Naming Yellow Birch Swamp.

January 4.  To what I will call Yellow Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard's, in north part of town.

January 4, 2019

Still ice is left on the trees, but to-day is a windy and blustering day.

The quantity of ice on the birches being reduced, they are still more wand- or faery like.

Tall ones, with no limbs for half their height, are grace fully bent over, and are now swaying from side to side in the wind, exactly like waving ostrich-plumes, as delicate as the spray on frosted windows.

The color of these ice-clad trees at a distance is not white, but rather slightly grayish or hoary, which the better merges them in the landscape.

This is the fourth day of the ice.

The landscape is white, not only from the ice on the ground and trees, but from the snow which fell yesterday, though it is not an inch deep.

In respect to snow, the winter appears to be just beginning.

I must call that swamp of E. Hubbard's west of the Hunt Pasture, Yellow Birch Swamp.  There are more of those trees than anywhere else in town that I know.

How pleasing to stand beside a new or rare tree! And few are so handsome as this. Singularly allied to the black birch in its sweet checkerberry scent and its form, and to the canoe birch in its peeling or fringed and tasselled bark. The top is brush-like as the black birch; the bark an exquisite fine or delicate gold-color, curled off partly from the trunk, with vertical clear or smooth spaces, as if a plane had been passed up the tree.

The sight of these trees affects me more than California gold.

I measured one five feet and two inches in circumference at six feet from the ground.

We have the silver and the golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil, and braces itself!

And here flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook over the iron-red sands in the sombre swamp, -- swampy wine.

In an undress, this tree.

Ah, time will come when these will be all gone. Among the primitive trees. What sort of dryads haunt these? Blond nymphs.

Near by, the great pasture oaks with horizontal boughs.

At Pratt's, the stupendous, boughy, branching elm, like vast thunderbolts stereotyped upon the sky; heaven-defying, sending back dark vegetable bolts, as if flowing back in the channel of the lightning.

The white oaks have a few leaves about the crown of the trunk in the lowest part of the tree, like a tree within a tree. The tree is thus less racked by the wind and ice.

In the twilight I went through the swamp, and yellow birches sent forth a dull-yellow gleam which each time made my heart beat faster.

Occasionally you come to a dead and leaning white birch, beset with large fungi like ears or little shelves, with a rounded edge above.

I walked with the yellow birch.

The prinos is green within.

If there were Druids whose temples were the oak groves, my temple is the swamp.

Sometimes I was in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned smooth and dark, till I came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was off.

The animals do not use fire; man does. At first there was a pile of cold fat pine roots on the icy rock. A match was rubbed, fire elicited, and now this fire is the most emphatic and significant fact hereabouts. Fire slumbers never far off, and the friction of a match can awaken it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1853

Yellow Birch Swamp. Also known as "Fever-bush Swamp", “Rattlesnake Fern Swamp”. and "Botrychium Swamp". See   May 5, 1859 ("Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Botrychium, Swamp.").See also June 10, 1853 ("What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?. . . It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? . . .Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country?") and   July 13, 1857, September 16, 1857, and Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts ( "Rattlesnake Fern")

as delicate as the spray on frosted windows. See December 28, 1859 ("In the morning the windows are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out."); January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light ")'; February 5, 1855 ("It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed.")

I measured one five feet and two inches in circumference at six feet from the ground. See May 18, 1857 (“There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp.”); September 2, 1857 ("The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was. . . ten feet nine inches in circumference.")

Sometimes I was in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned smooth and dark, till I came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was off. See February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. "); January 26, 1858 ("The yellow birch . . .might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. ") See also April 25, 1857 ("Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs!")

Yellow birches in bloom.

May 5. 

Thursday. P.M. — To Melvin's Preserve.

             May 5, 2018                                                               May 5, 2019

 

Red-wings fly in flocks yet. 

Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, a yellow butterfly, — how hot! this meteor dancing through the air. 

Also see a scalloped-edge dark- colored butterfly resting on the trunk of a tree, where, both by its form and color, its wings being closed, it resembles a bit of bark, or rather a lichen. Evidently their forms and colors, especially of the under sides of their wings, are designed to conceal them when at rest with their wings closed. 

Am surprised to find the Viola Muhlenbergii quite abundant beyond the bayberry and near the wall. According to my observation this year, it now stands thus with the violets : the V. ovata is the commonest, but not abundant in one spot; the V. Muhlenbergii is most abundant in particular spots, coloring the hummocks with its small pale flowers; the V. blanda and cucullata are, equally, less abundant than the former, or rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen. 

I noticed lately where middle-sized ants, half black and half sorrel, had completely removed the pine-needles from the crown of their large hills, leaving them bare like a mountain-top. 

Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Borychium, Swamp. It is perhaps the handsomest tree or shrub yet in bloom (apparently opened yesterday), of similar character to the alders and poplars, but larger and of higher color. You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. These are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind, — a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf. 

Yet they are dense enough to reveal the outline of the tree, seen against the bare twigs of itself and other trees. The tassels of this one in bloom are elongated to two or three times the length of those of another not in bloom by its side. These dancing tassels have the effect of the leaves of the tremble. Those not quite open have a rich, dark, speckled or braided look, almost equally handsome. Golden tassels all trembling in the gentlest breeze, the only signs of life on the trees. A careless observer might not notice them at all. 

The reawakened springy life of the swamp, the product of its golden veins. These graceful pendants, not in too heavy or dense masses, but thinly dispersed with a noble moderation. Great vegetable chandeliers they stand in the swamps. The unopened catkins, some more golden, others brown or coppery, are like living worms ready to assume a winged life. These trees, which cannot stir their stumps, thus annually assume this lively color and motion. 

I see and am bitten by little black flies, — I should say the same with those of Maine, — here on the Melvin Preserve. One eighth of an inch long. 

Brakes are five inches high. 

Poa annua (small and flat spreading in Pratt's garden), say a week. 

May 5, 2023

The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day. 

The wilderness, in the eyes of our forefathers, was a vast and howling place or space, where a man might roam naked of house and most other defense, exposed to wild beasts and wilder men. They who went to war with the Indians and French were said to have been "out," and the wounded and missing who at length returned after a fight were said to have "got in," to Berwick or Saco, as the case might be. 

Veronica peregrina, Pratt's garden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1859

Near the oak beyond Jarvis land, 

a yellow butterfly, — 

how hot! this meteor 

dancing through the air. 

See May 5, 1860 ("Yellow butterflies."). and Buson:

     Butterfly

sleeping

                 on the temple bell.

See also  May 22, 1856 (“A yellow butterfly over the middle of the flooded meadow.”); May 25, 1852 (“Yellow butterflies one at a time. The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out.”); September 19, 1859 ("One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

Am surprised to find the Viola Muhlenbergii quite abundant beyond the bayberry and near the wall. See May 12, 1858 ("Find the Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out (how long?), in the meadow southwest of Farmer's Spring.”); May 18, 1857 (“Viola Muhlenbergii abundantly out, how long?”); May 22, 1856 (“Viola Muhlenbergii, which is abundantly out; how long? A small pale-blue flower growing in dense bunches, but in spots a little drier than the V. cucullata and blanda”); May 29, 1856 ("What a flowery place, a vale of Enna, is that [Painted Cup] meadow! Painted Cup, Erigeron bellidifolius, Thalictrum dioicum, Viola Muhlenbergii, fringed polygala, buck-bean, pedicularis, orobanche, etc., etc. Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones”)

The yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Borychium, Swamp. See May 17, 1857 ("The yellow birch catkins, now fully out or a little past prime, are very handsome now, numerous clusters of rich golden catkins hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. It is like some great chandelier hung high over the underwood.”)

The sun sets red (first time), followed by a very hot and hazy day. See May 5, 1860 ("Sun goes down red."); May 4, 1860 (“The sun sets red, shorn of its beams.”); August 25, 1854 ("The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.”)

Veronica peregrina, Pratt's garden. See May 5, 1860 ("Veronica serpyllifolia, say yesterday.."). See also See May 22, 1856 ("Veronica peregrina, apparently several days.”);May 25, 1855 ("Veronica peregrina in Mackay’s strawberries, how long? “)

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, express more life than most trees

March 6. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Yellow Birch Swamp. 

We go through the swamp near Bee-Tree, or Oak, Ridge, listening for blackbirds or robins and, in the old orchards, for bluebirds. 

Found between two of the little birches in the path (where they grow densely), in Indigo-bird Sprout-land, a small nest suspended between one and two feet above the ground, between two of the little birches. This is where I have seen the indigo-bird in summer, and the nest apparently answers to Wilson's account of that bird's, being fastened with saliva to the birch on each side. 

Wilson says it is "built in a low bush . . . suspended between two twigs, one passing up each side." This is about the diameter of a hair-bird's nest within, composed chiefly of fine bark-shreds looking like grass and one or two strips of grape-vine bark, and very securely fastened to the birch on each side by a whitish silk or cobweb and saliva. It is thin, the lining being prob ably gone. 

There is a very picturesque large black oak on the  the Bee-Tree Ridge, of this form: 

The genista is not evergreen, having turned brown, though it is still quite leafy. I could not find a single green shoot. It is correctly represented in Loudon's "Arboretum," in '44, as "a deciduous under-shrub." Yet in his "Encyclopaedia," in '55, it is represented as "an evergreen shrub." 

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, — for it branches soon, — was two feet three inches in circumference.

Cut off a barberry on which I counted some twenty-six rings, the broadest diameter being about three and a half inches. Both these were on the west side the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, are very pretty. Like the alders, with their reddish catkins, they express more life than most trees. Most trees look completely at rest, if not dead, now, but these look as if the sap must be already flowing in them, — and in winter as well. 

In woodland roads you see where the trees which were bent down by ice, and obstructed the way, were cut off the past winter; their tops lie on one side.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1859

Yellow Birch Swamp.  This is also known as Fever-bush Swamp, Rattlesnake Fern Swamp and Botrychium Swamp,   See note to July 13, 1857 ("Rattlesnake Fern Swamp'); February 18, 1854 ("Yellow Birch Swamp"); July 10, 1857 ("He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom, about the bass in Fever-bush Swamp.”); September 2, 1857 ("In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood "); September 16, 1857 ("Botrychium Swamp"); .May 4, 1859 ("Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Botrychium, Swamp.");.

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the groundwas two feet three inches in circumference. See September 2, 1857 ("Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference.")

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides. See May 8, 1853 ("The catkins of the black birch gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance.") 

The alders, with their reddish catkins. See March 6, 1853 ("the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen;")

See also: A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:

• Listening for the bluebird
• Catkins expanding

A warm and bright October afternoon.

October  5

October 5, 2024

[Begins now ten days of perfect Indian summer without rain; 

and the eleventh and twelfth days equally warm, though rainy.] 

October 5, 2019

P. M. – To Yellow Birch Swamp. 

I go by the river and Hunt's Bridge. A warm and bright October afternoon. 

One man is making a gutter, to be prepared for rains, in his piece recently laid down in Merrick's pasture, where the grass is just springing up. 

I see many haws still green and hard, though their leaves are mostly fallen. Do they ever turn red and edible? Their leaves are a very dull reddish cast. 

The surface of the river sparkles in this air here and there. 

I see in most orchards the apples in heaps under the trees, and ladders slanted against their twiggy masses. 

The earth shines now as much as, or more than, ever in spring, especially the bare and somewhat faded fields, pastures, stubble, etc. The light is reflected as from a ripe surface, no longer absorbed to secure maturity. 

I go north by Jarvis's lane from the old pump-maker's house. 

There is not that profusion and consequent confusion of events which belongs to a summer's walk. There are few flowers, birds, insects, or fruits now, and hence what does occur affects us as more simple and significant. The cawing of a crow, the scream of a jay. 

The latter seems to scream more fitly and with more freedom now that some fallen maple leaves have made way for his voice. The jay's voice resounds through the vacancies occasioned by fallen maple leaves.

The mulberry [or ash] was perhaps the first tree that was conspicuously turned after the maples. Many maples are still quite green; so that their gala-day will be prolonged. 

I see some hickories now a crisped mass of imbrowned yellow, green in the recesses, sere brown on the prominences, though the eye does not commonly thus discriminate. 

The smooth sumach is very important for its mass of clear red or crimson. Some of it is now a very dark crimson. 

In the old Carlisle road I see a great many pitch pine twigs or plumes, cast down, evidently, by squirrels, — but for what? 

Many are now gathering barberries. 

Am surprised to see a large sassafras tree, with its rounded umbrella-like top, without limbs beneath, on the west edge of the Yellow Birch Swamp, or east of Boulder Field. It is some sixteen inches in diameter. There are seven or eight within two rods. Leaves curled, but not changed. 

See a red squirrel cast down a chestnut bur. 

The pigeon woodpecker utters his whimsical ah-week ah-week, etc., as in spring. 

The yellow birch is somewhat yellowed. 

See a cherry-bird. 

Many robins feeding on poke berries on Eb Hubbard's hill. 

There is a great abundance of poke there. That lowest down the hill, killed by frost, drooping and withered, no longer purple-stemmed, but faded; higher up it is still purple. 

I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel. I see him running by fits and starts along a chestnut bough toward me. His head looks disproportionately large for his body, like a bulldog's, perhaps because he has his chaps full of nuts. He chirrups and vibrates his tail, holds himself in, and scratches along a foot as if it were a mile. He finds noise and activity for both of us. It is evident that all this ado does not proceed from fear. There is at the bottom, no doubt, an excess of inquisitiveness and caution, but the greater part is make-believe and a love of the marvellous. He can hardly keep it up till I am gone, however, but takes out his nut and tastes it in the midst of his agitation. “See there, see there,” says he, “who's that? O dear, what shall I do?” and makes believe run off, but doesn’t get along an inch, – lets it all pass off by flashes through his tail, while he clings to the bark as if he were holding in a race-horse. He gets down the trunk at last on to a projecting knot, head downward, within a rod of you, and chirrups and chatters louder than ever. Tries to work himself into a fright. The hind part of his body is urging the forward part along, snapping the tail over it like a whip-lash, but the fore part, for the most part, clings fast to the bark with desperate energy. 

Squirr, “to throw with a jerk,” seems to have quite as much to do with the name as the Greek skia oura, shadow and tail. 

The lower limbs of trees often incline downwards as if from sympathy with the roots; the upper tend upwards with the leading stem. 

I found on the 4th, at Conantum, a half-bushel of barberries on one clump about four feet in diameter at base, falling over in wreaths on every side. I filled my basket, standing behind it without being seen by other pickers only a dozen rods off. Some great clumps on Melvin's preserve, no doubt, have many more on them. 

I hear nowadays again the small woodpecker's sharp, shrill note from high on the trees. . . . 

It is evident that some phenomena which belong only to spring and autumn here, lasted through the summer in that latitude, as the peeping of hylodes and blossoming of some flowers that long since withered here were there still freshly in bloom, in that fresher and cooler atmosphere, — the calla for instance. To say nothing of the myrtle-bird and F. hyemalis which breed there, but only transiently visit us in spring and fall. Just as a river which here freezes only a certain distance from the shore, follow it further north, is found to be completely bridged over. The toads, too, as I have said, rang at this season. What is summer where Indian corn will not ripen?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 5, 1857

There are few flowers, birds, insects, or fruits now, and hence what does occur affects us as more simple and significant. See October 5, 1851("The nights now are very still, for there is hardly any noise of birds or of insects")

Many are now gathering barberries. See September 16. 1857 ("Barberries very handsome now. See boys gathering them in good season."); September 18, 1856 ("I get a full peck from about three bushes.”); September 19, 1856 (“Gather just half a bushel of barberries on hill in less than two hours, or three pecks to-day and yesterday in less than three hours. It is singular that I have so few, if any, competitors.”); September 24, 1859 ("A great many have improved this first fair day to come a-barberrying to the Easterbrooks fields."); September 25, 1855 (We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes”); September 28, 1859 ("Children are now gathering barberries, — just the right time"); September 29, 1854 ("Now is the time to gather barberries"); October 1, 1853 (" Got three pecks of barberries.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Common Barberry

I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel. See September 28, 1851 ("I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays"); December 1, 1857 ("I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree."); March 30, 1859 ("Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit; not that he is excited by fear, I think, but so full is he of animal spirits that he makes a great ado about the least event. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

The jay seems to scream more fitly and with more freedom now that some fallen maple leaves have made way for his voice. Compare  October 11, 1859 ("The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance."). See September 21, 1854 ("I hear many jays since the frosts began.”); September 21, 1859 ("Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent"): October 6, 1856 ("The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods, when so many birds have left us.”); October 11, 1856 (“In the woods I hear the note of the jay, a metallic, clanging sound, some times a mew. Refer any strange note to him.”);  October 20, 1856  ("Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter. . .we hear the jay again more frequently,"); November 3, 1858 ("The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves,. . .It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

There are few flowers

birds, insects or fruits now, and 

hence what does occur –

affects us as more simple 

and significant. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A warm and bright October afternoon. 

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-571005 

Great pines two or more feet in diameter.

September 16.

A. M. – To Great Yellow Birch, with the Watsons. 

Solidago latifolia in prime at Botrychium Swamp.

Barberries very handsome now. See boys gathering them in good season. 

Some fever-bush berries already ripe. 

Watson has brought me apparently Artemisia vulgaris, growing naturally close to Austin's house in Lincoln; hardly in bloom. 

Walked through that beautiful soft white pine grove on the west of the road in John Flint’s pasture. These trees are large, but there is ample space between them, so that the ground is left grassy. Great pines two or more feet in diameter branch sometimes within two feet of the ground on each side, sending out large horizontal branches on which you can sit. Like great harps on which the wind makes music. There is no finer tree. 

The different stages of its soft glaucous foliage completely concealing the trunk and branches are separated by dark horizontal lines of shadow, the flakes of pine foliage, like a pile of light fleeces. 

I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. 

In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped. They begin at the base of the cone, as with the pitch pine. It is evident that they have just been very busy throwing down the white pine cones in all woods. Perhaps they have stored up the seeds separately. This they can do before chestnut burs open. 

Watson gave me three glow-worms which he found by the roadside in Lincoln last night. They exhibit a greenish light, only under the caudal extremity, and intermittingly, or at will. As often as I touch one in a dark morning, it stretches and shows its light for a moment, only under the last segment. 

An average one is five eighths of an inch long, exclusive of the head, when still; four fifths of an inch, or more, with the head, when moving; one fourth of an inch wide, broadest forward; and from one tenth to one eighth inch deep, nearly (at middle). They have six brown legs within about one fourth of an inch of the forward extremity. 

This worm is apparently composed of twelve scale-like segments, including the narrow terminal one or tail, and not including the head, which at will is drawn under the foremost scale or segment like a turtle's. (I do not remember if the other species concealed its head thus, completely.) Looking down on it, I do not see distinctly more than two antennae, one on each side, whitish at base, dark-brown at tip, and apparently about the same length with the longest of the other species. 

The general color above is black, or say a very dark brown or blackish; the head the same. On each side two faint rows of light-colored dots. The first segment is broadly conical, and much the largest; the others very narrow in proportion to their breadth transversely, and successively narrower, slightly recurved at tip and bristle-pointed and also curved upward at the thin outer edge, while the rounded dorsal ridge is slightly elevated above this. Beneath, dirty white with two rows of black spots on each side.

They always get under the sod by day and bury themselves. They are not often much curled up, never in a ring, nor nearly so much as the other kind. They are much more restless when disturbed, both by day and night, than the others. They are a much coarser insect than the other and approach more nearly to the form of a sow-bug. I kept them more than a week. 

Vide back, August 8th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1857

Solidago latifolia in prime at Botrychium Swamp. See September 1, 1856 (“Solidago latifolia not out quite.”); October 8, 1856 (“ S. latifolia, far gone.”)

Barberries very handsome now. See boys gathering them . . . See note to September 19, 1856 (“Gather just half a bushel of barberries on hill in less than two hours, or three pecks to-day and yesterday in less than three hours. It is singular that I have so few, if any, competitors.”)

Fever-bush berries already ripe. See September 2, 1857 (“In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood”); August 21, 1854 ("The fever-bush berries are partly turned red, perhaps prematurely.”)

On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. See note to September 9, 1857 (“To the Hill for white pine cones.”)

Watson gave me three glow-worms . . . See August 8, 1857 (“B. M. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms,”)

Three large yellow birch, measured.

September 2. 

Wednesday. P. M. – To Yellow Birches. 

September 2, 2017

Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference. The first branch is at two feet seven inches. The tree spreads about eighteen feet. The height is about seventeen feet.

A yellow birch some rods north was, at three feet from ground, four feet plus in circumference. A second, northeast of it, was, at four feet, five feet five inches in circumference. It branched at eight feet, the branches extending north two and a third rods, but south only one and a half. Was some fifty or sixty feet high. 

The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was, at three feet from the ground on the inside or at the ground on the outside, just below the branches, ten feet nine inches in circumference. It divides to three branches at ground on the upper side, and these almost immediately to three more, so low and horizontal that you can easily step into it. It extends two rods east and one west, the ends of the branches coming down to height of head all round, nearly. It is about two thirds as high as wide, or thirty-three feet high. Looking from the west, of an irregular diamond shape resting on the ground. The roots inclose some cellar stones. 

All these birches were measured at the smallest place between the ground and branches. Large yellow birches branch low and form a dense broom-like head of many long tapering branches. 

In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood, I see a Rhus radicans running up a buttonwood which is some forty feet high. It first makes a complete circle about it horizontally at the ground, then goes winding up it in a serpentine manner on the southwest (?) side, thirty feet at least, or as far as I could see, beginning to put out a few twigs at seven or eight feet. It is a vine one and a half and two inches wide, somewhat flattened, clinging close and flat to the tree by innumerable brown fibres which invest itself and adhere to the bark on each side in a thick web. You can hardly tell if it is alive or dead without looking upward. 

Remembering that it was poisonous to some to handle, it had altogether a venomous look. It made me think of a venomous beast of prey which had sprung upon the tree and had it in its clutches, as the glutton is said to cling to the deer while it sucks its blood. It had fastened on it, as a leopard or panther on a deer and there was no escape. It was not married to the buttonwood, as the vine to the poplar. I saw a still larger one the other day in Natick on an elm. 

Some bass trees blossomed sparingly after all, for I see some fruit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1857

The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar, was. . . ten feet nine inches in circumference. See May 18, 1857 (“There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp.”)

In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood . . .See July 10, 1857 ("He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom, about the bass in Fever-bush Swamp.”)

Some bass trees blossomed sparingly after all, for I see some fruit. See July 9, 1857 (“ I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum. ”); June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”)  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

September 2, 2017

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist.

July 13. 

Very hot weather. 

P. M. — To Rattlesnake Fern Swamp. 

I hear before I start the distant mutterings of thunder in the northwest, though I see no cloud. The haymakers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a little than not have the rain. 

I keep on, regardless of the prospect. 

See the indigo-bird still, chirping anxiously on the bushes in that sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry. 

Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries pretty thick there, and one lass is picking them with a dipper tied to her girdle. The first thought is, What a good school this lass goes to! 

Rattlesnake fern just done. 

I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist. 

The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it. There is forever that purchase to be made with that wealth which you possess, yet only once in a long while are you advertised of such a commodity. 

I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach to realization of it, thoughts which I know of no one to communicate to. 

I suddenly erect myself in my thoughts, or find myself erected, infinite degrees above the possibility of ordinary endeavors, and see for what grand stakes the game of life may be played. 

Men, with their indiscriminate attentions and ceremonious good-will, offer you trivial baits, which do not tempt; they are not serious enough either for success or failure. 

I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night. 

I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace. I rise into a diviner atmosphere, in which simply to exist and breathe is a triumph, and my thoughts inevitably tend toward the grand and infinite, as aeronauts report that there is ever an upper current hereabouts which sets toward the ocean. If they rise high enough they go out to sea, and be hold the vessels seemingly in mid-air like themselves. It is as if I were serenaded, and the highest and truest compliments were paid me. 

The universe gives me three cheers. 

Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it. 

This experience makes us unavailable for the ordinary courtesy and intercourse of men. We can only recognize them when they rise to that level and realize our dream.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1857

Rattlesnake fern swamp. This is Fever-bush Swamp, which HDT today names “Rattlesnake Fern Swamp”. On September 16, 1857 HDT begins to refer to it as Botrychium Swamp. It is the same as his Yellow Birch Swamp See May 5, 1859 and  Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts ( "Rattlesnake Fern")

The grass by the roadside is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhabitants, marks the season. See July 13, 1860 ("For a week past. . the season has had a more advanced look, from the reddening, imbrowning, or yellowing, and ripening of many grasses")

Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark . . .See July 7, 1851 (". . .the heavy shadows of the elms covering the ground with their rich tracery . . . like chandeliers of darkness.")

I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities. . . See June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me.")

July 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 13.

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 © 2009-2021

I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now.

May 13

P. M. — Down river and to Yellow Birch Swamp. 

Yesterday was the first warm day for a week or two, and to-day it is much warmer still and hazy — as much like summer as it can be without the trees being generally leafed. 

I saw a Fringilla hyemalis this morning and heard the golden robin, now that the elms are beginning to leaf, also the myrtle-bird’s tealee. 

The earliest gooseberry in garden has opened.

As we float down the river through the still and hazy air, enjoying the June-like warmth, see the first king birds on the bare black willows with their broad white breasts and white-tipped tails; and the sound of the first bobolink floats to us from over the meadows; now that the meadows are lit by the tender yellow green of the willows and the silvery-green fruit of the elms. 

I hear from a female red-wing that peculiar rich screwing warble —- not o gurgle ee — made with r, not with l. The whole air too is filled with the ring of toads louder than heretofore. 

Some men are already fishing, indistinctly seen through the haze. 

Under the hop-horn beam below the monument, observe a large pellet, apparently dropped by some bird of prey, consisting of mouse-hair, with an oat or two in it undigested, which probably the mouse had swallowed. This reminds me that I had read this kind of birds digested the flesh of the animals they swallowed, but not the vegetable food in the stomachs of the latter. 

The air is filled with the song of birds, — warbling vireo, gold robin, yellowbirds, and occasionally the bobolink. The gold robin, just come, is heard in all parts of the village.

Baltimore Oriole

(gold robin)

I see both male and female. 

It is a remarkable difference between this day and yesterday, that yesterday this and the bobolink were not heard and now the former, at least, is so musical and omnipresent.

Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold. 

I saw yesterday some of that common orange rust-like fungus already on a Potentilla simplex leaf. Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher. 

Leave the boat below N. Barrett’s and walk inland. See several handsome red-winged grasshoppers in different parts of our walk; but though we see where they alight, yet several times we can not find them in the grass for all that. 

The bayberry apparently will not open under a week. There are now a great many Viola pedata. 

The brook in Yellow Birch Swamp is very handsome now — broad and full, with the light-green hellebore eighteen inches high and the small two-leaved Solomon’s-seal about it, in the open wood. 

Only a part of the yellow birches are leafing, but not yet generally the large ones. I notice no catkins. One white birch sheds pollen. The white birches on the side of Ponkawtasset are beginning to show faint streaks of yellowish green here and there. 

A cooler and stronger wind from the east by midafternoon. The large bass trees now begin to leaf. 

Now, about two hours before sunset, the brown thrashers are particularly musical. One seems to be contending in song with another. The chewink’s strain sounds quite humble in comparison. 

At 9.30 P.M. I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. I doubt if we shall at any season hear more birds singing than now.

Saw an amelanchier with downy leaf (apparently oblongifolia) on the southeast edge of Yellow Birch Swamp, about eighteen feet high and five or six inches in diameter, —a clump of them about as big as an apple tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1855

Even see boys a-bathing, though they must find it cold. See May 8, 1857 (“Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river.”)

Hear the first catbird, more clear and tinkling than the thrasher. See May 13, 1853 ("At Corner Spring, stood listening to a catbird, sounding a good way off. Was surprised to detect the singer within a rod and a half on a low twig, the ventriloquist. . . .”)

I hear from our gate my night-warbler. Never heard it in the village before. See note to May 12, 1855

 I doubt if we shall 

at any season hear more 

birds singing than now.

To Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 18.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. 

Rabbit-tracks numerous here, some times quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow-covered brook.

What a contrast between the upper and under side of many leaves. Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia: dark pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and delicate bluish white beneath. The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia deserve to be copied on to works of art.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1854

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia. See January 10, 1855 ("Andromeda Polifolia, with its rich leaves turned to a mulberry-color above by the winter, with a bluish bloom and a delicate bluish white, as in summer, beneath, project above the ice, the tallest twigs recurved at top, with the leaves standing up on the upper side like teeth of a rake."); April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”). Also note to May 5, 1855.

I see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with grayish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ.

Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps.

At the old mill - site, saw two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. Saw the yellow under sides of their wings. It is barely possible I am mistaken, but, since Wilson makes them common in Pennsylvania in winter, I feel pretty sure.

Such sights make me think there must be bare ground not far off south.

It is a little affecting to walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer lichens here and there amid the snow, and remember that ere long we shall find violets also in their midst.

What an odds the season makes! The birds know it.

Whether a rose - tinted water lily is sailing amid the pads, or Neighbor Hobson is getting out his ice with a cross - cut saw, while his oxen are eating their stalks.

I noticed that the ice which Garrison cut the other day contained the lily pads and stems within it.

How different their environment now from when the queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface, exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects!

Hubbard's wooded hill is now almost bare of trees.

Barberries still hang on the bushes, but all shrivelled.

I found a bird's nest of grass and mud in a barberry bush filled full with them.

It must have been done by some quadruped or bird.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open.

Rabbit - tracks numerous there, sometimes quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow - covered brook.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The Mitchella repens berries look very bright amid the still fresh green leaves.

In the birch swamp west of this are many red (?) squirrel nests high in the birches. They are composed within of fibres of bark. I see where the squirrels have eaten walnuts along the wall and left the shells on the snow.

Channing has some microscopic reading these days. But he says in effect that these works are purely material. The idealist views things in the large.

I read some of the speeches in Congress about the Nebraska Bill, - a thing the like of which I have not done for a year. What trifling upon a serious subject! while honest men are sawing wood for them outside. Your Congress halls have an ale-house odor, - a place for stale jokes and vulgar wit. It compels me to think of my fellow-creatures as apes and baboons.

What a contrast between the upper and underside of many leaves, — the indurated and colored upper side and the tender, more or less colorless under side, - male and female, even where they are almost equally exposed!

The underside is commonly white, however, as turned away from the light toward the earth.

Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia, the ledum, Kalmia glauca.

De Quincey says that “The ancients had no experimental knowledge of severe climates.”

Neither have the English at home as compared with us of New England, nor we, compared with the Esquimaux.

This is a common form of the birch scale, black, I think, — not white, at any rate.

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia, dark but pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate bluish white beneath, deserve to be copied on to works of art.