The road should be for the use of the traveller.

July 18. 

Sunday. Keep on through New Boston, the east side of Mount Vernon, Amherst to Hollis, and noon by a mill-pond in the woods, on Pennichook Brook, in Hollis, or three miles north of village. 

At evening go on to Pepperell. 

A marked difference when we enter Massachusetts, in roads, farms, houses, trees, fences, etc., — a great improvement, showing an older-settled country. In New Hampshire there is a greater want of shade trees, but long bleak or sunny roads from which there is no escape. 

What barbarians we are! The convenience of the traveller is very little consulted. He merely has the privilege of crossing somebody’s farm by a particular narrow and maybe unpleasant path. The individual retains all other rights, — as to trees and fruit, and wash of the road, etc. 

On the other hand, these should belong to mankind inalienably. The road should be of ample width and adorned with trees expressly for the use of the traveller. There should be broad recesses in it, especially at springs and watering-places, where he can turn out and rest, or camp if he will. 

I feel commonly as if I were condemned to drive through somebody’s cow-yard or huckleberry pasture by a narrow lane, and if I make a fire by the roadside to boil my hasty pudding, the farmer comes running over to see if I am not burning up his stuff. You are barked along through the country, from door to door.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1858

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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 © 2009-2021

Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook

July 17. 

Saturday. Passed by Webster’s place, three miles this side of the village. 

Some half-dozen houses there; no store nor public buildings. A very quiet place. Road lined with elms and maples. Railroad between house and barn. The farm apparently a level and rather sandy interval, nothing particularly attractive about it. A plain public graveyard within its limits. 

Saw the grave of Ebenezer Webster, Esq, who died 1806, aged sixty-seven, and of Abigail, his wife, who died 1816, aged seventy-six, probably Webster’s father and mother; also of other Websters, and Haddocks. Now belongs to one Fay [?] of Boston. W. was born two or more miles northwest, but house now gone. 

Spent the noon on the bank of the Contoocook in the northwest corner of Concord, there a stagnant river owing to dams. Began to find raspberries ripe. Saw much elecampane by roadsides near farmhouses, all the way through New Hampshire. 

Reached Weare and put up at a quiet and agreeable house, without any sign or barroom. Many Friends in this town. Know Pillsbury and Rogers here. The former lived in Henniker, next town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1858

Continuing toward White Mountains in a private carriage with Edward Hoar

July 3.

Continued along in a slight rain through Bedford, crossing to Manchester, and driving by a brook in Hookset just above Pinnacle. Then through Allenstown and Pembroke, with its long street, to Loudon, leaving Concord on the left.

Along the sandy roadside in a pitch pine wood in Loudon, much apparent Calystegia spithamaza in bloom, but I think with reddish flowers. Probably same with my New Bedford plant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1858

This blue mountain outline

August 2. 

Wachusett from Fair Haven Hill looks like this:



the dotted line being the top of the surrounding forest. There is a whitish line along the base of Wachusett more particularly, as if the reflection of bare cliffs there in the sun. Undoubtedly it is the slight vaporous haze in the atmosphere seen edgewise just above the top of the forest, though it is a clear day. It, this line, makes the mountains loom, in fact, a faint whitish line; separating the mountains from their bases and the rest of the globe.

In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth, and be reminded of the invisible towns and communities, for the most part also unremembered, which lie in the further and deeper hollows between me and those hills. Towns of sturdy uplandish fame, where some of the morning and primal vigor still lingers, I trust. Ashburnham, Rindge, Jaffrey, etc., - it is cheering to think that it is with such communities that we survive or perish, and be reminded how many brave and contented lives are lived between me and the horizon.

Yes, the mountains do thus impart, in the mere prospect of them, some of the New Hampshire vigor. These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1852

In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth. See June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."); June 25, 1852 The mountain outline is remarkably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears . . .like a vast saucer sloping up ward to its sharp mountain rim."); July 27, 1852 ("The whole surface of the earth a succession of these great cups, falling away from dry or rocky edges to gelid green meadows and water in the midst, where night already is setting in!"); March 18, 1858 (" For the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim."); September 27, 1852 ("From our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them." March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.");  October 22, 1857("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? ");March 28, 1858 ("From this hilltop I overlook,. . . this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it.");  March 28, 1858 (" On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see..")