Three steps into the swamp barelegged.

June 9. 

June 9, 2017

A large fog. 

Celastrus scandens, maybe a day. 

Triosteum, apparently several days (not at all June 1st). 

Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste and musty, and most of the bottles are merely sour. 

P. M. — To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp. 

A peetweet's nest near wall by Shattuck's barn, Merrick's pasture, at base of a dock; four eggs just on the point of being hatched. A regular nest of weak stubble set in ground. 

In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glowing indigo. It flits from top of one bush to another, chirping as if anxious. Wilson says it sings, not like most other birds in the morning and evening chiefly, but also in the middle of the day. In this I notice it is like the tanager, the other fiery-plumaged bird. They seem to love the heat. It probably had its nest in one of those bushes. 

The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." Carrying out this design, this afternoon, I had not taken three steps into the swamp barelegged before I found the Naumbergia thyrsiflora in sphagnum and water, which I had not seen growing before. (Channing brought one to me from Hubbard's Great Meadow once.) It is hardly beginning yet. (In prime June 24th. Vide June 24th.)

The water in this Calla Swamp feels cold to my feet, and perhaps this is a peculiarity of it; on the north side a hill. 

When I was at the yellow-throat's nest (as above) I heard that very loud sharp pheet pheet of a wood- chuck (?) or rabbit which I have often heard before. 

The hellebore was very much eaten off about the wall whence it proceeded. It was kept up from time to time while I stayed.

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

June 9, 2017

I had not taken three steps into the swamp barelegged . . . See August 30, 1856 (“I left my shoes and stockings on the bank far off and waded barelegged through rigid andromeda.and other bushes a long way, to the soft open sphagnous centre of the swamp. ”)

Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste . . . See  April 16, 1857 ("Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch"). Also see April 12, 1856 ("According to Rees’s Cyclopaedia, the sap of the birches is fermentable in its natural state.");   April 11, 1856 ("I have now got four kinds of birch sap. . . .I do not think I could distinguish the different kinds of birch with my eyes shut. I drank some of the black birch wine with my dinner for the name of it; but, as a steady drink, it is only to be recommended to outdoor men and foresters. ");  May 27, 1856 ("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. . . ."); June 21, 1856 ("My canoe birch wine smells and tastes like mead considerably. All my birch wines are now more acid and very good indeed with sugar. Am surprised to see it effervesce, all white with white sugar only, like a soda water."); July 26, 1856 ( "Drank up the last of my birch wine. It is an exceedingly grateful drink now, especially the aromatic, mead like, apparently checkerberry-flavored one, which on the whole I think must be the black birch. It is a surprisingly high-flavored drink, thus easily obtained, and considering that it had so little taste at first. Perhaps it would have continued to improve.")

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

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

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing.

May 6. 

To Clamshell by river. 

Our earliest currant out. 

Oat spawn showing little pollywogs (?) in meadow water. 

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing.

Knawel out at Clamshell; how long? 

Cerastium out there under the bank. 

That early white birch there has about done running sap. 

Equisetum sylvaticum a day or two on the ditch bank there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1856

Our earliest currant out. See May 4, 1853 ("The currant in bloom"); May 4, 1860 ("Currant out a day or two at least."); May 9, 1854 ("Currant in garden, but ours may be a late kind."); May 9, 1855 ("The black currant will not bloom for five or six days.")  

Note: The "earlies currant" and the unqualified word "currant" in Thoreau's lexicon likely  refers to the commonly cultivated Red Currant (Ribes rubrum). The Currant family species in New England includes both currants and gooseberries:   

• Ribes americanum –Wild black currant f/k/a Ribes floridum. See May 8, 1853 ("The Ribes floridum, wild black currant, just begun")
• Ribes aureum – Golden currant 
• Ribes cynosbati –Prickly gooseberry. See  September 8, 1856 (" Prickly gooseberry, with its bur-like fruit")
• Ribes glandulosum Skunk currant, fetid currant f/k/a Ribes prostratum. See September 7, 1852 (“Wild currants (Ribes prostratum, with the berry the odor of skunk-cabbage, but a not quite disagreeable wild flavor.")
• Ribes hirtellum –  Hairy stem Gooseberry or Northern Gooseberry 
• Ribes lacustre –Prickly currant, swamp gooseberry, bristly black currant. See June 19, 1856 (at the Natural History rooms)("Ribes lacustre, or swamp gooseberry")
• Ribes missouriense –Missouri gooseberry or Missouri currant. See  May 5, 1855 ("Missouri currant look as if they would bloom to-morrow.”);
• Ribes nigrum – Black Currant. See May 18, 1856 (“R. W. E.’s black currant (which the wild Ribes floridum is said to be much like), maybe a day.”)
• Ribes rotundifolium –Appalachian gooseberry or round-leaved gooseberry
• Ribes rubrum  – garden red currant or red currant
• Ribes triste –swamp red currant or wild red currant
• Ribes uva-crispa – European gooseberry f/k/a Ribes grossularia

Thoreau recognized 6 kinds of currant: red currant, black currant, wild currant, wild black currant, swamp currant, and Missouri currant; and 2 kinds of gooseberry,  swamp gooseberry and prickly gooseberry. See May 5, 1855 ("Gooseberry, both kinds ");See also, e.g.; July 19, 1858 (Mt. Washington) (" At three miles, or limit of trees . . . Ribes lacustre, prostratum, and floridum(?)") 

Oat spawn showing little pollywogs. See May 4, 1858 (“What I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems,  etc . . . is not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylvaltica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color . . . Iss it not that of the R. fontinalis?”);  May 8, 1858 (“I see a great deal of the oat spawn . . . It is over the coarse, weedy (pontederia and yellow lily stubble)”); May 11, 1855 (“See oat-seed spawn — a mass as big as fist —- on bottom; of brown jelly composed of smaller globules, each with a fish-like tadpole, color of a seed.”);  May 13, 1858 ("The large globular masses of oat spawn, often on the very top of the old pontederia stems and also on the shooting Equisetum limosum, of the same color with the weeds and bottom, look like a seedy fruit which is divested of its rind."); May 13, 1857 ("A large bunch of oat spawn in meadow water.“)

The horse-chestnut and mountain-ash leafing. See May 5, 1855) ("The trees and shrubs which I observe . . . in the order of their intensity and generalness: Gooseberry, both kinds  . . . Red currant, and probably black . . .  Some mountain-ash . . . Some horse-chestnut")

Knawel out at Clamshell; how long?  See May 5, 1860 ("Knawel some time."); May 6, 1853 ("Common knawel, apparently for some time") [Scleranthus annuus (German knotweed)]

Cerastium out there under the bank. See  May 13, 1860 ("At Clamshell. one cerastium flower quite done and dry."); See also  May 22, 1856 ("A little clammy hairy cerastium (?) ( like a Cerastium viscosum, slender and erect ), about three inches high, will open in a day or two on the rock near the"); May 31, 1856 ("That little cerastium on the rock at the Island, noticed the 22d, which probably opened about that time, is now out of bloom.")

That early white birch there has about done running sap. See April 23, 1856 ("The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall, and a few small bees, flies, etc., are attracted by it.");  April 26, 1856 ("The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. "); April 27, 1856 ("The white birch which I tapped in V. palmata Swamp still runs; and the holes are full of, and the base of the tree covered with, a singular sour-tasted, rather hard-crusted white (not pink) froth, and a great many of those flat beetles (?), lightning-bug-like, and flies, etc.  are sucking it."); May 13, 1856 ("Where my sap has dried on the white birch bark it has now turned a bright light red. What a variety of colors it assumes!")

Equisetum sylvaticum  [Wood horsetail or Woodland horsetail] a day or two on the ditch bank there. See   May 6, 1853 ("Equisetum sylvaticum in front of Hosmer's Gorge. ");  May 6, 1855 ("Equisetum sylvaticum, probably yesterday or day before.”);  See also April 28, 1858 ("At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. Strawberries are abundantly out.); May 10, 1857 (“This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum.”)

This remarkable winter disappears at last.

April 10

Fast-Day. — 

Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up, and also with the uncertainty I always experienced whether the shops would be shut, whether we should have an ordinary dinner, an extraordinary one, or none at all, and whether there would be more than one service at the meeting-house. This last uncertainty old folks share with me. 

This is a windy day, drying up the fields; the first we have had for a long time. 

Therien describes to me the diagonal notch he used to cut in maples and birches (not having heard of boring) and the half-round spout, cut out of chestnut or other straight-grained wood with a half-round chisel, sharped and driven into a new-moon cut made by the same tool partly sidewise to the tree. This evidently injured the trees more than the auger. 

He says they used to boil the birch down to a syrup, and he thought that the black birch would run more than any tree. 

P. M. —I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments. Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.

I reach my port, and go to Trillium Wood to get yellow birch sap. 

The Deep Cut is full of dust. 

This wind, unlike yesterday’s, has a decidedly cold vein in it. The ditch by Trillium Wood is strewn with yellowish hemlock leaves, which are still falling. 

In the still warmer and broader continuation of this ditch, south of the wood, in the southwest recess, I see three or four frogs jump in, some probably large Rana palustris, others quite small. They are in before I see them plainly, and bury themselves in the mud before I can distinguish them clearly. They were evidently sitting in the sun by that leafy ditch in that still and warm nook. Let them beware of marsh hawks. 

I saw also four yellow-spot tortoises paddling about under the leaves on the bottom there. Once they were all together. This ditch is commonly dry in the summer. 

The yellow birch sap runs very fast. I set three spouts in a tree one foot in diameter, and hung on a quart pail; then went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. When I came back, the pail was running over. This was about 3 P. M. 

Each spout dropped about as fast as my pulse, but when I left, at 4 P. M., it was not dropping so fast.

The red maples here do not run at all now, nor did they yesterday. Yet one up the Assabet did yesterday. Apparently the early maples have ceased to run. 

We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. 

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last. 

Here and there its veteran snow-banks spot the russet landscapes. In the shade of walls and north hillsides and cool hollows in the woods, it is panting its life away. I look with more than usual respect, if not with regret, on its last dissolving traces. 

Is not that a jungermannia which so adorns the golden epidermis of the yellow birch with its fine fingers? 

I boil down about two quarts of this yellow birch sap to two teaspoonfuls of a smart-tasting syrup. I stopped there; else should have boiled it all away. A slightly medicinal taste, yet not disagreeable to me. It yields but little sugar, then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1856

I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.") See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing

Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can. See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit."); 

Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”) [Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.  See Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

 I look with respect –

this remarkable winter 

disappears at last.