We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

October 31. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Our currants bare; how long? 

The Italian poplars are now a dull greenish yellow, not nearly so fair as the few leaves that had turned some time ago. 

Some silvery abeles are the same color.  

I go over the Hubbard Bridge causeway. The young Salix alba osiers are just bare, or nearly so, and the yellow twigs accordingly begin to show. 

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. That warm weather of the 19th and 20th was, methinks, the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. 

I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff. 

Between the absolutely deciduous plants and the evergreens are all degrees, not only those which retain their withered leaves all winter, but those, commonly called evergreen, which, though slow to change, yet acquire at last a ruddy color while they keep their leaves, as the lambkill and water andromeda (?).

Get a good sight on Conantum of a sparrow (such as I have seen in flocks some time), which utters a sharp te te-te quickly repeated as it flies, sitting on a wall three or four rods off. I see that it is rather long and slender, is perhaps dusky-ash above with some black backward; has a pretty long black bill, a white ring about eye, white chin and line under check, a black (or dark) spotted breast and dirty cream-color beneath; legs long and slender and perhaps reddish-brown, two faint light bars on wings; but, what distinguishes it more, it keeps gently jerking or tossing its tail as it sits, and when a flock flies over you see the tails distinctly black beneath. Though I detected no yellow, yet I think from the note that it must be the shore lark (such as I saw March 24th) in their fall plumage. They are a common bird at this season, I think. 

I see a middle-sized red oak side by side with a black one under Lee’s Cliff. The first is still pretty fresh, the latter completely withered. The withered leaves of the first are flat, apparently thin, and a yellowish brown;those of the black are much curled and a very different and dark brown, and look thicker. 

Barberry generally is thickly leaved and only some what yellowish or scarlet, say russet. 

I tasted some of the very small grapes on Blackberry Steep, such as I had a jelly made of. Though shrivelled, and therefore ripe, they are very acid and inedible. 

The slippery elm has a few scattered leaves on it, while the common close by is bare. So I think the former is later to fall. You may well call it bare. 

The cedar at Lee’s Cliff has apparently just fallen, — almost. 

As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.

Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. 

Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. 

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

To my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand, and so are the Lombardy poplars in our streets. The Salix alba, too, looks yellower at a distance now. Their dull-brown and green colors do not report them selves so far, while the yellow crescit eundo, and we see the sun reflected in it. 

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, and if I had been sent to find it, I should have thought it to be, as we say, like looking for a needle in a haymow. All summer, and it chances for so many years, it has been concealed to me; but now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 

Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity. It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. Thus it plays its part in the choir. I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under. The sailor sails, and the soldier marches, under a color which will report his virtue farthest, and the ship’s “private signals” must be such as can be distinguished at the greatest distance. The eye, which distinguishes and appreciates color, is itself the seat of color in the human body. 

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent. 

Of the three (?) mocker-nuts on Conantum top only the southernmost is bare, the rest are thickly leaved yet. 

The Viburnum Lentago is about bare. 

That hour-glass apple shrub near the old Conantum house is full of small yellow fruit. Thus it is with them. By the end of some October, when their leaves have fallen, you see them glowing with an abundance of wild fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds them. Such is their pursuit of knowledge through difficulties. Though they may have taken the hour-glass form, think not that their sands are run out. So is it with the rude, neglected genius from amid the country hills; he suffers many a check at first, browsed on by fate, springing in but a rocky pasture, the nursery of other creatures there, and he grows broad and strong, and scraggy and thorny, hopelessly stunted, you would say, and not like a sleek orchard tree all whose forces are husbanded and the precious early years not lost, and when at first, within this rind and hedge, the man shoots up, you see the thorny scrub of his youth about him, and he walks like an hour-glass, aspiring above, it is true, but held down and impeded by the rubbish of old difficulties overcome, and you seem to see his sands running out. But at length, thanks to his rude culture, he attains to his full stature, and every vestige of the thorny hedge which clung to his youth disappears, and he bears golden crops of Porters or Baldwins, whose fame will spread through all orchards for generations to come, while that thrifty orchard tree which was his competitor will, perchance, have long since ceased to bear its engrafted fruit and decayed.

The beach plum is withering green, say with the apple trees, which are half of them bare. 

Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1858

Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. See October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ");October 25, 1858 ("[I]t is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood.")

It becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. … It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. Compare October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vaporous haze.")

The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.")


Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height. See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it.

October 23

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th.

Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish. Choke-cherries are bare; how long?

Amelanchier bare. 

Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson. 

Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet. 

Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet. 

You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson. (C. says they are handsome, like a mahonia.) 

The meadow-sweet is yellowish and yellow-scarlet. 

In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more. 

Panicled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen. 

Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now. 

Wild holly fallen. 

Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there. 

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling. I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaleaves turned a light red or scarlet. 

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous.

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that, when they had ditched about six feet deep, or to the bottom, near the edge of this swamp, they came to old flags, and he thought that the whole swamp was once a pond and the flags grew by the edge of it. Thought the mud was twenty feet deep near the pool, and that he had found three growths of spruce, one above another, there. He had dug up a hard-pan with iron in it (as he thought) under a part of this swamp, and in what he cast out sorrel came up and grew, very rankly indeed.

I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. 

I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a handsome clear yellow, — and some (the R. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red. This is the rule with it. 

Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen. 

Beach plum is still green with some dull red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen. 

Butternuts are bare. 

Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1858

Geese go over Wayland the 17th. See October 24, 1858 ("A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.” This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. . . .This weather warns of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way.")");    October 27, 1857 ("I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm"); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. "); November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. ");November 18, 1854 (" Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.");   November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least"); December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day."); December 6, 1855 ("10 P. M. — Hear geese going over.")

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous. I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glauca. See February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc.")

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. See February 12, 1858 ("About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. . . , which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. ")

A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it. See November 8, 1857 ("I have no doubt that a good farmer, who, of course, loves his work, takes exactly the same kind of pleasure in draining a swamp, seeing the water flow out in his newly cut ditch, that a child does in its mud dikes and water-wheels. Both alike love to play with the natural forces.")

Our first fall rain makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.

September 20. 

Sunday. Another mizzling day. 

P. M. — To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s. 

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. 

This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. 

Yet there has been no drought the past summer. Vegetation is unusually fresh. Methinks the grass in some shorn meadows is even greener than in the spring. You are soon wet through by the underwood if you enter the woods, — ferns, aralia, huckleberries, etc. 

Went through the lower side of the wood west of Peter’s. 

The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis, which spread out flat and of uniform height some eighteen (?) inches above the forest floor, are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing. 

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. 

The branches of the alternate cornel are spreading and flat, somewhat cyme-like, as its fruit. 

Beach plums are now perfectly ripe and unexpectedly good, as good as an average cultivated plum. I get a handful, dark purple with a bloom, as big as a good-sized grape and but little more oblong, about three quarters of an inch broad and a very little longer. 

I got a handkerchief full of elder-berries, though I am rather late about it, for the birds appear to have greatly thinned the cymes. 

A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there. 

A pitch pine and birch wood is rapidly springing up between the Beck Stow Wood and the soft white pine grove. It is now just high and thick enough to be noticed as a young wood-lot, if not mowed down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1857

First fall rain. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night");   September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon."); September 25, 1860 ("Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon.")

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. See December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")  See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified. ")

September 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. September 20

Our first fall rain makes 

a dividing line between 

the summer and fall. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Our first fall rain

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-570920

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow.

September 10.

Thursday. P. M. — To Cardinal Ditch and Peter’s.

Cardinal-flower, nearly done. 

Beach plum, almost ripe. 

Squash vines on the Great Fields, generally killed and blackened by frost (though not so much in our garden), revealing the yellow fruit, perhaps prematurely. 

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow. 

I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time. Saw it out on the 20th; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1857

Cardinal Ditch / Cardinal-flower, nearly done. See August 27, 1856 (“The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now”). Also September 14, 1856 (“The flowering of the ditches. ”)

Standing by Peter's well, the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off . . . See March 31, 1856 ("To Peter’s -- I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year.”); August 15, 1858 ("The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising")' September 8, 1858 ("I perceive the dark-crimson leaves, quite crisp, of the white maple on the meadows, recently fallen.")  Compare April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); May 1, 1855 ("The maples of Potter’s Swamp, seen now nearly half a mile off against the russet or reddish hillside, are a very dull scarlet, like Spanish brown.”)

A rosaceous tinge

by the bank of the river –

maples a mile off.

Botanizing the East Branch

July 31. 

Friday. 

This morning heard from the camp the red-eye, robin (P. said it was a sign of rain), tweezer-bird, i. e. parti-colored warbler, chickadee, wood thrush, and soon after starting heard or saw a blue jay. . . . 

I saw here my sweet-scented Aster macrophyllus (?) just out, also, near end of carry in rocky woods, a new plant, the halenia or spurred gentian, which I observed afterward on the carries all the way down to near the mouth of the East Branch, eight inches to two feet high. 

I also saw here, or soon after, the red cohosh berries, ripe, (for the first time in my life); spikenard, etc. 

The commonest aster of the woods was A. acuminatus, not long out, and the commonest solidago on the East Branch, Solidago squarrosa. . . .

P. said that his mother was a Province woman and as white as anybody, but his father a pure-blooded Indian. I saw no trace of white blood in his face, and others, who knew him well and also his father, were confident that his mother was an Indian and suggested that she was of the Quoddy tribe (belonged to New Brunswick), who are often quite light-colored. . . . 

[Below Bowlin stream] I got  one (apparently) Lilium superbum flower, with strongly revolute sepals and perfectly smooth leaves beneath, otherwise not large nor peculiar. 

On this East Branch we saw many of the small purple fringed orchis (Platanthera psycodes), but no large ones (P. fimbriata), which alone were noticed on the West Branch and Umbazookskus. 

Also saw often the Lysimachia ciliata, and once white cohosh berries, and at one place methinks the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum (?) with the other. . . . 

On a small bare sand or gravel bar, I observed that same Prunus which grows on the rocks at Bellows Falls, whose leaf might at first sight be mistaken for that of a willow. It is evidently the Prunus depressa (sand cherry) of Pursh, and distinct, as a variety at least, from the common allied one (P. pumila of Pursh), which is not depressed even when it grows, as it often does abundantly, in river meadows (e. g. Edmund Hosmer's on Assabet). The leaf of the former is more lanceoate-spatulate, and I have never seen it in Concord, though the P. pumila is very common here. Gray describes but one kind. 

Jackson, being some miles below this, in the East Branch, the 6th of October, twenty years ago, says, "There are several small gravelly islands covered with a profusion of deep purple beach plums, but since they had been frozen they were found to be taste less and insipid." We did not see any of these.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 31, 1857

See The Maine Woods ("We had smooth but swift water for a considerable distance, where we glided rapidly along, scaring up ducks and kingfishers. But, as usual, our smooth progress ere long came to an end, and we were obliged to carry canoe and all about half a mile down the right bank, around some rapids or falls. . . .I cannot tell how many times we had to walk on account of falls or rapids. We were expecting all the while that the river would take a final leap and get to smooth water, but there was no improvement this fore noon. However, the carries were an agreeable variety. So surely as we stepped out of the canoe and stretched our legs we found ourselves in a blueberry and raspberry garden, each side of our rocky trail around the falls being lined with one or both.. . . For seven or eight miles below that succession of " Grand " falls, the aspect of the banks as well as the character of the stream was changed. After passing a tributary from the northeast, perhaps Bowlin Stream, we had good swift smooth water, with a regular slope, such as I have described. Low, grassy banks and muddy shores began.. . Soon afterward a white-headed eagle sailed down the stream before us. We drove him several miles, while we were looking for a good place to camp, for we expected to be overtaken by a shower, — and still we could distinguish him by his white tail, sailing away from time to time from some tree by the shore still farther down the stream... . We at length found a place to our minds, on the west bank, about a mile below the mouth of the Seboois, ...in a very dense spruce wood above a gravelly shore... .")

The season of small fruits.

July 6.  

Rubus triflorus well ripe. 

The beach plums have everywhere the crescent-shaped mark made by the curculio, — the few that remain on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1857

Rubus triflorus well ripe. See  June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed"); July 2, 1851 ("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits");  July 11, 1857 ("I see more berries than usual of the Rubus triflorus in the open meadow near the southeast corner of the Hubbard meadow blueberry swamp.. . .They are dark shining red and, when ripe, of a very agreeable flavor and somewhat of the raspberry's spirit.") See also May 21, 1856 ("Rubus triflorus abundantly out at the Saw Mill Brook");  May 29, 1858 ("Rubus triflorus, well out, at Calla Swamp, how long?");  June 7, 1857 ("Rubus triflorus still in bloom");  and also  June 17, 1854 ("[T]he season of small fruits has arrived. ")  July 5, 1852 ("Nature offers fruits now as well as flowers"); July 6, 1851 ("Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years . . . and about one third the days were foggy

June 20.

Saturday. Fog still.

June 20, 2017

A man working on the lighthouse, who lives at the Pond Village, says that he raised potatoes and pumpkins there where a vessel once anchored. That was when they let the salt water into the pond. Says the flags there now are barrel flags; that the chair flag is smaller, partly three-sided, and has no bur; perhaps now all gone. 

Speaking of the effect of oil on the water, this man said that a boat's crew came ashore safely from their vessel on the Bay Side of Truro some time ago in a storm, when the wind blowed square on to the land, only by heaving over oil. The spectators did not think they would reach the shore without being upset. 


When I expressed some doubt of the efficacy of this, he observed in the presence of Small and others, "We always take a bottle of oil when looking for sea clams, and, pouring out a few drops, can look down six or seven feet." 

We dined on halibut caught on the ledges some three miles off the Back Side. 

There was a carpenter who worked on the lighthouse boarding at Small's, who had lived sixteen years on the extremity of Cape Ann. When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock, perhaps fifty yards long and a dozen feet high, about two miles from the shore at Sandy Bay, outside Avery's Rock. That he and all the inhabitants of the Cape always called it " Selvaygias." Did not know but it had some thing to do with salvage for wrecks. 

This man, who is familiar with the shore of New England north of Cape Cod, thought that there was no beach equal to this for grandeur. He thought August the most foggy month. 

Small thought that the shore at the mouth of Pamet River about held its own. 

I saw an extract in a Cape (Yarmouth Register) paper from a promised History of the Cape by Dr. Dix, an Englishman, who was owing Small for board, etc. (page 136 of it). There was also advertised "The Annals of Barnstable County and its several Towns," etc., by Frederick Freeman, to be in two volumes, 8vo, $4.00. This will probably be out first. 

A child asked concerning a bobolink, "What makes he sing so sweet, Mother? Do he eat flowers? " 

Talked with an old lady who thought that the beach plums were better than cherries. 

Visited the telegraph station, tended by one Hall, just north of the light. He has a small volume called the "Boston Harbor Signal Book," containing the names of some three thousand vessels, their owners, etc., and a code of signals. There were also the private signals of more than a hundred merchants on a large sheet on the wall. There was also a large volume called "The Universal Code of Signals," Marryat (Richardson, London), 1854, containing the names of some twenty thousand vessels of all nations, but chiefly English, and an extensive system of signalling, by which he could [carry on] a long conversation with a vessel on almost any subject. He said that he could make out the name seven miles off and the signal sometimes twenty miles. [The man at Hull July 24, 1851, said they could tell the kind of vessel thirty miles off, the number at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on hull six or seven miles.]

Thought there would be a fog as long as the wind was southwest. "How is it in Boston ?" I asked. "I will ask," said he. Tick tick tick — "Wind northeast and cloudy." (Here it was southwest and thick fog.) 

He thought that there [were] more vessels to be seen passing this point than any other in the United States. One day when telegraphing the passing vessels he put in "a fox passing," for there was one running between the station and the edge of the bank. 

I observed the name of the brig Leader displayed on  a flag for me. The report was, "Brig Leader in." It may be a month before the vessel reaches Boston. 

The operator said that last winter the wind between his station and the bank blew him three rods through the air, and he was considerably hurt when he fell. A boy was blown head over heels. The fences were blown up, post and rail. There was no wind just this side the edge of the bank, but if you lay down there and extended your hand over the edge of the bank it would be blown suddenly upward, or if you cast off a large piece of wood it would be blown up thirty or forty feet high. Both boys and men often amuse them selves by running and trying to jump off the bank with their jackets spread, and being blown back. (Small confirmed this.) 

Hall said that he could not possibly jump off. Sometimes and in some places, pebbles as big as chestnuts are blown far over the bank. 

Hall said that he saw very large flocks of geese; had counted as many as six hundred go by at once, reaching three miles; and sometimes alight on the water. 

Talked with Uncle Sam, who was picking goose berries on the bank, — for the sun shone a short time. He showed me some fossil shells imbedded in stone which he had picked up on the high bank, just south of the light, and laid on his pile of driftwood. He wanted to know something about them. Said that a lecturer down at Pamet River had said, as he was told, that the Norwegians who formerly came to this country cemented them together. He had come down to watch a piece of driftwood, perhaps a stump, which had been lodged on a bar for a day or two. He was trying to make out what it was. There is something picked up on the shore of the Cape and advertised in every paper. 

This was the third foggy day. It cleared up the next day noon, but the night after and the next day was foggy again. It is a serious objection to visiting or living on the Cape that you lose so many days by fog.

Small said that a week of fog at this season would be nothing remarkable. You can see that the fog is local and of no great thickness. From time to time the sun almost or quite shines, and you can see half a mile, or to Provincetown even, and then, against all your rules, it thickens up again. An inlander would think [it] was going to clear up twenty times when it may last a week. Small said that they were very common with southerly winds, being blown up from Nantucket Shoals; that they were good for almost everything but corn, yet there was probably less rain there at this season than on the mainland. 

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years, once in October, twice in June, and once in July, having spent in all about one month there, and about one third the days were foggy, with or without rain. According to Alden (in Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. v, First Series, page 57), Nantucket was discovered by a famous old Indian giant named Maushop, who waded the sea to it, and there filling his pipe with "poke," his smoke made fog. Whence that island is so much in the fog, and the aborigines on the opposite portion of the Cape, seeing a fog over the water at a distance, would say, "There comes old Maushop's smoke." The Gloucester carpenter thought August the worst month for fog on the coast. 

The fog lasted this time, with the exception of one afternoon and one or two slight breakings away, five days, or from Thursday morning till I reached Minot's Ledge, Monday noon. How much longer it continued on the Cape I do not know. The Cape people with whom I talked very generally denied that it [was] a phenomenon in any degree peculiar to the Cape. They said that it was just such weather at Boston. Indeed, some denied that it was fog at all. They said with some asperity that it was rain. Yet more rain would have fallen in a smart shower in the country in twenty minutes than in these five days on the Cape. When I got home I found that there had been an abundance [of] cloudy weather and rain within a week, but not one foggy day in Concord. 

Small thought that Lieutenant Davis might have misunderstood him. He meant to say that the offshore current (three miles off) set down the Cape, and wrecks in it went down the coast, the inshore one sets up. 

I noticed several lengths of fence hereabouts made chiefly of oars, very long ones.

A Cape Cod house is low, unpainted, shingled on the sides. They have many windows, even under the roofs to light the closets there, and as the chambers can only be lighted at one end, there are commonly two windows there. Once I saw a triangular blind under the peak, though there was no window beneath it. The windows commonly afford a view of the bay or ocean, though the house may be sheltered by some hill, or they are very snugly placed in a hollow, apparently as secluded as among the New Hampshire hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1857

When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock....:  The Dry Salvages are located about two miles north-east of Rockport, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. They are “dry” even at high tide, in contrast to an adjacent, lower reef, the Little Salvages, which are submerged at high tide. ~ The Dry Salvages by Vladimir Brezina

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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

What ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy!

 June 5. 

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp and Poplar Hill. 

The shad-flies were very abundant probably last evening about the house, for this morning they are seen filling and making black every cobweb on the side of the house, blinds, etc. All freshly painted surfaces are covered with them. The surface of pools and ditches also is remarkably thick with them. The living ones are on the bushes which I pluck, far from any water. 

I find one Vaccinium Oxycoccus open. The petals are not white like the common, but pink like the bud. 

That low reedy sedge about the edge of the central pool in the swamp is just out of bloom and shows the seeds.

I see a great many tortoises in that pool, showing their heads and backs above water and pursuing each other about the pool. It is evidently their copulating- season. Their shells are yellow-spotted, and their throats are of a reddish yellow (?). Are they the Emys guttata?  It is a wonder how they made their way to this water through so many twiggy bushes and over so many tussocks. How should they know of such a wild water? To this wild water, then, the tortoises which inhabit the swamps resort in their breeding-season, and are there undisturbed. You would think it almost the labor of a lifetime for a tortoise to make its way from the surrounding shrubbery to this water, and how do they know that there is water here? 

The larch cones are still very beautiful against the light, but some cones, I perceive, are merely green.

Some apparent beach plum (?) almost completely out of bloom, ten to twelve feet high, along the wall behind Adolphus Clark's. This is the largest I know of.

Lamb kill. 

The mocker-nuts on Mrs. Ripley's hill apparently a day or more. 

Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. But such trees have comparatively few leaves and have grown but little as yet. 

At evening, paddle up Assabet. There are many ephemerae in the air; but it is cool, and their great flight is not yet. 

Pincushion gall on oak. 

I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are! as wild, really, as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration, and knew them as intimately as I do these, that even they served for a language of the sentiments. Stigmariae stood for a human sentiment in that race's flower language. Chickweed, or a pine tree, is but little less wild. I assume to be acquainted with these, but what ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geological period.

June 5,  2017

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  June 5, 1857



Some red maples are much more fertile than others. Their keys are now very conspicuous. See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed. "); June 2, 1859 ("Red maple seed is partly blown off. Some of it is conspicuously whitish or light-colored on the trees.")

A walk on the beach

July 11.

See young piping plover running in a troop on the beach like peetweets.

Patches of shrub oaks, bayberry, beach plum, and early wild roses, overrun with woodbine. What a splendid show of wild roses, whose sweetness is mingled with the aroma of the bayberry! 

A bar wholly made within three months; first exposed about first of May; as I paced, now seventy five rods long and six or eight rods wide at high water, and bay within six rods wide. The bay has extended twice as far, but is filled up. 

upland plover 

The upland plover hovers almost stationary in the air with a quivering note of alarm. Above, dark-brown interspersed with white, darkest in rear; gray-spotted breast, white beneath; bill dark above, yellowish at base beneath, and legs yellowish. 

Bank at lighthouse one hundred and seventy feet on the slope, perpendicular one hundred and ten; say shelf slopes four and ordinary tide-fall is nine, makes one hundred and twenty-three in all. Saw sand bank south fifteen to twenty-five feet higher. 

Mackerel-fishing not healthy like cod-fishing; hard work packing the mackerel, stooping over.

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

Upland plover. "In Massachusetts, and to the eastward of that state, this species is best known by the name of 'Upland Plover,'”   ~ J. J. Audubon  [Bertram’s sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda),  now known as the Upland Sandpiper.]

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

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