Perambulated Carlisle line.

September 19.

Perambulated Carlisle line.

Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.

Found the bound stones on Carlisle by the river all or mostly tipped over by the ice and water, like the pitch pines about Walden Pond.

Grapes very abundant along that line.

The soapwort gentian now.

In an old pasture, now grown up to birches and other trees, followed the cow-paths to the old apple trees.

Mr. Isaiah Green of Carlisle, who lives nearest to the Kibbe Place, can remember when there were three or four houses around him (he is nearly eighty years old and has always lived there and was born there); now he is quite retired, and the nearest road is scarcely used at all.

He spoke of one old field, now grown up, which [we] were going through, as the "hog-pasture," formerly.

He found the meadows so dry that it was thought to be a good time to burn out the moss.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1851

Perambulated Carlisle line. See September 12, 1851 (" On Monday, the 15th instant, I am going to perambulate the bounds of the town. ...It is a sort of reconnoissance of its frontiers authorized by the central government of the town, which will bring the surveyor in contact with whatever wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces."); September 15, 1851 ("Commenced perambulating the town bounds."); September 16, 1851 ("The inhabitants of Lincoln yield sooner than usual to the influence of the rising generation, and are a mixture of rather simple but clever with a well-informed and trustworthy people."); September 17, 1851 ("Perambulated the Lincoln line."); September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line."); September 20, 1851 ("A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men.. . . I feel inexpressibly begrimed."); September 21, 1851 ("Here was the cider-mill, and there the orchard, and there the hog-pasture; and so men lived, and ate, and drank, and passed away, — like vermin.")

Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks. See September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn."); September 13, 1859  ("The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. . . .  in this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn."); October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens, — without florets, — or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft") See also 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Great Bidens

The soapwort gentian now. See September 19, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown") See also September 6, 1857 ("Soapwort gentian, out not long");;September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") September 25, 1857 ("You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian 

Mr. Isaiah Green of Carlisle . . .spoke of one old field, now grown up . . . as the "hog-pasture," formerly. See June 10, 1853 ("Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green‘s, and then across the road through the woods to the Paul Adams house by Bateman‘s Pond. Saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs and a shelter for them at night, a half-mile east of the last house, — something rare in these days here abouts.)

Nature will get her seeds along in due season.

March 8. 

I just heard peculiar faint sounds made by the air escaping from a stick which I had just put into my stove. It sounded to my ear exactly like the peeping of the hylodes in a distant pool, a cool and breezy spring evening, - as if it were designed to remind me of that season. 

Saw the F. hyemalis March 4th.

***

In short, Nature uses all sorts of conveyances, from the rudest drag to a balloon, but she will get her seeds along in due season.

Is it not possible that Loudon is right as it respects the primitive distribution of the birch? 

Are not the dense patches always such as have sprung up in open land (commonly old fields cleared by man), as is the case with the pitch pine? It disappears at length from a dense oak or pine wood.

Perhaps originally it formed dense woods only where a space had been cleared for it by a burning, as now at the eastward. Perhaps only the oaks and white pines could (originally) possess the soil here against all comers, maple succeeding because it does not mind a wet foot. 

Suppose one were to take such a boxful of birch seed as I have described into the meeting-house belfry in the fall, and let some of it drop in every wind, but always more in proportion as the wind was stronger, and yet so husband it that there should be some left for every gale even till far into spring; so that this seed might be blown toward every point of the compass and to various distances in each direction. Would not this represent a single birch tree on a hill? Of which trees (though only a part on hills) we have perhaps a million.

And yet some feel compelled to suppose that the birch trees which spring up after a burning are spontaneously generated -- for want of seed!

It is true [it] does not come up in great quantities at the distance I have spoken of, but, if only one comes up there this year, you may have a million seeds matured there a few years hence. It is true that the greater part of these seeds fall near the trees which bore them, and comparatively few germinate; yet, when the surface is in a favorable condition, they may spring up in very unexpected places.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1861

Saw the F. hyemalis. See October 5, 1857 ( F. hyemalis . . . only transiently visit us in spring and fall."); February 16, 1854 ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall"); March 6, 1860 ("I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. . . . These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner. "); March 7, 1853 ("The only birds I see to-day are the lesser redpolls. I have not seen a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla hyemalis"); March 14, 1858 (" I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring,. . .They are now getting back earlier than our permanent summer residents. It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco

Nature will get her seeds along in due season. See March 2, 1856 ("The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet. As I went home up the river, I saw some of the seeds forty rods off, and perhaps, in a more favorable direction, I might have found them much further. It suggested how unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds. Even the spring does not find her unprovided with birch, aye, and alder and pine seed. A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows.."); October 16, 1860 (Looking from a hilltop, I observe that pines, white birches, red maples, alders, etc., often grow in more or less regular rounded or oval or conical patches, while oaks, chestnuts, hickories, etc., simply form woods of greater or less extent, whether by themselves or mixed, and do not naturally spring up in an oval form. This is a consequence of the different manner in which trees which have winged seeds and those which have not are planted")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, , Birches in Season

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past

May 11. 

May 11, 2019

The river no lower than yesterday. 

Warbling vireo. 

2 P. M. — 77º. Very warm. To factory village. 

Redstart. 

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. 

I see at Damon’s Spring some dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres much more at Clamshell the 13th). It is ripe, then, several days, or say just before elm seed, but the mouse-ear not on the 13th anywhere. 

The senecio shows its yellow. 

The warmth makes us notice the shade of houses and trees (even before the last have leafed) falling on the greened banks, as Harrington’s elm and house. June-like. 

See some large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. 

The Ranunculus abortivus well out; say five days? 

Red cherry in bloom, how long? 

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. 

William Brown’s nursery is now white (fine white) with the shepherd’s-purse, some twelve to eighteen inches high, covering it under his small trees, like buck wheat, though not nearly so white as that. I never saw so much. It also has green pods. Say it is in prime. 

E. Hosmer, as a proof that the river has been lower than now, says that his father, who was born about the middle of the last century, used to tell of a time, when he was a boy, when the river just below Derby’s Bridge did not run, and he could cross it dry-shod on the rocks, the water standing in pools when Conant’s mill (where the factory now is) was not running. 

I noticed the place to-day, and, low as the river is for the season, it must be at least a foot and a half deep there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1860

 Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. See April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling");  May 5, 1859 ("Red-wings fly in flocks yet."). May 13, 1860 ("Red wings are evidently busy building their nests.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in  Early Spring

Dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres. See May 9, 1858 ("A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.")

The senecio shows its yellow. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July.")

Large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. See April 26, 1856 ("The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. Is not this the only birch which shows this colored froth?")

The Ranunculus abortivus [Kidneyleaf Crowfoot] well out; say five days? See May 16, 1859 ("Ranunculus abortivus well out (when?), southwest angle of Damon's farm.");May 25, 1858 ("See an abundance of Ranunculus abortivus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.'s house, going to seed and in bloom. The branches are fine and spreading, about eight or ten inches high.")

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. See May 16, 1853 ("Yellow violets  yesterday at least. "); May 18, 1856 ("E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets."); May 25, 1852 ("The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out"); 

That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

December 6

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. 

It is somewhat of a lichen day. The bright-yellow sulphur lichens on the walls of the Walden road look novel, as if I had not seen them for a long time. Do they not require cold as much as moisture to enliven them? What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. Even stones of smaller size which make the walls are so finished, and piled up for what use? How naturally they adorn our works of art! 

See where the farmer has set up his post-and-rail fences along the road. The sulphur lichen has, as it were, at once leaped to occupy the northern side of each post, as in towns handbills are pasted on all bare surfaces, and the rails are more or less gilded with them as if it had rained gilt. The handbill which nature affixes to the north side of posts and trees and other surfaces. 

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. 

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. 

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. 

For two rods in width next the shore, where the water is shallowest and the sand bare, you see a strip of light greenish two or three rods in width, and then dark brown (with a few green streaks only) where the dark sediment of ages has accumulated. 

And, looking down the pond, you see on each side successive wooded promontories — with their dim reflections — growing dimmer and dimmer till they are lost in the mist. The more distant shores are a mere dusky line or film, a sort of concentration of the mistiness. 

In the pure greenish stripe next the shore I saw some dark-brown objects above the sand, which looked very much like sea turtles in various attitudes. One appeared holding its great head up toward the surface. 

They were very weird-like and of indefinite size. I supposed that they were stumps or logs on the bottom, but was surprised to find that they were a thin and flat collection of sediment on the sandy bottom, like that which covered the bottom generally further out. 

When the breeze rippled the surface some distance out, it looked like a wave coming in, but it never got in to the shore. 

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. Thus it is alternate snow and seeds.

Returning up the railroad, I see the great tufts of sedge in Heywood's meadow curving over like locks of the meadow's hair, above the snow.  These browned the meadow considerably. 

Then came a black maze, of alders moistened by the rain, which made a broad black belt between the former brown and the red-brown oaks higher up the hillside. 

The white pines now, seen through the mist, the ends of their boughs drooping a little with the weight of the glaze, resemble very much hemlocks, for the extremities of their limbs always droop thus, while pines are commonly stiffly erect or ascendant.

***

I took out my boots, which I have not worn since last spring, with the mud and dust of spring still on them, and went forth in the snow. That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

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

It is somewhat of a lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); and note to February 7. 1959("I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")


No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. See November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north."; )December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth."); December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds. "); December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it").


That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter. See November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage."); December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 8, 1852 ("One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion"); compare March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”)

That is an era

when you change from summer shoes 

to the boots of winter.

Each phase of nature is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention.

November 8. 

P. M. — To Boulder Field.

 Goodwin, laying wall at Miss Ripley’s, observed to me going by, “Well, it seems that __ thought that he had lived long enough.” He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. A boy slept in the chamber with him, and, hearing a noise, got and found  __  on the floor with both his jugular veins cut, but his windpipe whole. He said to the boy, “Take the razor and cut deeper,” but the boy ran, and __ died, and Garfield said it was about time, for __, in revenge for being sent to the house of correction, had set fire to a pile of wood of his, that long pile by the road side beyond William Wheeler’s, that I stood under in a rain once.  __ probably burned Witherell’s house too, and perhaps Boynton’s stable. 

The red osier at Mrs. Simmons’s is quite bare; how long? Her hawthorn is still quite leafy and pretty, yellow-brown, dotted. A thorn at Hall’s fence is dark scarlet and pretty. There are many leaves on the buckthorn still.

Common thorn bushes, long since bare, when many grow together in clumps, make another such a smoke, though smaller, as the maples, — the same color. I can often distinguish the bush by this. 

Alders are a very dark gray, sort of iron gray, and, if near enough, you see dark lines (the stems) and specks (the fruit) like cinders, like a very dense, dark, and unconsumed uliginous smoke, in which many cinders rise. 

Those trees and bushes which grow in dense masses and have many fine twigs, being bare, make an agreeable misty impression where there are a myriad retreating points to receive the eye, not a hard, abrupt wall; just as, in the sky, the visual ray is cushioned on clouds, unless it is launched into the illimitable ether. The eye is less worn and wearied, not to say wounded, by looking at these mazes where the seer is not often conscious of seeing anything. 

It is well that the eye is so rarely caught and detained by any object in one whole hemisphere of its range, i. e. the sky. It enjoys everlasting holiday on this side.  Only the formless clouds and the objectless ether are presented to it. For they are nervous who see many faces in the clouds. Corresponding to the clouds in the sky are those mazes now on the earth. 

Nature disposes of her naked stems so softly as not to put our eyes out. She makes them a smoke, or stationary cloud, on this side or that, of whose objective existence we rarely take cognizance. She does not expect us to notice them. She calls our attention to the maple swamp more especially in October. 

There is also the coarse maze produced by an oak wood (when nearly all the leaves are fallen), in which, however, the large boughs reflecting the light have considerable distinctness, and that of the forest in general. 

I thought, from a small specimen, that the brushy yellow birch tops were of the same hue with the alders. [Vide Nov. 11th.] 

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness, now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow.[I read that snow fell two or three inches deep in Bangor yesterday morning.] Some green she thinks so good for our eyes, like blue, that she never banishes it entirely, but has created evergreens. 

It is remarkable how little any but a lichenist will observe on the bark of trees. The mass of men have but the vaguest and most indefinite notion of mosses, as a sort of shreds and fringes, and the world in which the lichenist dwells is much further from theirs than one side of this earth from the other. They see bark as if they saw it not. These objects which, though constantly visible, are rarely looked at are a sort of eye-brush. 

Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not too distinct and obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. 

It is like a silent but sympathizing companion in whose company we retain most of the advantages of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking in a strain foreign to the place. I know of but one or two persons with whom I can afford to walk. 

With most the walk degenerates into a mere vigorous use of your legs, ludicrously purposeless, while you are discussing some mighty argument, each one having his say, spoiling each other’s day, worrying one another with conversation, hustling one another with our conversation. I know of no use in the walking part in this case, except that we may seem to be getting on together toward some goal; but of course we keep our original distance all the way. Jumping every wall and ditch with vigor in the vain hope of shaking your companion off. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, though they sit at opposite points of [the] compass, to see nature and do the honors to one who does not. 

Animals generally see things in the vacant way I have described. They rarely see anything but their food, or some real or imaginary foe. I never saw but one cow looking into the sky. 

Lichens as they affect the scenery, as picturesque objects described by Gilpin or others, are one thing; as they concern the lichenist, quite another. These are the various grays and browns which give November its character. 

There are also some red mazes, like the twigs of the white maple and our Cornus sericea, etc. (the red osier, too, further north), and some distinct yellow ones, as willow twigs, which are most interesting in spring. The silvery abeles are steadily , falling nowadays. The chalky white under side of these leaves is remarkable. None of our leaves is so white. 

I think I admire again about this time the still bright red or crimson fruit of the sumach, now when not only its own but most other leaves have fallen and there are few bright tints, it is now so distinct on its twigs. Your attention is not distracted by its brilliant leaves now. 

I go across N. Barrett’s land and over the road beyond his house. The aspect of the Great Meadows is now nearly uniform, the new and exposed grass being nearly as brown and sere as that which was not cut. Thus Nature has been blending and harmonizing the colors here where man had interfered. 

I wandered over bare fields where the cattle, lately turned out, roamed restless and unsatisfied with the feed; I dived into a rustling young oak wood where not a green leaf was to be seen; I climbed to the geological axis of elevation and clambered over curly-pated rocks whose strata are on their edges, amid the rising woods; and again I thought, They are all gone surely, and left me alone. Not even a man Friday remains. What nutriment can I extract from these bare twigs? Starvation stares me in the face. 

“Nay, nay!” said a nuthatch, making its way, head downward, about a bare hickory close by.

 “The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat. Only the superfluous has been swept away. Now we behold the naked truth. If at any time the weather is too bleak and cold for you, keep the sunny side of the trunk, for there is a wholesome and inspiring warmth such as the summer never afforded. There are the winter mornings, with the sun on the oak wood tops. While buds sleep, thoughts wake.”

  (“Hear! hear!” screamed the jay from a neighboring copse, where I had heard a tittering for some time.)

“Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” 

And then the speaker shifted to another tree, further off, and reiterated his assertions, and his mate at a distance confirmed them; and I heard a suppressed chuckle from a red squirrel that heard the last remark, but had kept silent and invisible all the while. Is that you? “Yes-sir-ee,” said he. 

Then, running down a slanting bough, he called out rather impudently, “Look here! just get a snug-fitting fur coat and a pair of fur gloves like mine, and you may laugh at a northeast storm,” and then he wound up with a slang phrase, in his own lingo, accompanied by a flourish of his tail, just as a newsboy twirls his fingers with his thumb on his nose and inquires, “Does your mother know you are out?” 

The wild pear tree on Ponkawtasset has some yellow leaves still. 

The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence. 

Now, too, I can see (for the same reason) where grows our only patch of broom, a quarter of a. mile off, it such a distinct, somewhat yellowish, green. 

Already the creeping juniper is a ripe glaucous green, with a distinct ruddy tinge to the upper surface, —— the whole bush a ripe tint like a fruit. 

I stand in Ebby Hubbard’s yellow birch swamp, ad miring some gnarled and shaggy picturesque old birches there, which send out large knee-like limbs near the ground, while the brook, raised by the late rain, winds fuller than usual through the rocky swamp. I thought with regret how soon these trees, like the black birches that grew on the hill near by, would be all cut off, and there would be almost nothing of the old Concord left, and we should be reduced to read old deeds in order to be reminded of such things, —deeds, at least, in which some old and revered bound trees are mentioned. These will be the only proof at last that they ever existed. 

Pray, farmers, keep some old woods to match the old deeds. Keep them for history’s sake, as specimens of what the township was. Let us not be reduced to a mere paper evidence, to deeds kept in a chest or secretary, when not so much as the bark of the paper birch will be left for evidence, about its decayed stump. 

The sides of the old Carlisle road where it is low and moist are (and have for a long time been), for many rods together and a rod in width, brown or cinnamon-colored with the withered dicksonia fern, not like the brown of trees (their withered leaves), but a peculiar cinnamon-brown. The bare huckleberry bushes and the sweet ferns are draped with them as a kind of mourning.

Solidago puberula still out, for you see a few bright yellow solidago flowers long after they are generally turned to a dirty-white fuzzy top. 

Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week. He shows me samphire, plucked three weeks ago in Brighton, when it was a very brilliant crimson still. 

Looking from Pratt’s window at sunset, I saw that  purple or rosy light reflected from some old chestnut rails on the hilltop before his house. Methinks it is pinkish, even like the old cow-droppings in the pastures. So universally does Nature blush at last. The very herbage which has gone through the stomachs and intestines of the cow acquires at last a faint pinkish tinge. 

The button-bush balls are now blackish (really dark brown) and withered, looking much blacker against the light than a month ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1858

Each phase of nature is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. See March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye"); November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”);  July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.); November 4, 1858 ("All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. "); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.",)

Lichens as they affect the scenery, as picturesque objects described by Gilpin or others, are one thing; as they concern the lichenist, quite another. See January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”).; January 26, 1858 ("The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.")

"While buds sleep, thoughts wake,” said the nuthatch, “Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” See January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.")

With most the walk degenerates into a mere vigorous use of your legs, ludicrously purposeless, while you are discussing some mighty argument, each one having his say, spoiling each other’s day. See August 31, 1856 ("Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day. . . Suppose a man asks, not you to go with him, but to go with you! Often, I would rather undertake to shoulder a barrel of pork and carry it a mile than take into my company a man."); November 25, 1857 ("I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon"); September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons.");

If I could only contract with a family of squirrels.

September 9

Wednesday. P. M. – To the Hill for white pine cones.

Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left. 

The cones are now all flowing with pitch, and my hands are soon so covered with it that I cannot easily cast down the cones where I would, they stick to my hands so. I cannot touch the basket, but carry it on my arm; nor can I pick up my coat, which I have taken off, unless with my teeth, or else I kick it up and catch it on my arm. 

Thus I go from tree to tree, from time to time rubbing my hands in brooks and mud-holes, in the hope of finding something that will remove pitch like grease, but in vain. It is the stickiest work I ever did. I do not see how the squirrels that gnaw them off and then open them scale by scale keep their paws and whiskers clean. They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. 

How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me! 

Some are already brown and dry and partly open, but these commonly have hollow seeds and are worm-eaten. 

The cones collected in my chamber have a strong spirituous scent, almost rummy, or like a molasses hogshead, agreeable to some. They are far more effectually protected than the chestnut by its bur. 

Going into the low sprout-land north of the Sam Wheeler orchard, where is a potato-field in new ground, I see the effects of the frost of the last two or three nights. The ferns and tall erechthites showing its pappus are drooping and blackened or imbrowned on all sides, also Eupatorium pubescens, tender young Rhus glabra, etc., and the air is full of the rank, sour smell of freshly withering vegetation. It is a great change produced in one frosty night. What a sudden period put to the reign of summer! 

On my way home, caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road, where it was rather slugish, as usual. Saw another in the road a week or two ago. The whole length was eight inches; tail alone, one and four fifths. The plates about one hundred and nineteen; scales forty and upward. It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, and perhaps this is the same with Storer's occipito-maculatus. 

C. brings me a small red hypopitys. It has a faint sweet, earthy, perhaps checkerberry, scent, like that sweet mildewy fragrance of the earth in spring. 

Aunts have just had their house shingled, and amid the rubbish I see sheets of the paper birch bark, which have lain on the roof so long. The common use of this formerly shows that it must have been abundant here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1857

They must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of. See April 8, 1857 ("If you got your hands pitched in pine woods, you had only to rub a parcel of these berries between your hands to start the pitch off.")

I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit . . .all flowing with pitch . . . See October 15, 1855 (“Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”);  November 4, 1855 (" I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September.”); October 8, 1856 (“At length I discover some white pine cones, a few, . . . all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them. The tip of each scale is covered with fresh flowing pitch.”); September 16, 1857 ("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.");  September 18, 1859 "There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open. . . . the winged seeds have fallen or are ready to fall. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!”); September 18, 1860 ("White pine cones (a small crop), and all open that I see.”).

Caught one of those little red bellied snakes in the road,. . . Saw another in the road a week or two ago. . . .There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus, and perhaps this is the same with Storer's occipito-maculatus.[The northern redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata)] See October 11, 1856 (“ It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long,. . .I count some one hundred and twenty-seven plates. It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back. ”)


I see the effects of the frost of the last two or three nights. . . What a sudden period put to the reign of summer! See ; September 23, 1854 ("Many plants fall with the first frosts. This is the crisis when many kinds conclude their summer.”); August 27, 1853 (" September is at hand; the first month (after the summer heat) with a burr to it, month of early frosts.”)

C. brings me a small red hypopitys [pine-sap].  See June 29, 1853 (“American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech- drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe.”);  July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson . . .[s]ays she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.”);  August 14, 1856 (“Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed.”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pine-sap and Indian-pipe

Note. The stems of "hairy pine-sap"(Hypopitys lanuginosa ) are often pink or red, distinguishing it  from yellow pine-sap, which has light brown to yellow stems. However, the red, yellow (and other “species”) are often lumped together as Monotropa hypopitys, described generally as a saprophytic, red, pink, lavender, or yellow plant with several vase-like, nodding flowers on a downy, scaly stem; stem and flowers colored alike, with  autumn-flowering plants being red color, and early-flowering plants yellow.  Like Indian-pipe, pine-saps are mycotrophs, receiving nutrients via fungal mycelia rather than through photosynthesis. ~ GoBotany, Wildflower.org

How unexplored still are the realms of nature -- what we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion.

July 24. 

Friday. 

As we paddled along, we saw many peetweets, also the common iris or blue flag, along the rocky shore, and here and afterwards great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color. . . . 

P. said that Bematinichtik meant high land generally and no particular height. . . .

Near this island, or rather some miles southwest of it, on the mainland, where we stopped to stretch our legs and look at the vegetation, I measured a canoe birch, five and a half feet in circumference at two and a half from the ground. . . . 

I was disappointed to find my clothes under my india-rubber coat as completely wetted by perspiration as they could have been by rain, and that this would always be the consequence of working in such a garment, at least in warm weather. . . . 

We looked down on the unpretending buildings and grounds of the Kineo House, as on a little flat map, oblong-square, at our feet. . . . 

It [the phosphorescent wood] suggested to me how unexplored still are the realms of nature, that what we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one to L' Inferno or Paradiso.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 24, 1857

See The Maine Woods ("About four o'clock the next morning (July 24), though it was quite cloudy, accompanied by the landlord to the water's edge, in the twilight, we launched our canoe from a rock on the Moosehead Lake. . . . Think of our little eggshell of a canoe tossing across that great lake, a mere black speck to the eagle soaring above it! . . . [We] were soon partly under the lee of the mountain, about a mile north of the Kineo House, having paddled about twenty miles. It was now about noon. . . . The clouds breaking away a little, we had a glorious wild view, as we ascended, of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface and numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its shores on every side . . . From the summit of the precipice which forms the southern and eastern sides of this mountain peninsula, and is its most remarkable feature, being described as five or six hundred feet high, we looked, and probably might have jumped, down to the water, or to the seemingly dwarfish trees on the narrow neck of land which connects it with the main. It is a dangerous place to try the steadiness of your nerves. . . . Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. . . .I did not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it. . . . I let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature. . . . It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before.")

The common iris or blue flag. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Flag Iris (Versicolor)

Phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. See August 8, 1857 ("Speaking with Dr. Reynolds about the phosphorescence which I saw in Maine, etc., etc., he said that he had seen the will-o'-the-wisp, a small blue flame, like burning alcohol, a few inches in diameter, over a bog, which moved when the bog was shaken.")

What we know and have seen is always an insignificant portion. We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one . . . See March 29, 1853 (“ a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to...appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”); June 14, 1853(". . . that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions”); 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. .”); September 2, 1856 and note ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood, . . . My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things.") and note to July 2, 1857 ("We find only the world we look for.")

A Maine guide and outfitter.

July 22. 

Wednesday. 

I am struck by the appearance of large canoe birch trees, even about houses, as an ornamental tree, and they are very enlivening, their trunks white as if whitewashed, though they rarely escape being barked and so disfigured more or less by mischievous fingers. Their white boles are in keeping with the fresh, cool air. 

At a mile and a half north of Bangor, passed the spot, at Treat's Falls, where the first settler and fur-trader, one Treat, lived. . . . 

We wanted to get one who was temperate and reliable, an older man than we had before, well skilled in Indian lore. I was warned not to employ an Indian on account of their obstinacy and the difficulty of understanding one another, and on account of their dirty habits in cooking, etc., but it was partly the Indian, such as he was, that I had come to see. The difficulty is to find one who will not get drunk and detain you wherever liquor is to be had. Some young white men of Oldtown named Pond were named as the very ones for us. But I was bent on having an Indian at any rate. 

While we were talking with Polis, a young, very dark- complexioned Indian, named something like Nicholai Orson, came up, and Polis said, "He go with you." We found that the latter wanted to go very much, said he knew the country and all about it. But I said, " We don't know you." He was too dark-colored, as if with African blood, — P. said they did not mix with them, — and too young for me. 

While I was talking with him, Thatcher took Polis aside and in quired the other's character, when P. frankly told him that he wouldn't do for us at all, that he was a very good fellow except that he would get drunk whenever he had a chance. . . . T. said he would get away from Nicholai with as few words as possible. So T. saying to N. that if we wanted him we would call again in a couple of hours, we departed. . . 

A light india-rubber coat is useful, but you cannot work in it in warm weather, for your underclothes will be just as wet with perspiration as if dipped in water before you know it, and, beside, I wore off the rubber against the cross-bars behind my back. You could not wear india-rubber pants in addition unless you sat perfectly still in cool weather. The only india-rubber bags we could find in Bangor were no better than a canvas bag, the rubber rapidly cracking and peeling off, letting in water and dirtying the contents. They would have been an imposition if the seller had not admitted that they would not hold water, and asserted that he could not make one that would. Doubted; far better ones could be home-made of good india-rubber cloth. 

Called on a Mr. Coe, part proprietor (?) of the Chamberlain Farm, so called, on Chamberlain Lake (spoke of it as "our farm"), who gave us some advice as to our outfit. Said he should like to have the making up of our packs, thinking we should take too many things. Told of one who, having to walk a few days through the woods, began by loading himself with some fifteen pounds of shot. The rule is to carry as little as possible. Advised us to go on foot, carry but few supplies, and replenish at the different camps we might find. 

He hastily scribbled this memorandum for us : —

“Axe 

Canoe 

Blankets 

Fry-pan 

Teakettle 

Dippers 

Tea 

Salt 

Hard-bread and pork 

Pepper 

Matches 

Ammunition and lines and hooks 

Camphor “

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

He hastily scribbled this memorandum. See July 19, 2018 (“For such an excursion as the above, carry and wear: . . .”)

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

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

Kalmia in prime.

May 27. 

May 27, 2016 

I stop at Bristol pond take a picture 

then hear a Baltimore oriole confirmed

 when I see it high in a tree singing. 

~ zphx 

To Kalmia Swamp with Sanborn. 

Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; two stories, i.e. upon an old nest, elevated one foot above the water; eggs with very dark blotches. 

Kalmia in prime, and rhodora. Apparently the oldest-blossomed kalmia the palest. 

Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches.

The pyrus (smooth-leaved) out apparently a day or two. 

See men fishing, one or two, and often perceived the meadow fragrance. 

My three kinds of birch sap have now become more acid, especially the white and canoe birch. The black birch is milder and more agreeable. With sugar it is an agreeable drink. I prefer it to cream-o’-tartar water. This is the real birch wine.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1856

Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; . . . eggs with very dark blotches. . . .See June 14, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest in ditch bank under Clamshell, of coarse grass lined with fine, and five eggs nearly hatched and a peculiar dark end to them."); June 9, 1855 ("A song sparrow’s nest low in Wheeler’s meadow, with five eggs, made of grass lined with hair. ")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

Kalmia in prime, and rhodora. . . . See May 26, 1855 ("To my surprise the Kalmia glauca almost all out; perhaps began with rhodora. A very fine flower, the more interesting for being early."); January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . . the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.").   Note: the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia is known as rosemary-leaf laurel or alpine bog laurel (Andromeda Polifolia) H. Peter Loewer, Thoreau's Garden: Native Plants for the American Landscape 32-33

Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp. See  November 15, 1857 ("I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me.")  January 15, 1857 ("So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse (" The common name of "deer mouse" (coined in 1833) is a reference to its  agility. Unlike meadow voles,  deer mice have long legs that allow them to bound like deer.")

Often perceived the meadow fragrance. . . . See May 27, 1855 ("The meadow fragrance to-day.”); May 15,1856 ("Perceive some of that delicious meadow fragrance coming over the railroad causeway.”)

May 27. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 27

A deer mouse jumping 

off by the side of the swamp –

short leaps ten inches.

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 © 2009-2026