An old pitch pine stump at Tommy Wheeler's hollow.

November 6. 

Sawed off half of an old pitch pine stump at Tommy Wheeler's hollow. I found that, though the surface was entire and apparently sound except one or two small worm-holes, and the sap was evidently decaying, yet within or just under the surface, it was extensively hơneycombed by worms, which did not eat out to the surface. Those rings included in the outmost four or five inches were the most decayed  — including the sap wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1860

An old pitch pine stump. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.

A January Thaw.

December 28

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. A January thaw. 

December 28, 2023

The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond forming; unfathomable water beneath the snow. 

Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here. 

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. 

Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1851

Tommy Wheeler house. See February 22, 1857 ("The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside.")

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them. See November 29, 1850 ("The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. "); December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. A steady but gentle, warm rain."); See also December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist . . . They eclipse the trees they cover.");  May 13, 1852 ("A May storm, yesterday and to-day;. . . The fields are green now, and all the expanding leaves and flower-buds are much more beautiful in the rain, - covered with clear drops.") And A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

 

White pines look greener, 

a drop on every needle

in this gentle rain.

tinyurl.com/hdt511228

By the size of the bricks you cannot tell the age of an old house within fifty years.

February 22

 

Dugan Desert

P. M. — To Dugan Desert. 

The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside. 

Its bricks are about the same size with those of the Lee chimney; they are eight and three quarters to nine inches long by four and a half, but not in clay. 

A part at least of the back side has bricks on their edges in clay, as at the Hunt house, and there are bricks in clay flat on the plate, close under roof at the eaves. 

I think that by the size of the bricks you cannot tell the age of an old house within fifty years.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1857

The Tommy Wheeler house. See December 28, 1851 ("Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here.")

Its bricks are about the same size with those of the Lee chimney . . . See February 17, 1857 ("The bricks of the old [Lee]chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick. ")

How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early!

April 28. 

Surveying the Tommy Wheeler farm.

April 28, 2017

Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye. 

The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal. 

Mr. Newton, with whom I rode, thought that there was a peculiar kind of sugar maple which he called the white; knew of a few in the middle of Framingham and said that there was one on our Common. 

How promising a simple, unpretending, quiet, some what reserved man, whether among generals or scholars or farmers! How rare an equanimity and serenity which are an encouragement to all observers! Some youthfulness, some manliness, some goodness. Like Tarbell, a man apparently made a deacon on account of some goodness, and not on account of some hypocrisy and badness as usual. 

Is not the Hubbard Ditch plant the same I see in a Nut Meadow pool, and a remarkable evergreen? with much slime and many young snails on it? 

I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that, from J. P. Brown’s wood bounding on Dugan. It is not a note, nor a bird, to attract attention; only suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further. 

See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge.  

Many Anemone nemorosa in full bloom at the further end of Yellow Thistle Meadow, in that warm nook by the brook, some probably a day or two there. I think that they are thus early on account of Miles’s dam having broken away and washed off all the snow for some distance there, in the latter part of the winter, long before it melted elsewhere. - It is a warm corner under the south side of a wooded hill, where they are not often, if ever before, flooded. 

As I was measuring along the Marlborough road, a fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early! Sardanapalus-like, she loves extremes and contrasts.

I began to survey the meadow there early, before Miles’s new mill had been running long this Monday morning and flooded it, but a great stream of water was already rushing down the brook, and it almost rose over our boots in the meadow before we had done. 

Observing the young pitch pines by the road south of Loring’s lot that was so heavily wooded, George Hubbard remarked that if they were cut down oaks would spring up, and sure enough, looking across the road to where Loring’s white pines recently stood so densely, the ground was all covered with young oaks. 

Mem. — Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods which I remember, and see what has sprung up; e. g. pitch pines on Thrush Alley and the white pines on Cliffs, also at Baker’s chestnuts, and the chestnut lot on the Tim. Brooks farm. 

This was a very pleasant or rather warm day, looking a little rainy, but on our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze. 

This has been'a remarkably pleasant, and I think warm, spring. We have not had the usual sprinklings of snow, having had so much in the winter, — none since I can remember. There is none to come down out of the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1856

Pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, —seeing with the side of the eye. See April 28, 1858 ("While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound . . ., I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road,"); See also, e.g. September 13, 1852 ("Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 (" It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 ("It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came . . .to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.")

A fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. See April 24, 1855 ("That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths."); See April 30, 1859 ("That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun."); See also March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me."); March 10, 1855; ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. . . . But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Blue Butterfly in Spring

A bird suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further.  See  April 27, 1854  ("I hear the black and white creeper's note, — seeser seeser seeser se.  . . . Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's note"); April 27, 1855 ("The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes.");  See also August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.”); September 17, 1857 (“How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone.!”); March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge. See April 26, 1854  ("Hear the first chewink hopping and chewinking among the shrub oaks."); April 26, 1855 ("See and hear chewinks, — all their strains; the same date with last year, by accident"): April 26, 1858 (" See a chewink (male) in the Kettell place woods."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink  (Rufous-sided Towhee)

Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods. . .and see what has sprung up. . . . See October 27, 1860 ("I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks. They prevail and are countless under the pines, while they are hard to find under the oaks.")

I hear first to-day

the seezer seezer of the

black and white creeper.

A blue atmosphere

February 11.

Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.

P. M. To J. Dugan’s via Tommy Wheeler’s. 

The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods. 

February 11, 2023

The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1855

The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods. See January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); February 2, 1854; ("The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue."); February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.").

The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees . . .See February 11, 1856  ("See a partridge by the riverside, opposite Fair Haven Hill, which at first I mistake for the top of a fence-post above the snow, “); February 11, 1859 ("The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed");  February 18, 1852 (“I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard.”); April 22. 1852 ("Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  February 11

Minus ten degrees.

A blue atmosphere tinges

the distant pine woods.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A blue atmosphere 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550211

Little flocks of chip-birds

September 16.

Sophia and mother returned from Wachusett. S. saw much bayberry in Princeton. 

September 16, 2016

P. M. —To Fringed Gentian Meadow over Assabet and to Dugan Desert. 

I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now? 

There have been a few slight frosts in some places. The clematis is feathered. One Asclepias Cornuti begun to discount. I see many hardhacks in the lichen pasture by Tommy Wheeler’s which are leafing out again conspicuously. 

I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise. 

I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest. As the eggs were laid the 7th of June, it makes about three months before they came out of the ground. The nest is full of sand and egg shells. I see no tracks of the old one. I take out the remaining one, and it begins slowly to crawl toward the brook about five rods distant.  It is so slow that I can not stop to watch it, and so carry it to within seven or eight inches of the water, turning its head inland. At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1854

One Asclepias Cornuti begun to discount. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by . . . notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood.") ; September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting."); October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting."); November 20, 1858 ("he common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting") See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.

I see little flocks of chip-birds. See September 1, 1854 ("Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden."); October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns, and they are divided by a light line") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow 

 I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now? See September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta . . . to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle.")October 21, 1857 ("I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

The eggs were laid the 7th. See June 7, 1854 ("A snapping turtle . . . had just been excavating.”) \

At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water. See September 11, 1854 (“At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water”)  See August 26, 1854 (“Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. Its eyes are open. It puts out its head, stretches forth its claws, and liberates its tail. With its great head it has already the ugliness of the full-grown, and is already a hieroglyphic of snappishness. . . . I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles.”)

September 16.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 16

Flocks of chip-birds rise

along the roadside showing

their light undersides.

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Little flocks of chip-birds 

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-540916

To Tommy Wheeler's lot.

November 4.

As I go over John Hosmer's High Level, there being considerable wind, I notice for the first time that peculiar blueness of the river agitated by the wind and contrasting with the tawny fields, a fall phenomenon.

White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1860

White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. See November 4, 1853 ("The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white . . .”)

To Tommy Wheeler wood-lot.

November 1. 

A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. and probably warmer at two.

The butterflies are out again, - probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa, and yellow-winged grasshoppers with blackish edges.

A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves.

Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.

Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land, about that now frosty hollow, cut as I judge from sprouts four years ago.  No. 6, having 164 rings and having been cut four years, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1860 

A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. See November 1, 2015 ("A beautiful Indian-summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind. ")

Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. See November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. . . .Why should this day be so distinguished?"); See also November 7, 1855 ("Looking west over Wheeler’s meadow, I see that there has been much gossamer on the grass, and it is now revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”) and note to November 3, 1857 ("Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig,")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land cut four years ago. SeeJuly 8, 1857 (“Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings.”); See also October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.”)