December 3.
P. M. - Up river by boat to Clamshell Hill.
Saw two tree sparrows on Monroe's larch by the waterside. Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash.
They were busily and very adroitly picking the seeds out of the larch cones. It would take man's clumsy fingers a good while to get at one, and then only by breaking off the scales, but they picked them out as rapidly as if they were insects on the outside of the cone, uttering from time to time a faint, tinkling chip.
I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank, pushing the sand behind them into the water. So they dig these now as places of retreat merely, or for the same purpose as the cabins, apparently.
One I explored this afternoon was formed in a low shore (Hubbard's Bathing-Place), at a spot where there were no weeds to make a cabin of, and was apparently never completed, perhaps because the shore was too low.
The ranunculus is still a fresh bright green at the bottom of the river. It is the evergreen of the river, and indeed resembles the common running evergreen (Lycopodium, I think it is called).
I see along the sides of the river, two to four inches above the surface but all at one level, clear, drop shaped crystals of ice, either held up by some twig or hanging by a dead vine of climbing mikania. They are the remains of a thin sheet of ice, which melted as the river went down, and in drops formed around and ran down these cores and again froze, and, being thicker than the surrounding ice, have outlasted it.
At J. Hosmer's tub spring, I dug out a small bull frog (?) in the sandy mud at the bottom of the tub — it was lively enough to hop — and brought it home. Probably they lie universally buried in the mud now, below the reach of frost.
In a ditch near by, under ice half an inch thick, I saw a painted tortoise moving about.
The frogs then are especially to be looked for in the mud about springs.
It is remarkable how much power I can exert through the undulations which I produce by rocking my boat in the middle of the river. Some time after I have ceased I am surprised to hear the sound of the undulations which have just reached the shores acting on the thin ice there and making a complete wreck of it for a long distance up and down the stream, cracking off pieces four feet wide and more.
I have stirred up the river to do this work, a power which I cannot put to rest. The secret of this power appears to lie in the extreme mobility, or, as I may say, irritability, of this element.
It is the principle of the roller, or of an immense weight moved by a child on balls, and the momentum is tremendous.
Some of the clamshells, freshly opened by the muskrats and left lying on their half-sunken cabins, where they are kept wet by the waves, show very handsome rainbow tints.
I examined one such this afternoon. The hinge of the shell was not broken, and I could discover no injury to the shell, except a little broken off the edges at the broadest end, as if by the teeth of the rat in order to get hold, insert its incisors.
The fish is confined to the shell by strong muscles at each end of each valve, and the rat must dissolve the union between both of these and one side of the shell before he can get it open, unless the fish itself opens it, which perhaps it cannot wide enough. I could not open one just dead without separating the muscle from the shell. The growth of the mussels shell appears to be in somewhat concentric layers or additions to a small shell or eye.
The clam which I brought home the 30th ult., and left outdoors by mistake, I now find frozen to death.
J. Hosmer told me the other day that he had seen a man eat many of these clams raw and relish them.
It is a somewhat saddening reflection that the beautiful colors of this shell for want of light cannot be said to exist, until its inhabitant has fallen a prey to the spoiler, and it is thus left a wreck upon the strand. Its beauty then beams forth, and it remains a splendid cenotaph to its departed tenant, symbolical of those radiant realms of light to which the latter has risen, - what glory he has gone to.
And, by the way, as long as they remain in “the dark unfathomed caves of ocean," they are not “gems of purest ray serene,” though fitted to be, but only when they are tossed up to light.
Probably the muskrat inserts his incisors between the edges of the shells (and so crumbles them) in order to pry them open.
Some of these shells at Clamshell Hill, whose contents were cooked by the Indians, are still entire, but separated.
Wood has spread a great many loads over his land.
People would be surprised to learn what quantities of these shellfish are annually consumed by the muskrat.
Their shells help convert the meadow mud or river sediment into food for plants.
The Indians generally — I have particularly observed it in the case of the Penobscots —make a very extensive use of the muskrat for food, and from these heaps it would seem that they used the fresh-water clam extensively also, – these two peculiarly indigenous animals.
What if it were calculated how often a muskrat rises to his stool on the surface of the ice with a mussel in his mouth and ejects the tenant, taking the roof? It is as if the occupant had not begun to live until the light, with whatever violence, is let into its shell with these magical results.
It is rather a resurrection than a death. These beaming shells, with the tints of the sky and the rainbow commingled, suggest what pure serenity has occupied it.
Look at the trees, bare or rustling with sere brown leaves, except the evergreens, their buds dormant at the foot of the leaf-stalks. Look at the fields, russet and withered, and the various sedges and weeds with dry bleached culms. Such is our relation to nature at present; such plants are we. We have no more sap nor verdure nor color now.
I remember how cheerful it has been formerly to sit around a fire outdoors amid the snow, and, while I felt some cold, to feel some warmth also, and see the fire gradually increasing and prevailing over damp, steaming and dripping logs and making a warm hearth for me.
When I see even these humble clamshells lying open along the riverside, displaying some blue, or violet, or rainbow tints, I am reminded that some pure serenity has occupied them.
(I sent two and a half bushels of my cranberries to Boston and got four dollars for them.)
There the clam dwells within a little pearly heaven of its own.
But even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer and a serene inward life, not destitute of warmth and melody. Only the cold evergreens wear the aspect of summer now and shelter the winter birds.
Layard discovers sculptured on a slab at Kouyunjik ( Nineveh ) machines for raising water which I perceive correspond exactly to our New England well-sweeps, except that in the former case the pole is “balanced on a shaft of masonry.” He observes that it is “still generally used for irrigation in the East, as well as in south ern Europe, and called in Egypt a shadoof.”
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1853
Two tree sparrows . . . with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash. See
December 3, 1855 ("Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow. "); see also
December 4, 1856 ("Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white-barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf.") And also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
the Tree Sparrow;
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
Winter Birds
I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank. See December 3, 1852 ("The muskrats' cabins are an ornament to the river . . . Could not the architect take a hint from the pyramidal or conical form of the muskrat's house? Something of this form and color, like a large haycock in the meadow, would be in harmony with the scenery."); see also
November 11, 1855 (" 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. ");. . December 8, 1853 ("I observe a place on the shore where a small circle of the withered grass was feathered white with frost, and, putting down my hand, felt the muskrat's hole in the bank which was concealed to my eye.") And also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
the Musquash
I am surprised to hear the sound of the undulations which have just reached the shores acting on the thin ice there and making a complete wreck of it. See November 14, 1855 ("The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there.")
But even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer. See
November 12, 1853 ("I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.");
November 27, 1853 ("Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow; but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now.")
