A conversation with Therien, the woodchopper.

December 24

The rain of yesterday concluded with a whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. To day is cold and quite windy. 

P. M. — To the field in Lincoln which I surveyed for Weston the 17th. 

Walden almost entirely open again. 

Skated across Flint's Pond; for the most part smooth but with rough spots where the rain had not melted the snow. 

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. It is as if they bounded the continent toward Behring's Straits. 

In Weston's field, in springy land on the edge of a swamp, I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons within a rod or two, and probably there are many more about a foot from the ground, commonly on the main stem — though sometimes on a branch close to the stem — of the alder, sweet-fern, brake, etc., etc. 

The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. 

The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it." 

Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it. 

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. I heard his axe half a mile off, and also saw the smoke of his fire, which I mistook for a part of the mist which was drifting about. 

I asked him where he boarded. At Shannon's.

He asked the price of board and said I was a grass boarder, i. e. not a regular one. 

Asked him what time he started in the morning. The sun was up when he got out of the house that morning. He heard Flint's Pond whooping like cannon the moment he opened the door, but sometimes he could see stars after he got to his chopping-ground. 

He was working with his coat off in the rain. 

He said he often saw gray squirrels running about and jumping from tree to tree. There was a large nest of leaves close by. 

That morning he saw a large bird of some kind. 

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice, — not for news; he said he didn't want news. He had got twenty- three or twenty-four of them, had got them bound and paid a dollar for it, and would like to have me see it. He hadn't read it half; there was a great deal of reading in it, by gorry.

He wanted me to tell him the meaning of some of the hard words. 

How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. 

He cut enough to earn his board. A man could not do much more in the winter. 

He used the dry twigs on the trees to start his fire with, and some shavings which he brought in his pocket. He frequently found some fire still in the morning. 

He laid his axe by a log and placed another log the other side of it. I said he might have to dig it out of a snow drift, but he thought it would not snow. 

Described a large hawk killed at Smith's (which had eaten some hens); its legs "as yellow as a sovereign;" apparently a goshawk. 

He has also his beetle and wedges and whetstone. 

In the town hall this evening, my spruce tree, one of the small ones in the swamp, hardly a quarter the size of the largest, looked double its size, and its top had been cut off for want of room. It was lit with candles, but the starlit sky is far more splendid to-night than any saloon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  December 24, 1853

A whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. See  December 24,1850 ("the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain."); December 24,1851 ("Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow."); December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning,"); December 24, 1856 ("More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches")

Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint's Pond. See December 4, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river."). Compare  December 27, 1852 (" Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.."); December 11, 1854 ("I find Flint’s frozen to-day,and how long?");  December 9, 1856 ("Yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint's, which was frozen at least four inches thick. This is, no doubt, owing solely to the greater depth of Walden."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. . "); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, ..."); December 24, 1859 (“There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. ”);

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. See September 12, 1851 ("To the Three Friends' Hill beyond Flint's Pond. . . I go to Flint's Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill beyond, looking over Concord. I have thought it the best, especially in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. "); October 22, 1857 ("Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon!")

In Weston's field I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons. See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons");  February 19, 1854 (" the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them "); January 6, 1855 ("Saw one of those silver-gray cocoons which are so securely attached by the silk being wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig.")

This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share.See February 19, 1854 ("Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end.”)

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. See July 14, 1845 ("Alek Therien, he called himself; a Canadian now, a woodchopper, a post-maker; makes fifty posts—holes them, i. e.—in a day; and who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. And he too has heard of Homer, and if it were not for books, would not know what to do rainy days."); February 5, 1855 ("Found Therien cutting down the two largest chestnuts in the wood-lot behind where my house was."); December 29, 1853 ("I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself.")

He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. He cut enough to earn his board. See Walden ("He wasn’t a-going to hurt himself. He didn’t care if he only earned his board.")

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice. See Walden ("I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to “keep himself in practice,” he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English.")

He has also his beetle.  See March 15, 1857 ("An indispensable piece of woodcraft."); December 29, 1853 ("The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.")

My spruce tree. See December 22, 1853 ("Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce swamp,")

A man could not do 

much more in the winter than

to earn his board.

Early rising and a morning walk.

December 13

Walk early through the woods to Lincoln to survey. 

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday. River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. 

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? 

As we walked over the Cedar Hill, Mr. Weston asked me if I had ever noticed how the frost formed around a particular weed in the grass, and no other. It was a clear cold morning. We stooped to examine, and I observed, about the base of the larger pin-weed [cistus], the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. They were very conspicuous, dotting the grass white. But what was most remarkable was that, though there were plenty of other dead weeds and grasses about, no other species exhibited this phenomenon. 

I think it can hardly be because of the form of its top, and that therefore the moisture is collected and condensed and flows down its stem particularly. It may have something to do with the life of the root, which I noticed was putting forth shoots beneath. Perhaps this growth generates heat and so steam. He said that his cows never touched that weed. 

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. 

I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher's), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (?) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, perhaps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse.

Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1852

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? See  December 13, 1851 ("It seems an age since I took walks and wrote in my journal.");  See also January 10, 1851 ("I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily."); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.”); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

About the base of the [cicstus] the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. See November 11, 1858 ("Frost. . . forming a sort of fool’s cap of different thicknesses, or cockles, or sugar-plums. It seems it is so cool that the frost about the cistus does not melt all day."); See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character."); November 20, 1858 ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields."); November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow . . . Now see . . . the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust."); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.");  December 6, 1856 ("Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides . . . What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! . . . Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

Pinweed (GoBotany)

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. See December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is . . . distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter"); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years . . . and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”)

River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. See  December 13, 1850 (“The river froze over last night, — skimmed over;”);   December 13, 1857 ("[Goose Pond] and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny 'sides.’’); December 13, 1859 (“My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it.”);  See also December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.”); December 8, 1853 ("Goose Pond now firmly frozen.”); December 27, 1857 ("Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet . . . in many places water has oozed out and spread over the ice, mixing with the snow and making dark places.”)

He had neatly covered over a bird's nest and lined it warmly with  green moss. See  February 3, 1856 (“Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice."); February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. It is about five inches wide and three or four high, with one, if not two, small round indistinct entrances on the side . . . It is made very firmly and round, far more so than an oven-bird's nest, of the rye and grass stubble which was at hand under the snow, gnawed off to convenient lengths. A very snug and warm nest, where several might have lain very cosily under the snow in the hardest winter . . . Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods?") See also note to October 8, 1853 (“Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest ”)

Maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse. Compare August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. . . . above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse ("Most of Thoreau's observations of wild mice are either the meadow mouse or deer mouse.  Thoreau calls the meadow mouse or  "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta -- now known as Microtus  pennsylvanicus,  meadow Vole.")

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday . . . Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days. See November 16, 1852 ("Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow."); November 23, 1852 ("This morning the ground is white with snow, and it still snows. This is the first time it has been fairly white this season, though once before, many weeks ago, it was slightly whitened for ten or fifteen minutes.”) Νου.  29, 30, and Dec. 1, 1852 ("The snow which fell the 23d whitened the ground but a day or two." December 1, 1852 ("The snow keeps off unusually."); December 2, 1852 ("Still no snow."); December 12, 1852 ("Cold at last . . . I see snow on the mountains. Last night's rain was snow there, then.)"

Why have I ever 

omitted early rising 

and a morning walk?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Early rising and a morning walk

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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