What various kinds of ice there are!

January 26. 

P. M. — Over Cyanean Meadow on ice. 

These are remarkably warm and pleasant days. The water is going down, and the ice is rotting. 

I see some insects — those glow-worm-like ones — sunk half an inch or more into the ice by absorbed heat and yet quite alive in these little holes, in which they alternately freeze and thaw. 

At Willow Bay I see for many rods black soil a quarter of an inch deep, covering and concealing the ice (for several rods). This, I find, was blown some time ago from a plowed field twenty or more rods distant. This shows how much the sediment of the river may be increased by dust blown into it from the neighboring fields. 

Any ice begins immediately after it is formed to look dusty in the sun anywhere. 

This black soil is rapidly sinking to the bottom through the ice, by absorbing heat, and, water overflowing and freezing, it is left deep within thick ice. Or else, lying in wavelets on the ice, the surface becomes at last full of dark bottomed holes alternating with clear ice. 

The ice, having fairly begun to decompose, is very handsomely marked, more or less internally as it appears, with a sort of graphic character, or bird-tracks, very agreeable and varied. It appears to be the skeleton of the ice revealed, the original crystals (such as we see shoot on very thin ice just beginning) revealed by the rotting. 

Thus the peculiar knotty grain or knurliness of the ice is shown, — white marks on dark. These white waving lines within it look sometimes just like some white, shaggy wolf-skin. 

The meadow which makes up between Hubbard’s mainland and his swamp wood is very handsomely marked, or marbled, with alternate white and dark ice. The upper surface appears to be of one color and consistency, like a hard enamel, but very interesting white figures are seen through it. 

What various kinds of ice there are! 

This which lately formed so suddenly on the flooded meadows, from beneath which the water has in a great measure run out, letting it down, while a warm sun has shone on it, is perhaps the most interesting of any. It might be called graphic ice.

 It is a very pleasant and warm day, and when I came down to the river and looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1859

When I looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season. See January 29, 1856 (“Another bright winter day.. . .The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, ”); March 14, 1856 ("As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,. . .the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — . . . it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen.”)

What various kinds of ice there are! See January 31, 1859 ("We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")

Bluer than the bluest sky.

September 28. 

Tuesday. P. M. ——To Great Fields via Gentian Lane. 

September 28, 2018

The gentian (Andrewsii), now generally in prime, loves moist, shady banks, and its transcendent blue shows best in the shade and suggests coolness; contrasts there with the fresh green;—a splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age. They are particularly abundant under the north side of the willow-row in Merrick’s pasture. I count fifteen in a single cluster there, and afterward twenty at Gentian Lane near Flint’s Bridge, and there were other clusters below. Bluer than the bluest sky, they lurk in the moist an shady recesses of the banks. 

Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia.

Liatris done, apparently some time. 

When Gosnold and Pring and Champlain coasted along our shores, even then the small shrub oak grew on the mainland, with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately. [The black oak acorns also slightly marked thus.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1858

The gentian (Andrewsii), now generally in prime—a splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age. See August 29, 1858 ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen."); September 25, 1858  ("The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age.")

Liatris done, apparently some time. See August 1, 1856  ("Liatris will apparently open in a day or two.");August 26, 1858 ("The liatris is about (or nearly) in prime."); September 6, 1859 ("The liatris is, perhaps, a little past prime. It is a very rich purple in favorable lights and makes a great show where it grows.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Liatris

The small shrub oak with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately. See September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

Their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow.

April 25.
P. M. —To Hill by boat. 

Sweet-gale is out in some parts of the Island birch meadow, next the Indian field, probably several days, at least in some places. 

Larch not yet sheds pollen. 

The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in amid the birches to hear them. The wind is pretty strong and easterly. There are many, probably squatted about the edge of the falling water, in Merrick’s pasture. (The river began to fall again, I think, day before yesterday.) It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. Now it sounds low and indefinitely far, now rises, as if by general consent, to a higher key, as if in another and nearer quarter, — a singular alternation.

The now universal hard metallic ring of toads blended and partially drowned by the rippling wind. The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather. 

The cinquefoil well out. I see two or three on the hemlock dry plain, — probably a day or two. 

I observe a male grackle with a brownish head and the small female on one tree, red-wings on another.

Return over the top of the hill against the wind. The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 P. M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue. 

Aspen bark peels; how long? 

I landed on Merrick’s pasture near the rock, and when I stepped out of the boat and drew it up, a snipe flew up, and lit again seven or eight rods off. After trying in vain for several minutes to see it on the ground there, I advanced a step and, to my surprise, scared up two more, which had squatted on the bare meadow all the while within a rod, while I drew up my boat and made a good deal of noise. In short, I scared up twelve, one or two at a time, within a few rods, which were feeding on the edge of the meadow just laid bare, each rising with a sound like squeak squeak, hoarsely. That part of the meadow seemed all alive with them. 

It is almost impossible to see one on the meadow, they squat and run so low, and are so completely the color of the ground. They rise from within a rod, fly, half a dozen rods, and then drop down on the bare open meadow before your eyes, where there seems not stubble enough to conceal, and are at once lost as completely as if they had sunk into the earth. I observed that some, when finally scared from this island, flew off rising quite high, one a few rods behind the other, in their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow, making it uncertain where they would settle, till at length I lost sight of one and saw the other drop down almost perpendicularly into the meadow, as it appeared. 


Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, one middling—sized one and two smaller. He said they could come down through his mill without hurt. Were they all bound down the brook to the river? I brought home one of the small ones. It was seven and one eighth inches long. Put it in a firkin for the night, but it got out without upsetting it. It had four points on each side behind, and when I put it in the river I noticed half a dozen points or projections on as many of its rear plates, in keeping with the crest of its tail. It buried itself in the grassy bottom within a few feet of the shore. Moves off very flat on the bottom. These turtles have been disturbed or revealed by his operations.

Anne Kamey, our neighbor, looking over her garden yesterday with my father, saw what she said was shamrock, which the Irish wear on their caps on St. Patrick’s Day, the first she had ever seen in this country. My father pointed it out in his own garden to the Irish man who was working for him, and he was glad to see it, for he had had a dispute with another Irishman as to whether it grew in this country and now he could convince him, and he put it in his pocket. 

I saw it afterward and pronounced it common white clover, and, looking into Webster’s Dictionary, I read, under Shamrock: “The Irish name for a three-leafed plant, the Oxalis Acetosella, or common wood-sorrel. It has been often supposed to be the Trifolium repens, white trefoil or white clover.” This was very satisfactory, though perhaps Webster’s last sentence should have been, The Trifolium repens has often been mistaken for it. 

At evening see a spearer’s light.

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

Snipes’ peculiar zigzag manner. See April 18, 1854 ("They circle round and round, and zig zag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height.”)


 At evening see a spearer’s light. See April 25, 1855 ("A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is. ")

I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle.

March 22.

P. M.—To white maples and up Assabet.

The ice of the river is very rapidly softening, still concealed by snow, the upper part becoming homogeneous with the melting snow above it. I sometimes slump into snow and ice six or eight inches, to the harder ice beneath. I walk up the middle of the Assabet, and most of the way on middle of South Branch. 

Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish? 

The snow now no longer bears you. It has become very coarse-grained under the sun, and I hear it sink around me as I walk. 

Part of the white maples now begin to flow, some perhaps two or three days. Probably in equally warm positions they would have begun to flow as early as those red ones which I have tapped. Their buds, and apparently some of the red ones, are visibly swollen. This probably follows directly on the flowing of the sap. In three instances I cut off a twig, and sap flowed  and dropped from the part attached to the tree, but in no case would any sap flow from the part cut off (I mean where I first had cut it), which appears to show that the sap is now running up. I also cut a notch in a branch two inches in diameter, and the upper side of the cut remained dry, while sap flowed from the lower side, but in another instance both sides were wet at once and equally. 

The sap, then, is now generally flowing upward in red and white maples in warm positions. See it flowing from maple twigs which were gnawed off by rabbits in the winter. 

The down of willow catkins in very warm places has in almost every case peeped out an eighth of an inch, generally over the whole willow. 

On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the country over. Do not see any flying, nor before this. 

The woodchoppers, who are cutting the wood at Assabet Spring, now at last go to their work up the middle of the river, but one got in yesterday, one leg the whole length. It is rotted through in many places behind Prichard’s. 

At the red maple which I first tapped, I see the sap still running and wetting the whole side of the tree. It has also oozed out from the twigs, especially those that are a little drooping, and run down a foot or two bathing them sometimes all around, both twigs and buds sometimes, or collected in drops on the under sides of the twigs and all evaporated to molasses, which is, for the most part, as black as blacking or ink, having probably caught the dust, etc., even over all this snow. Yet it is as sweet and thick as molasses, and the twigs and buds look as if blacked and polished. Black drops of this thick, sweet syrup spot the under sides of the twigs. 

No doubt the bees and‘other insects frequent the maples now. I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad. It is as thick as molasses. See a fuzzy gnat on it. It is especially apt to collect about the bases of the twigs, where the stream is delayed. Where the sap is flowing, the red maple being cut, the inner bark turns crimson. 

I see many snow-fleas on the moist maple chips. 

Saw a pigeon woodpecker under the swamp white oak in Merrick’s pasture, where there is a small patch of bare ground. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 22, 1856

On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned . . . Do not see any flying, nor before this. See March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . The perla insects still about ice and water,"); See also March 3, 1860 ("I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon."); March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); March 24, 1857 ("I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light..") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active

[Crows] visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish? See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"); March 22, 1855 ("I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago.")

The down of willow catkins in very warm places has in almost every case peeped out an eighth of an inch. See March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water, and C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow.") See also March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. "); March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now. The silvery down of the former has in some places crept forth from beneath its scales a third of an inch at least . . .It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.");  March 21, 1859 ("The willow catkins are also very conspicuous, in silvery masses rising above the flood. "); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad. See January 4, 1859("When it grew late. . . I mistook the distant sound of the locomotive whistle for the hoot of an owl."); November 21, 1857 ("I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction.") Compare December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

The hum of a bee?

Perhaps the railroad whistle

on the Lowell line.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I thought I heard the hum of a bee.

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-560322