Light and shadows along the Concord River.

September 27

Here is a cloudy day, and now the fisherman is out. 

Some tall, many-flowered, bluish-white asters are still abundant by the brook-sides. 

I never found a pitcher-plant without an insect in it. The bristles about the nose of the pitcher all point inward, and insects which enter or fall in appear for this reason unable to get out again. It is some obstacle which our senses cannot appreciate. 

Pitcher-plants more obvious now.

***

2 P. M. Rowed down the river to Ball's Hill.

The maples by the riverside look very green yet, have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost.  Not so on the uplands.

The river is so low that, off N. Barrett's shore, some low islands are exposed, covered with a green grass like mildew. 

There are all kinds of boats chained to stumps and trees by the riverside —some from Boston and the salt — but I think that none after all is so suitable and convenient as the simple flat-bottomed and light boat that has long been made here by the farmers themselves. They are better adapted to the river than those made in Boston. 

From Ball's Hill the Great Meadows, now smoothly shorn  have a quite imposing appearance, so spacious and level. There is so little of this level land in our midst. 

There is a shadow on the sides of the hills surrounding (a cloudy day), and where the meadow meets them it is darkest. The shadow deepens down the woody hills and is most distinctly dark where they meet the meadow line. 

Now the sun in the west is coming out and lights up the river a mile off, so that it shines with a white light like a burnished silver mirror. 

The poplar tree seems quite important to the scene.

The pastures are so dry that the cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way. 

The patches of sunlight on the meadow look luridly yellow, as if flames were traversing it. 

It is a day for fishermen. 

The farmers are gathering in their corn. 

The Mikania scandens and the button-bushes and the pickerel-weed are sere and flat with frost. 

We looked down the long reach toward Carlisle Bridge. The river, which is as low as ever, still makes a more than respectable appearance here and is of generous width. 

Rambled over the hills toward Tarbell's. The huckleberry bushes appear to be unusually red this fall, reddening these hills. 

We scared a calf out of the meadow which ran like a ship tossed on the waves, over the hills toward Tarbell's. They run awkwardly , red oblong squares tossing up and down like a vessel in a storm, with great commotion.  We fell into the path, printed by the feet of the calves, with no cows' tracks. 

The note of the yellow-hammer is heard from the edges of the fields. 

The soapwort gentian looks like a flower prematurely killed by the frost. 

The soil of these fields looks as yellowish white as the corn-stalks themselves. 

Tarbell's hip roofed house looked the picture of retirement, - of cottage size, under its noble elm with its heap of apples before the door and the wood coming up within a few rods, it being far off the road. The smoke from his chimney so white and vapor-like, like a winter scene. 

The lower limbs of the willows and maples and button bushes are covered with the black and dry roots of the water-marigold and the ranunculi, plants with filiform, capillary, root-like submerged leaves.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1851

Pitcher-plants more obvious now. See September 11, 1851 ("We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation?"); September 28, 1851 ("This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant . . .These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

Here is a cloudy day, and now the fisherman is out. September 25, 1851 ("Both air and water are so transparent that the fisherman tries in vain to deceive the fish with his baits")

There are all kinds of boats chained to stumps and trees by the riverside. See October 15, 1851 ("We comment on the boats of different patterns, – dories (?), punts, bread-troughs, flatirons, etc., etc., — which we pass, the prevailing our genuine dead-river boats, not to be matched by Boston carpenters."); April 22, 1857 (“We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low.”).

Cows all feeding one way. See July 5, 1853 ("Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving forward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them.")

The farmers are gathering in their corn. See August 27, 1853 ("Topping corn now reveals the yellowing pumpkins."); September 4, 1859 ("Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins."); September 5, 1851 ("A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent."); September 14,1851 ("The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets."); September 16, 1852 ("The jay screams; the goldfinch twitters; the barberries are red. The corn is topped"); September 17, 1852 ("The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields."); October 6, 1858 ("The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight");  October 10, 1857 ("See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks of corn stalks and the standing corn. Such is the season.") See also September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast.")

We looked down the long reach toward Carlisle Bridge. See October 6, 1851 ("The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look.. . . I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln."); April 10, 1852 ("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."); August 24, 1858 ("I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water"); July 14, 1859 ("There extends from Tarbell Hill to Skelton Bend what I will call the Straight Reach, a mile and a third long and quite straight. This is the finest water view, making the greatest impression of size, of any that I know on the river.")

The soapwort gentian looks like a flower prematurely killed by the frost.  See September 6, 1857 ("Soapwort gentian, out not long."); September 8, 1852 ("Gentiana saponaria out."); September 19, 1851 ("The soapwort gentian now.");  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"); 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 (Gentiana saponaria)

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

Now the sun lights up 

the river so it shines like 

a silver mirror.  

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Light and shadows along the Concord River

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

 

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

November 16. 

9 a. m. — Sail up river to Lee's Bridge. 

Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow. A very little ice along the edges of the river, which does not all melt before night. 

Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape. 

I still see the drowned white lily pads showing their red sides. 

On the meadow side the water is very much soiled by the dashing of the waves. 

I see one duck. 

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. 

The waves run high, with white caps, and communicate a pleasant motion to the boat. 

At Lee's Cliff the Cerastium viscosum. 

We sailed up Well Meadow Brook. The water is singularly grayey, clear and cold. The bottom of the brook showing great nuphar roots, like its ribs, with some budding leaves. 

Returning, landed at Holden's Spruce Swamp. 

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1852

Muskrat-houses completed.See  October 16, 1859 (“When I get to Willow Bay I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight, as, perchance, in some countries new haystacks in the yards; as to the Esquimaux the erection of winter houses.”); November 11, 1855 ("The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”)

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. See . November 11, 1851 (“There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan's. Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light”) December 3, 1856 (“The silvery needles of the pine straining the light.")

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf. See November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract. See November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.”); November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”);  December 1, 1852 (“At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,- the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, the red ones of the blueberry”)

If you get on to a rock in the river, rock the boat.

July 18. 

One tells me that he stopped at Stedman Buttrick's on the 10th, and found him sitting under a cherry tree ringing a bell, in order to keep the birds off! 

If you get on to a rock in the river, rock the boat, while you keep steadily pushing, and thus there will be moments when the boat does not rest on the rock at all, and you will rapidly get it off. 

The river is getting low, so that the entrances to musquash-holes in the bank are revealed and often laid bare, with fresh green rushes or flags, etc., in them. 

Nathan Hosmer remembers that when the two new stone piers at Hunt's Bridge were built, about 1820, one Nutting went under water to place the stones, and he was surprised to see how long he would remain under about this business.

Nothing has got built without labor. Past generations have spent their blood and strength for us. They have cleared the land, built roads , etc., for us. In all fields men have laid down their lives for us. Men are industrious as ants. 

I find myself very heavy-headed these days. It occurs to me that probably in different states of what we call health, even in morbid states, we are peculiarly fitted for certain investigations, — we are the better able to deal with certain phenomena.

N. Barrett says that he has formerly cut six cocks of hay on his bar.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 18, 1859

If you get on to a rock in the river, rock the boat, and you will rapidly get it off. Compare August 8, 1859 ("Rice has had a little experience once in pushing a canal-boat up Concord River. Says this was the way they used to get the boat off a rock when by chance it had got on to one. If it had run quite on, so that the rock was partly under the main bottom of the boat, they let the boat swing round to one side and placed a stout stake underneath, a little aslant, with one end on the bottom of the river and the other ready to catch the bows of the boat, and while one held it, perhaps, the other pushed the boat round again with all his force, and so drove it on to the stake and lifted it up above the rock, and so it floated off.")

July 18. See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 18

A Book of 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

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen.

April 19. 

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen. 

As I go up the riverside, I see a male marsh hawk hunting. He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs, for in such a tortuous line do the frogs sit. They probably know about what time to expect his visits, being regularly decimated.

Particular hawks farm particular meadows. It must be easy for him to get a breakfast. Far as I can see with a glass, he is still tilting this way and that over the water-line. 

At Fair Haven Pond I see, half a mile off, eight large water-fowl, which I thought at first were large ducks, though their necks appeared long. Studying them patiently with a glass, I found that they had gray backs, black heads and necks with perhaps green reflections, white breasts, dark tips to tails, and a white spot about eyes on each side of bill. At first the whole bird had looked much darker, like black ducks. I did not know but they might be brant or some very large ducks, but at length inclined to the opinion that they were geese. 

At 5.30, being on the Common, I saw a small flock of geese going over northeast. Being reminded of the birds of the morning and their number, I looked again and found that there were eight of them, and probably they were the same I had seen. 

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th !!! 

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. 

Afterwards, along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. 

In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird twenty or thirty rods off. This surprised me very much. It was equally rich and varied, and yet I did not believe it to be a thrasher. Determined to find out the singer, I sat still with my glass in hand, and at length detected the singer, a goldfinch sitting within gunshot all the while. 

This was the most varied and sprightly performer of any bird I have heard this year, and it is strange that I never heard the strain before. It may be this note which is taken for the thrasher’s before the latter comes. 

P. M. — Down river. 

I find that my Rana halecina spawn in the house is considerably further advanced than that left in the meadows. The latter is not only deeper beneath the surface now, on account of the rain, but has gathered dirt from the water, so that the jelly itself is now plainly seen; and some of it has been killed, probably by frost, being exposed at the surface. I hear the same tut tut tut, probably of the halecina, still there, though not so generally as before. 

See two or three yellow lilies nearly open, showing most of their yellow, beneath the water; say in two or three days. 

Rice tells me of winging a sheldrake once just below Fair Haven Pond, and pursuing it in a boat as it swam down the stream, till it went ashore at Hubbard’s Wood and crawled into a woodchuck’s hole about a rod from the water on a wooded bank. He could see its tail and pulled it out. 

He tells of seeing cartloads of lamprey eels in the spawning season clinging to the - stones at a dam in Saco, and that if you spat on a stone and cast it into the swift water above them they would directly let go and wiggle down the stream and you could hear their tails snap like whips on the surface, as if the spittle was poison to them; but if you did not spit on the stone, they would not let go. 

He thinks that a flock of geese will sometimes stop for a wounded one to get well. 

Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? 

Hear a toad ring at 9 P. M. Perhaps I first hear them at night, though cooler, because it is still. 

R. W. E. saw an anemone on the 18th.

H.D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 19, 1858

He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs. See note to April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . .  It is looking for frogs.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. See April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey"); April 15, 1859 ("Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. See April 7, 1855 (“See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew.”)


In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird. See April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird. . . . Also a catbird mews? [Could this have been a goldfinch?]"); August 11, 1858 ("The goldfinch is a very fine and powerful singer, and the most successful and remarkable mocking-bird that we have. In the spring I heard it imitate the thrasher exactly, before that bird had arrived, and now it imitates the purple finch.");

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday. See April 27, 1860 ("Viola ovata common."); April 29, 1855 (“Viola ovata will open to-morrow.”); May 1, 1856 ("Viola ovata on southwest side of hill, high up near pines.”); May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.");  May 6, 1855 (“Beyond Clamshell, some white Viola ovata, some with a faint bluish tinge.”); May 9, 1852 (“ That I observed the first of May was a V. ovata, a variety of sagittate. [arrowhead violet]”)

Each new year is a surprise to us.

 
March 18

 7 A.M. – By river. 

Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides. You see them just hopping under the bush or into some other covert, as you go by, turning with a jerk this way and that, or they flit away just above the ground, which they resemble. It is the prettiest strain I have heard yet. 

Melvin is already out in his boat for all day, with his white hound in the prow, bound up the river for musquash, etc., but the river is hardly high enough to drive them out. 

March 18, 2018

P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Bath. 

How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields are bare and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change! 

• The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath. It is eminently soft and soothing, and, as surely as the thermometer, indicates a higher temperature. It is the accent of the south wind, its vernacular. It is modulated by the south wind. 

• The song sparrow is more sprightly, mingling its notes with the rustling of the brash along the watersides, but it is at the same time more terrene than the bluebird. 

• The first woodpecker comes screaming into the empty house and throws open doors and windows wide, calling out each of them to let the neighbors know of its return. But heard further off it is very suggestive of ineffable associations which cannot be distinctly recalled, – of long-drawn summer hours, – and thus it, also, has the effect of music. I was not aware that the capacity to hear the woodpecker had slumbered within me so long.

• When the blackbird gets to a conqueree he seems to be dreaming of the sprays that are to be and on which he is to perch. 

• The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. The song sparrow is immediately most at home of any that I have named. 

I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood. 

At Hubbard's shore, where a strong but warm westerly wind is blowing, the shore is lined for half a rod in width with pulverized ice, or “brash,” driven against it. 

At Potter's sand-hill (Bear Garden), I see, on the southeast side of the blue-curls, very distinct and regular arcs of circles (about a third of a circle), scored deep in the sand by the tops of these weeds, which have been blown about by the wind, and these marks show very surely and plainly how the wind has been blowing and with what force and flakiness. 

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood — as in the maple swamp — with a novel sound. I doubt if the same is ever heard in the winter. It apparently comes at this season, not only to dry the earth but to wake up the trees, as it were, as one would awake a sleeping man with a smart shake. Perchance they need to be thus wrung and twisted, and their sap flows the sooner for it. 

Perfectly dry sand even is something attractive now, and I am tempted to tread on and to touch it, as a curiosity. Skunks’ tracks are everywhere now, on the sand, and the little snow that is left. 

The river is still closed with ice at Cardinal Shore, so Melvin must have stopped here at least; but there is a crescent of “brash ” there, which the waves blown up-stream have made, half a dozen rods wide. It is even blown a rod on to the solid ice. The noise made by this brash undulating and grating upon itself, at a little distance, is very much like the rustling of a winrow of leaves disturbed by the winds. A little farther off it is not to be distinguished from the roar of the wind in the woods. 

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging. 

The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along, like a hen her chickens. 

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. 

It is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. It is a deeper and warmer blue than in winter, methinks. The snow is off the mountains, which seem even to have come again like the birds. 

The undulating river is a bright-blue channel between sharp-edged shores of ice retained by the willows. The wind blows strong but warm from west by north, so that I have to hold my paper tight when I write this, making the copses creak and roar; but the sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. 

But ah! the needles of the pine, how they shine, as I look down over the Holden wood and westward! Every third tree is lit with the most subdued but clear ethereal light, as if it were the most delicate frostwork in a winter morning, reflecting no heat, but only light. And as they rock and wave in the strong wind, even a mile off, the light courses up and down there as over a field of grain; i. e., they are alternately light and dark, like looms above the forest, when the shuttle is thrown between the light woof and the dark web, weaving a light article, – spring goods for Nature to wear. 

At sight of this my spirit is like a lit tree. It runs or flashes over their parallel boughs as when you play with the teeth of a comb. The pine tops wave like squirrels' tails flashing in the air. Not only osiers but pine-needles, methinks, shine in the spring, and arrowheads and railroad rails, etc., etc. Anacreon noticed the same. 

Is it not the higher sun, and cleansed air, and greater animation of nature? There is a warmer red to the leaves of the shrub oak, and to the tail of the hawk circling over them. 

I sit on the Cliff, and look toward Sudbury. I see its meeting-houses and its common, and its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk, but I never played on its common nor read the epitaphs in its graveyard, and many strangers to me dwell there. How distant in all important senses may be the town which yet is within sight! We see beyond our ordinary walks and thoughts. With a glass I might perchance read the time on its clock. How circumscribed are our walks, after all! With the utmost industry we cannot expect to know well an area more than six miles square, and yet we pretend to be travellers, to be acquainted with Siberia and Africa! 

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. There was an abundance of checkerberry, as if it were a peculiar locality for shrubby evergreens. At first the checkerberry was green, but low down the hill it suddenly became dark-red, like a different plant, as if it had been more subject to frost there, it being more frosty lower down. Where it was most turned, that part of the leaf which was protected by another overlapping it was still pure bright-green, making a pretty contrast when you lifted it. 

Eight or ten rods off I noticed an evergreen shrub with the aspect or habit of growth of the juniper, but, as it was in the woods, I already suspected it to be what it proved, the American yew, already strongly budded to bloom. This is a capital discovery. 

I have thus found the ledum and the taxus this winter and a new locality of the epigaea.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1858

The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath . . . It is modulated by the south wind. See March 9, 1852 ("I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind."); March 17, 1858 ("Hear the first bluebird. A remarkably warm and pleasant day with a south or southwest wind . . .  The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see them . . . four species of birds have all come in one day, no doubt to almost all parts of the town. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood to wake up the trees,  and their sap flows the sooner for it. See March 9, 1852 (“These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow.”)

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. See May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised  thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”) ; October 7, 1857 ("When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape.”). See also note to June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.")

The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. See March 18, 1853 ("He does not sing as yet . . . the robin and blackbird only peep and chuck at first."); March 18, 1859 ("Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind. . . and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain.") See also  February 27, 1857 (" Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. "); March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet."); March 17, 1858 ("I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin

Each new year is a surprise to us. See December 29, 1851 (" What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle.")

The sharp tinkle of a song sparrow is heard through it all. See March 18, 1857 ("I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two.”)March 18, 1852 ("I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring.”)

I have thus found the ledum this winter. See February 4, 1858 (“As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord.”)

Going by the epigaea on Fair Haven Hill, I thought I would follow down the shallow gully through the woods from it, that I might find more or something else. See September 8, 1858 ("It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.")

A new locality of the epigaea. See February 7, 1858 (“I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

The snow is off the

mountains, which seem to have come

again like the birds,

their blue scalloped rim

a deeper and warmer blue

than winter, methinks.

A spring landscape as

impossible a fortnight

ago as birdsong.

The note of each bird

remembered like a dream when

we hear it again.

How happens it that

each new year is always

a pleasing surprise?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Each new year is a surprise to us.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-580318

To hear the surging of the waves and to feel the great billows toss us.

April 22. 

April 22, 2017

Wednesday. Fair again. To Great Sudbury Meadow by boat. 

The river higher than before and rising. C. and I sail rapidly before a strong northerly wind, — no need of rowing upward, only of steering, — cutting off great bends by crossing the meadows. We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge, Hubbard's causeway, (to save the wind), and at Pole Brook (to save  distance). 

It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests. 

The world is not aware what an extensive navigation is now possible on our overflowed fresh meadows. It is more interesting and fuller of life than the sea bays and permanent ponds. 

A dozen gulls are circling over Fair Haven Pond, some very white beneath, with very long, narrow-pointed, black- tipped wings, almost regular semicircles like the new moon. As they circle beneath a white scud in this bright air, they are almost invisible against it, they are so nearly the same color. What glorious fliers! 

But few birds are seen; only a crow or two teetering along the water's edge looking for its food, with its large, clumsy head, and on unusually long legs, as if stretched, or its pants pulled up to keep it from the wet, and now flapping off with some large morsel in its bill; or robins in the same place; or perhaps the sweet song of the tree sparrows from the alders by the shore, or of a song sparrow or blackbird. The phoebe is scarcely heard. Not a duck do we see! 

All the shores have the aspect of winter, covered several inches deep with snow, and we see the shadows on the snow as in winter; but it is strange to see the green grass burning up through in warmer nooks under the walls. 

We pause or lay to from time to time, in some warm, smooth lee, under the southwest side of a wood or hill, as at Hubbard's Second Grove and opposite Weir Hill, pushing through saturated snow like ice on the surface of the water. There we lie awhile amid the bare alders, maples, and willows, in the sun, see the expanded sweet-gale and early willows and the budding swamp pyrus looking up drowned from beneath. 

As we lie in a broad field of meadow wrack, — floating cranberry leaves and finely bruised meadow-hay, — a wild medley — countless spiders are hastening over the water. We pass a dozen boats sunk at their moorings, at least at one end, being moored too low. 

Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore and was apparently chilled by the cold. Was it not Storer's "little brown snake?" It had a flat body. 

Frank Smith lives in a shanty on the hill near by. 

At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. 

Some very fresh brown fungi on an alder, tender and just formed one above another, flat side up, while those on the birch are white and flat side down. They soon dry white and hard. This melting snow makes a great crop of fungi. 

Turritis stricta, nearly out (in two or three days).

Observed the peculiar dark lines on a birch (Betula populifolia) at the insertion of the branches, regular cones like volcanoes in outline, the part included grayish-brown and wrinkled, edged by broad heavy dark lines. There are as many of these very regular cones on the white ground of a large birch as there are branches. They are occasioned by the two currents of growth, that of the main trunk and that of the branch (which last commenced several inches lower near the centre of the tree), meeting and being rucked or turned up at the line of contact like a surge, exposing the edges of the inner bark there, decayed and dark, while the bark within the lines approaches the darker color of the limb. The larger were six or seven inches high by as much in width at the bottom. You observe the same manner of growth in other trees. That portion of the bark below the limb obeys the influence of the limb and endeavors to circle about it, but soon encounters the growth of the main stem. There are interesting figures on the stem of a large white birch, arranged spirally about it. 

The river has risen several inches since morning, so that we push over Hubbard Bridge causeway, where we stuck in the morning.

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

We have to roll our boat over the road at the stone bridge .See April 22, 1852 ("The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge, so that there is now only the Boston road open") and note to May 28, 1854 (“This spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast.”)

The sweet song of the tree sparrows from the alders by the shore, See April 22, 1855 ("Tree sparrows still . . .  about with their buntingish head and faint chirp.") See also  April 27, 1855 (" I hear the sweet warble of a tree sparrow in the yard") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

It is worth the while to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us . . . See April 29, 1856 (“They gurgle under my stern, in haste to fill the hollow which I have created. The waves seem to leap and roll like porpoises, with a slight surging sound when their crests break, and I feel an agreeable sense that I am swiftly gliding over and through them . . .It is pleasant, exhilarating, to feel the boat tossed up a little by them from time to time.”); April 14, 1856 ("The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting. “);  May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”); April 10, 1852 ("It is pleasant, now that we are in the wind, to feel the chopping sound when the boat seems to fall upon the successive waves which it meets at right angles or in the eye of the wind.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sailing

Rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore.  See  April 2, 1857 (" I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life."); April 12, 1858 (“We came upon a partridge standing on the track, between the rails over which the cars had just passed. She had evidently been run down, but. . . was apparently more disturbed in mind than body. I took her up and carried her one side to a safer place.”);July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. "); August 28, 1854 (“The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time. . . — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun. I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.”); December 31, 1857 ("Found . . .a bull frog. . . It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into,") See also April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one."); April 29, 1858 ("Noticed a man killing, on the sidewalk by Minott's, a little brown snake")

At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. 
See April 22, 1855 ("The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. ") See also  April 8, 1859 ("The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit?") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

I hear the croaking frogs

April 5. 

Sunday. 

Arthur R. has been decking a new Vineyard boat which he has bought, and making a curb about the open part.  

P. M. —-Walked round by the ruins of the factory. See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris in rather low ground, about the still standing withered stems. It was well called husk-root by the squaw. 

Arthur says that he just counted, at 9.30 P. M., twenty toads that had hopped out from under the wall on to the sidewalk near the house. This, then, is apparently the way with the toads. They very early hop out from under walls on to sidewalks in the warmer nights, long before they are heard to ring, and are often frozen and then crushed there. Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. 

I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M., also the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock, whose other strain he has already heard.

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



See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris . . . See June 26, 1856 (I had been expecting to find the aletris about New Bedford . . ."')

Frozen toads. . . .Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. See April 5, 1860 ("I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to.");See also  April 2, 1857 ("On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture.");  April 6, 1860 ("A toad has been seen dead on the sidewalk, flattened.")

I hear the croaking frogs. See March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking...) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular. . ."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,");  April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

I hear the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock. See April 5, 1855 ("Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge ") See also March 28, 1854 ("See this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock."); I. April 22, 1860 ("It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

Walden open today.

March 29.

P.M. — To Walden and river.

Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.

Cross through the woods to my boat under Fair Haven Hill. How empty and silent the woods now, before leaves have put forth or thrushes and warblers are come! Deserted halls, floored with dry leaves, where scarcely an insect stirs as yet.

Taking an average of eight winters, it appears that Walden is frozen about ninety-eight days in the year.

When I have put my boat in its harbor, I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. They are not red-wings, and by their size they make me think of crow blackbirds, yet on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same ?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1857

Walden open today. See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”); March 20, 1853 ("It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. The wind ... raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. It is the contrast between life and death. There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy.");   March 26, 1857 ("Walden is already on the point of breaking up. In the shallow bays it is melted six or eight rods out, and the ice looks dark and soft.”); March 28, 1858 (“Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night.”); March 29, 1855 ("As I stand on Heywood’s Peak, looking over Walden, more than half its surface already sparkling blue water, I inhale with pleasure the cold but wholesome air like a draught of cold water”); March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.”);  March 29, 1859 ("Walden is first clear after to-day.”);  March 31, 1855 ("Yesterday the earth was simple to barrenness, and dead, —bound out. Out-of-doors there was nothing but the wind and the withered grass and the cold though sparkling blue water, and you were driven in upon yourself. Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth... We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life. Looking from the Cliffs I see that Walden is open to-day first."); April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th.“)

In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April;

in '46, the 25th of March;
in '47, the 8th of April;
in '51, the 28th of March;
in '52, the 18th of April;
in '53, the 23rd of March;
in '54, about the 7th of April. ~ Walden.

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

March 29. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 29