Gathering wood

September 26.

Go up Assabet for fuel. One old piece of oak timber looks as if it had been a brace in a bridge. I get up oak rails here and there, almost as heavy as lead, and leave them to dry somewhat on the bank. Stumps, partially burned, which were brought by the freshet from some newly cleared field last spring; bleached oak trees which were once lopped for a fence; alders and birches which the river ice bent and broke by its weight last spring. It is pretty hard and dirty work. 

It grieves me to see how rapidly some great trees which have fallen or been felled waste away when left on the ground. There was the large oak by the Assabet, which I remember to have been struck by lightning, and afterward blown over, being dead. It used to lie with its top down-hill and partly in the water and its butt far up. Now there is no trace of its limbs, and the very core of its trunk is the only solid part, concealed within a spongy covering. Soon only a richer mould will mark the spot.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1855

Go up Assabet for fuel. See  September 24, 1855 ("Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus");  September 25. 1857 (Brought home my first boat-load of wood.");  October 21, 1857 ("I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best.")

Thoreau wrote to Blake: "Mr. Ricketson of New Bedford has just made me a visit of a day and a half, and I have had a quite good time with him. He and Charming have got on particularly well together . He is a man of very simple tastes, notwithstanding his wealth ; a lover of nature ; but, above all, singularly frank and plain-spoken . I think that you might enjoy meeting him. . . . I have just got a letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there." Letters to Blake, September 26, 1855.  See September 29, 1855 ("Go to Daniel Ricketson’s, New Bedford")

A very bright and pleasant fall day.

September 24.

P. M. — Up river to Conantum with C. 

A very bright and pleasant fall day. 

The button bushes pretty well browned with frost (though the maples are but just beginning to blush), their pale yellowish season past. 

Nowadays remark the more the upright and fresh green phalanxes of bulrushes when the pontederias are mostly prostrate. The river is perhaps as low as it has been this year. 

Hardly can I say a bird sings, except a slight warble, perhaps, from some kind of migrating sparrow. Was it a tree sparrow, not seen? 

The slender white spikes of the Polygonum hydropiperoides and the rose-colored ones of the front-rank kind, and rarely of the P. amphibium, look late and cool over the water. 

See some kalmiana lilies still freshly bloomed. 

Above the Hubbard Bridge we see coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks, with a silveriness to the under sides of their wings in the light. At first they were in form like a flock of blackbirds, then for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow. 

Some still raking, others picking, cranberries. 

I suppose it was the solitary sandpiper (Totanus solitarius) which I saw feeding at the water’s edge on Cardinal Shore, like a snipe. It was very tame; we did not scare it even by shouting. I walked along the shore to within twenty-five feet of it, and it still ran toward me in feeding, and when I flushed it, it flew round and alighted between me and C., who was only three or four rods off. It was about as large as a snipe; had a bluish dusky bill about an inch and a quarter long, apparently straight, which it kept thrusting into the shallow water with a nibbling motion, a perfectly white belly, dusky-green legs; bright brown and black above, with duskier wings. When it flew, its wings, which were uniformly dark, hung down much, and I noticed no white above, and heard no note.

Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel, —-one oak rail, on which fishers had stood in wet ground at Bittern Cliff, a white pine rider (?) with a square hole in [it] made by a woodpecker anciently, so wasted the sap as to leave the knots projecting, several chestnut rails; and I obtained behind Cardinal Shore a large oak stump which I know to have been bleaching there for more than thirty years, with three great gray prongs sprinkled with lichens. It bore above the marks of the original burning. There was a handful of hazel nuts under it emptied by the ground (?) squirrel, a pretty large hole in the rough and thin stem end of each, where the bur was attached. Also, at Clamshell Hill Shore, a chestnut boat-post with a staple in it, which the ice took up last winter, though it had an arm put through it two feet underground. Some much decayed perhaps old red maple stumps at Hubbard’s Bath Place. 

It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus. How much better than to buy a cord coarsely from a farmer, seeing that I get my money’s worth! Then it only affords me a momentary satisfaction to see the pile tipped up in the yard. 

Now I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. Each has its history, of which I am reminded when I come to burn it, and under what circumstances I found it. 

Got home late. C. and I supped together after our work at wooding, and talked it over with great appetites.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1855

Button bushes ... browned with frost. See September 24, 1854 ("the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, ")

Solitary sandpiper. See May 26, 1855 ("See to-day (and saw the 23d) a larger peetweet like bird on the shore, with longer, perhaps more slender, wings, black or blackish without white spots; all white beneath; and when it goes off it flies higher. ")

Driftwood scented with muskrats.

September 22.

Many tortoise-scales about the river now.

Some of my driftwood — floating rails, etc. — are scented with muskrats; have been their perches; and also covered with a thick clear slime or jelly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1855

Many tortoise-scales about the river now.  See September 15, 1855 ("See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs.")

Some of my driftwood are scented with muskrats; and also covered with a thick clear slime or jelly.  See March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. He has left some scentless jelly-like substance").

Cold and windy – osiers surprise me.

March 25

Cold and windy.

Down river in boat to Great Meadows. Freezes on oars. Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills.

March 25, 2017

Got a boat-load of driftwood, — rails, bridge timber, planks, etc.

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds.

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?

Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color; at least they surprise me at a distance by their green passing through yellowish to red at top.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1854

Too cold and windy almost for ducks. They are in the smoother open water (free from ice) under the lee of hills. See  March 21, 1854 ("At sunrise to Clamshell Hill . . .Think I should find ducks cornered up by the ice; they get behind this hill for shelter. Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them. ");March 22, 1854 ("Still very cold . . . Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. ");.March 24, 1854 ("The same ducks under Clamshell Hill "); March 25, 1858 ("Cold northwest wind as yesterday and day before . . .There are so many sportsmen out that the ducks have no rest); and see March 28, 1858 ("Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward.. . . It is a wildlife that is associated with stormy and blustering weather"); .March 29, 1858 ("I infer that waterfowl travel in pleasant weather") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal? See March 18, 1855 ("Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal"); March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

I am almost certain osiers have acquired a fresher color. See February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations,is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season"); March 14, 1856 ("They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year,. . . Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen."); March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for."); March 22, 1854("C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow."); March 24, 1855 ("I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Willow osiers

surprise me at a distance –

green yellowish red!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Willow Osiers Surprise Me

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

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