."); December 28, 1852 ("A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?"); Walden, An artist in the city of Kouroo ("In an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter. ")

The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown. See September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered."); September 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither."); September 25, 1859 ("The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown. . . in harmony with the twilight of the swamp"); September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever."); October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds"); October 2, 1857 ("They are now generally imbrowned or crisp. In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent"); October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.");  October 6, 1858 ("Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw, ");October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns . . .have acquired their November aspect")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

He enjoys the distinction of being the only man in the town who raises his own tobacco. See September 22, 1859 ("Temple, . . .thinks he is the only one who has cultivated any in C[oncord]. of late years.")

There I see Melvin and the robins, and many a nut-brown maid sashe-ing to the barberry bushes. See October 20, 1857 ("What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! . . . the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit, resorted to by men and beasts; Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins, these, at least, were attracted thither this afternoon")

I meet Melvin loaded down with barberries, in bags and baskets. See September 18, 1856 ("I get a full peck from about three bushes.”); September 25, 1855 (We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes”). October 1, 1853 (" Got three pecks of barberries.")

tinyurl.com/HDThaste

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.

May 27. 

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

May 27, 2019

May 27, 2015

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. 

It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed. Rivers flow already bearing the dust of summer on their bosoms. The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. 

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. 

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. 

A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper.

Melvin and Skinner tell me of three wild geese, to their surprise seen within a week down the river, — a gander and two geese, — which must be breeding here. Melvin got near them a fortnight ago. They are too much disturbed to rear a brood, I think. 

Melvin tells of seeing once in June dead shad-flies washed up on the North Branch in windrows, along the shore. 

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. 

Went by Temple's. For rural interest, give me the houses of the poor, with simply a cool spring, a good deal of weather-stained wood, and a natural door-stone: a house standing somewhere in nature, and not merely in an atmosphere of art, on a measured lot; on a hillside, perchance, obviously not made by any gardener, amid rocks not placed there by a landscape gardener for effect; with nothing "pretty" about it, but life reduced to its lowest terms and yet found to be beautiful. 

This is a good foundation or board to spring from. All that the natives erect themselves above that will be a genuine growth.

Blue-eyed grass out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1859

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks. See June 4, 1854 (“The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off?”) and  note to June 4, 1857 (“I observed yesterday, the first time this year, the lint on the smooth surface of the Assabet at the Hemlocks, giving the water a stagnant look. It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves.”)

These expressions of the face of Nature are sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.”); September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually”)

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. See June 6, 1855 ("You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land.”); June 9. 1856 ("It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath .”); May 29, 1857 ("the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June.”);May 29, 1857  ("It was like the first bright flashings of an eye from under dark eyelashes after shedding warm tears."); May 29, 1857 ("I sit on the top of Lee's Cliff, looking into the light and dark eye of the lake.")

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. See note to May 31, 1853 ( It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.’”)

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. See May 30, 1857 ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.”). Compare April 28, 1856 ("I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, . . . suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further."); May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Black and White Creeper

The first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. See May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); May 22, 1854 (“The song suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. . . . . Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); May 24, 1857 (“Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.”); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.”); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 4, 1857 ( “the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.”)

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. See June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now")

Blue-eyed grass out. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1853 ("That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention"); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. “)

On the way up the dogs are let loose and they dutifully walk along the trail in front of us.  I veer off on the last steep and get up to my chair in time to take several pictures of a the sunset through open clouds in the west. A jet pass is over headed for Europe. The sun is setting so at the right moment is reflecting both from the lake and the pond  —and still has more north to go. At dusk we head back regular way and both can walk in the dark without lights as the path is illuminated by the phosphorus of paint. Every rock that is to be avoided as marked and the rest is a fairyland of of lights pulling us through the woods.

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

~zphx 20190527

It is the worst or wettest of walking.

January 21. 

A January thaw, with some fog, occasioned as yet wholly by warm weather, without rain; high wind in the night; wind still south. 

The last two days have been remarkably pleasant and warm, with a southerly wind, and last night was apparently warmer yet (I think it was 46° this morning); and this morning I am surprised to see much bare ground and ice where was snow last evening, and though last evening it was good sleighing and the street was not wet at all, — though the snow was moist, — now it is almost entirely bare ice except for the water. 

The sluices are more than full, rushing like mill-streams on each side the way and often stretching in broad lakes across the street. It is the worst or wettest of walking, requiring india-rubber boots. Great channels, eight inches deep and a foot or more wide, are worn in the ice across the street, revealing a pure, clear ice on the sides, contrasting with the dirty surface. 

I do not remember so sudden a change, the effect of warmth without rain. 

• Yesterday afternoon it was safe sledding wood along the riverside on the ice, — Hubbard was doing so,— and I saw at the bridges that the river was some eight inches lower than it had been when it froze, the ice adhering to the piers, and all held up there so much higher than the surrounding surface; and now it is rapidly rising, and the river is forbidden ground. 

It is surprising how suddenly the slumbering snow has been melted, and with what a rush it now seeks the lowest ground on all sides. 

• Yesterday, in the streets and fields, it was all snow and ice and rest; now it is chiefly water and motion. 
• Yesterday afternoon I walked in the merely moist snow-track of sleds and sleighs, while all the sides of the road and the ditches rested under a white mantle of snow. This morning I go picking my way in rubbers through broad puddles on a slippery icy bottom, stepping over small torrents which have worn channels six or eight inches deep, and on each side rushes past with a loud murmur a stream large enough to turn a mill, occasionally spreading out into a sizable mill-pond. 

It begins to rain by afternoon, and rains more or less during the night. Before night I heard of the river being over the road in one place, though it was rather low before. 

Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow.

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

A January thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard."); January 9, 1860 ("After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring."); January 12, 1854 ("Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”); January 13, 1854 ("Still warm and thawing, springlike. . . The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. "); January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”); January 22, 1860 ("Crows . . . are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow."); January 23, 1853 ("It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.”);January 23, 1860 ("When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe "); January 31, 1854 ("We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression.")

It is the worst or wettest of walking. See January 12, 1854 (“hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”); January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”); January 23, 1853 ("It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.”)

Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow. See January 22, 1859 ("Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun.")

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th.

December 22. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

December 22. 2018

I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. Hear the well-known mew and watery twitter of the last and the drier chilt chilt of the former. These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow. There may be thirty goldfinches, very brisk and pretty tame. They hang head downwards on the weeds. I hear of their coming to pick sunflower seeds in Melvin’s garden these days.

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1858

Quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. See December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here."); February 16, 1854  ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall."); January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod."); March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring,")  

No more frozen than on the 20th. See note to December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”) and December 22, 1853 ("Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open”).

I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh. See December 22, 1853 (“Last night's sprinkling of snow . . . whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it.”)

Like a snow-storm they come rushing down from the north.

December. 12. 

P. M. — Up river on ice to Fair Haven Hill. 

The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic

Crossing the fields west of our Texas house, I see an immense flock of snow buntings, I think the largest that I ever saw. There must be a thousand or two at least. There is but three inches, at most, of crusted and dry frozen snow, and they are running amid the weeds which rise above it. 

The weeds are chiefly Juncus tenuis (?), but its seeds are apparently gone. I find, however, the glumes of the piper grass scattered about where they have been. 

The flock is at first about equally divided into two parts about twenty rods apart, but birds are incessantly flitting across the interval to join the pioneer flock, until all are united. They are very restless, running amid the weeds and continually changing their ground. They will suddenly rise again a few seconds after they have alighted, as if alarmed, but after a short wheel settle close by. 

Flying from you, in some positions, you see only or chiefly the black part of their bodies, and then, as they wheel, the white comes into view, contrasted prettily with the former, and in all together at the same time. 

Seen flying higher against a cloudy sky they look like large snowflakes. 

When they rise all together their note is like the rattling of nuts in a bag, as if a whole binful were rolled from side to side. They also utter from time to time — i. e., individuals do — a clear rippling note, perhaps of alarm, or a call. It is remarkable that their notes above described should resemble the lesser redpolls'! 

Away goes this great wheeling, rambling flock, rolling through the air, and you cannot easily tell where they will settle. Suddenly the pioneers (or a part not foremost) will change their course when in full career, and when at length they know it, the rushing flock on the other side will be fetched about as it were with an undulating jerk, as in the boys’ game of snap-the-whip, and those that occupy the place of the snapper are gradually off after their leaders on the new tack.

As far as I observe, they confine themselves to upland, not alighting in the meadows. Like a snow-storm they come rushing down from the north. The extremities of the wings are black, while the parts next their bodies are black [sic]. They are unusually abundant now. 

See a shrike on a dead pine at the Cliffs.

The pitch pines have not done falling, considerable having fallen on the snow. 

The river meadows, where they were not cut, are conspicuous brown-straw-colored now,— in the sun almost a true straw-color. November lingers still there. 

I should like to know where all those snowbirds will roost to-night, for they will probably roost together. And what havoc an owl might make among them! [Melvin tells me that he saw a thousand feeding a long time in the Great Meadows, — he thinks on the seeds of the wool-grass (!!), — about same time.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 12, 1858


Snow buntings. See  November 7, 1858 ("Going up the lane beyond Farmer’s, I was surprised to see fly up from the white, stony road, two snow buntings, which alighted again close by, one on a large rock, the other on the stony ground. They had pale-brown or tawny touches on the white breast, on each side of the head, and on the top of the head, in the last place with some darker color. Had light-yellowish bills. They sat quite motionless within two rods, and allowed me to approach within a rod, as if conscious that the white rocks, etc., concealed them. It seemed as if they were attracted to surfaces of the same color with themselves, — white and black (or quite dark) and tawny. One squatted flat, if not both. Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment."); November 29, 1859 ("Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time. "); December 10, 1854 (" See a large flock of snow buntings (quite white against woods, at any rate), though it is quite warm. "); December 24, 1851 ("Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored.."); January 2, 1856") ("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.

September 25. 

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. 

P. M. — Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. 

The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? 

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. 

There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. 

Edward Hoar says he found last year Datum Stramomlum in their garden. Add it, then, to our plants. 

In the evening Mr. Warren brings me a snipe and a pectoral sandpiper. This last, which is a little less than the snipe but with a longer wing, must be much like T. solitarius, and I may have confounded them. The shaft of the first primary is conspicuously white above. 

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. 

Melvin says he has found the pigeon hawk’s nest here (distinct from partridge hawk’s); also that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here. Goodwin also says the last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1858

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies. See August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. See  August 29, 1858  ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.")

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. See October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint."); also September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.");  September 25, 1855 ("Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side"); September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year."); ; September 19, 1858 ("Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately.")

Melvin says that he sometimes sees the large yellow-legs here. See September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow")