The ice was very thin, and the holes were perfect disks.

November 19.

Old Mr. Joseph Hosmer, who helped me to-day, said that he used to know all about the lots, but since they’ve chopped off so much, and the woods have grown up, he finds himself lost.

Thirty or forty years ago, when he went to meeting, he knew every face in the meeting-house, even the boys and girls, they looked so much like their parents; but after ten or twelve years they would have outgrown his knowledge entirely (they would have altered so), but he knew the old folks still, because they held their own and didn't alter.

Just so he could tell the boundaries of the old wood which hadn't been cut down, but the young wood altered so much in a few years that he couldn't tell anything about it.

When I asked him why the old road which went by this swamp was so roundabout, he said he would answer me as Mr. __ did him in a similar case once, “Why, if they had made it straight, they wouldn't have left any room for improvement."

Standing by Harrington's pond-hole in the swamp, which had skimmed over, we saw that there were many holes through the thin black ice, of various sizes, from a few inches to more than a foot in diameter, all of which were perfectly circular.

Mr. H. asked me if I could account for it.

As we stood considering, we jarred the boggy ground and made a dimple in the water, and this accident, we thought, betrayed the cause of it; i.e. the circular wavelets so wore off the edges of the ice when once a hole was made.

The ice was very thin, and the holes were perfect disks.

But what jarred the ground and shook the water?

Perhaps the wind which shook the spruce and pine trees which stood in the quaking ground, as well as the little life in the water itself, and the wind on the ice and water itself.

There was a more permanent form created by the dimple, but not yet a shellfish.



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

Harrington's pond-hole in the swamp.(aka Harrington’s Mud-hole Harrington’s Pool) -- This boggy pool on the north edge of the Ministerial Swamp is/was notable for its uncommon bog plants – such as Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) and Black Spruce (Picea mariana) ~ Thoreau Place Names A Guide to Place Names in Concord and Lincoln, MA in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau compiled by Ray Angelo.  See November 24, 1851 ("Found on the south side of the swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen"); August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.")

Lee House, circa 1650, burns

February 15.

About the 1st of January, when I was surveying the Lee farm, Captain Elwell, the proprietor, asked me how old I thought the house was. I looked into Shattuck's History and found that, according to him, "Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656. His farm, estimated at three hundred and fifty acres, lay between the two rivers, and descended to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, whose posterity successively held it for more than one hundred years. . . . He d. June 16, 1701." (Vide page 389.) 

Shattuck says that the principal sachem of our Indians, Tahattawan, lived "near Nahshawtuck hill." Shattuck (page 28) says that the celebrated Waban originally lived in Concord, and he describes Squaw Sachem and John Tahattawan, son of Tahattawan, as Musketaquid Indians. In 1684 " Mantatukwet, a Christian Indian of Natick, aged 70 years or there abouts," according to the Register at Cambridge, de posed "that about 50 years since he lived within the bounds of that place which is now called Concord, at the foot of an hill, named Nahshawtuck, now in the possession of Mr. Henry Woodis," etc. (page 7). A vote of Henry Woodies in 1654 is mentioned. Under date 1666, Shattuck finds in the South Quarter, among the names of the town at that time, "Henry Woodhouse 1 [lot] 360 [acres]," etc. 

When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i. e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester. (It took fire and came near being destroyed in the night of the previous December 18th, early in morning. I was the first to get there from town.) In the course of the forenoon of yesterday I walked up to the site of the house, whither many people were flocking, on foot and in carriages. There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night. 

On my way I met Abel Hunt, to whom I observed that it was perhaps the oldest house in town. "No," said he, "they saw the date on it during the fire, — 1707." 

When I arrived I inquired where the date had been seen, and read it for myself on the chimney, but there was too much smouldering fire to permit of my approaching it nearly. I was interested in the old elm near the southeast corner of the house, which I found had been a mere shell a few years since, now filled up with brick. Flood, who has lived there, told me that Wheeler asked his advice with regard to that tree, — whether he could do better than lay the axe at its root. F. told him that he had seen an ash in the old country which was in the same condition, and is a tenderer tree than an " elum,"  preserved by being filled up, and with masonry, and then cemented over. 

So, soon after, the mason was set to work upon it under his directions, Flood having scraped out all the rotten wood first with a hoe. The cavity was full three feet wide and eight or ten high commencing at the ground. The mason had covered the bricks and rounded off with mortar, which he had scored with his trowel so that [one] did not observe but it was bark. It seemed an admirable plan, and not only improved the appearance but the strength and durability of the tree. 

This morning (the 15th), it having rained in the night, and thinking the fire would be mostly out, I made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. By laying down boards on the bricks and cinders, which were quite too hot to tread on and covered a smothered fire, I was able to reach the chimney. 

The inscription was on the east side of the east chimney (which had fallen), at the bottom, in a cupboard on the west side of the late parlor, which was on a level with the ground on the east and with the cellar on the extreme west and the cellar kitchen on the north. There was a narrow lower (milk) cellar south and southeast of it, and an equally lower and narrower cellar east of it, under the parlor. This side of the chimney was perhaps fifteen feet from the east side of the house and as far from the north side. The inscription was in a slight recess in the chimney three feet four inches wide and a little more in height up and down, as far as I could see into the pile of bricks, thus : —

It appeared to have been made by the finger or a stick, in the mortar when fresh, which had been spread an inch to an inch and a quarter thick over the bricks, and, where it was too dry and hard, to have been pecked with the point of a trowel. The first three words and the " 16 " were perfectly plain, the " 5 " was tolerably plain, though some took it for a three, but I could feel it yet more distinctly. The mortar was partly knocked off the rest, apparently by this fire, but the top of some capital letter like a "C," and the letters "netty" were about as plain as represented, and the rest looked like " Henry " (Woodhouse ?) or " l (t ?) kinry " ( ?) the " y " ( ?) at end being crowded for want of room next the side. These last two words quite uncertain. 

The surface of this recess was slightly swelling or bulging, somewhat like the outside of an oven, and above it the chimney was sloped and rounded off to the narrower shaft of it. The letters were from two and one half to three inches long and one eighth to one half inch deep. This chimney, as well as the more recent westerly one, had been built chiefly with clay mortar, and I brought away a brick, of a soft kind, eight and seven eighths inches — some nine — long, four and one fourth plus wide, varying one fourth, and two and one half thick, though there were some much smaller near it, probably not so old. The clay (for mortar) was about as hard as mortar on it. The mortar in which the inscription was made contained considerable straw (?) and some lumps of clay, now crumbling like sand, with the lime and sand. The outside was white, but the interior ash-colored. 

I discovered that the mortar of the inscription was not so old as the chimney, for the bricks beneath it, over which it was spread, were covered with soot, uniformly to the height of seven or eight feet, and the mortar fell off with an eighth of an inch thickness of this soot adhering to it, as if the recess had been a fireplace mortared over. 

I have just been reading the account of Dr. Ball's sufferings on the White Mountains. Of course, I do not wonder that he was lost. I should say: Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass; salt pork and hard-bread and salt; fish-hooks and lines; a good jack-knife, at least, if not a hatchet, and perhaps a gun; matches in a vial stopped water-tight; some strings and paper. 

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion, though in the midst of cities, else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. 

HOW TO CATCH A PIG 

If it is a wild shoat, do not let him get scared; shut up the dogs and keep mischievous boys and men out of the way. Think of some suitable inclosure in the neighborhood, no matter if it be a pretty large field, if it chances to be tightly fenced; and with the aid of another prudent person give the pig all possible opportunities to enter it. Do not go very near him nor appear to be driving him, only let him avoid you, persuade him to prefer that inclosure. If the case is desperate and it is necessary, you may make him think that you wish him to anywhere else but into that field, and he will be pretty sure to go there. Having got him into that inclosure and put up the fence, you can contract it at your leisure. When you have him in your hands, if he is obstinate, do not try to drive him with a rope round one leg. Spare the neighbors' ears and your pig's feelings, and put him into a cart or wheelbarrow. 

The brick above described appears to be of the same size with those of Governor Craddock's house in Medford, said to have been built in 1634 and measured by Brooks. (Vide Book of Facts.) It is remarkable that though Elwell, the last occupant of this house, never has seen this inscription, it being in this obscure nook in the cellar, the inscriber's purpose is served, for now nothing stands but the other chimney and the foundation of this, and the inscription is completely exposed to the daylight and to the sun, and far more legible even a rod or two off than it could have been when made. 

There it is, staring all visitors in the face, on that clear space of mortar just lifted above the mouldering ruins of the chimney around it. Yesterday you could not get within a rod of it, but distinctly read it over the furnace of hot bricks and coals. I brought away a brick and a large flake of the mortar with letters on it, but it crumbled in my hands, and I was reminded of the crumbling of some of the slabs of Nineveh in the hands of Layard as soon as brought to light, and felt a similar grief because I could not transport it entire to a more convenient place than that scorching pile, or even lay the crumbling mass down, without losing forever the outlines and the significance of those yet undeciphered words. But I laid it down, of necessity, and that was the end of it. 

There was our sole Nineveh slab, perhaps the oldest engraving in Concord. [No; some gravestones are undoubtedly older.] 

Webster prided himself on being the first farmer in the south parish of Marshfield, but if he was the first they must have been a sorry set, for his farming was a complete failure. It cost a great deal more than it came to. He used other people's capital, and was insolvent when he died, so that his friends and relatives found it difficult to retain the place, if indeed they have not sold it. How much cheaper it would have been for the town or county to have maintained him in the alms house than as a farmer at large! How many must have bled annually to manure his broad potato-fields, who without inconvenience could have contributed sufficient to maintain him in the almshouse!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1857

February 14. February 15. February 16

The Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up . . . tI made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. See February 16, 1857 ("To Lee house site again . . .The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650,"); February 17, 1857 ("The bricks of the old [Lee]chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick . . .E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house."); February 27, 1857 ("I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house!")

historical assessmetnt form Tanglewood drive ( this land with a long history with the Woodis and Lee families going back to the 1660s.  The Lee farm and nearby Conant farm were favorite spots of Thoreau, who visited in all seasons to view the landscape from Conantum and Fairhaven Hill and to walk “Lee’s Cliff” where he had gone as a boy for picnics with his family. Thoreau named the area Conantum in about 1845, while living on Walden Pond and writing the first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He wrote, “There is a pleasant track on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my mind; -- the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,--places where one may have many thoughts and not decide anything.”)

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion. . . else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. See January 9, 1855 ("Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow."); March 29, 1853 ("We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, . . .Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")

Bog Laurel!

January 9.

 January 9, 2015

A cloudy day, threatening snow; wet under foot. 

How pretty the evergreen radical shoots of the St. John’s-wort now exposed, partly red or lake, various species of it. Have they not grown since fall? I put a stone at the end of one to try it. A little wreath of green and red lying along on the muddy ground amid the melting snows. 

I am attracted at this season by the fine bright-red buds of the privet andromeda, sleeping couchant along the slender light-brown twigs. They look brightest against a dark ground.

Walk up on the river a piece above the Holden Swamp, though there are very few places where I can get on to it, it has so melted along the shore and on the meadows. The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots.

This winter I hear the axe in almost every wood of any consequence left standing in the township.

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 very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.

Very delicate evergreen opposite linear leaves, strongly revolute, somewhat reddish-green above, the blossom-buds quite conspicuous. The whole aspect more tender and yellowish than the Andromeda Polifolia. The pretty little blossom-buds arranged crosswise in the axils of the leaves as you look down on them.

(Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 9, 1855


Andromeda calyculata is the leather-leaf or dwarf Cassandra (Chamaedaphne calculata). 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

Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust . . ., I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. See  July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. "); February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc")

This winter I hear the axe in almost every wood of any consequence left standing in the township. See December 19, 1851 ("In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper's axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year, men having come out for fuel to the forests, as if men had stolen forth in the arctic night to get fuel to keep their fires a-going.") January 8, 1852 ("Even as early as 3 o'clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor."); January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever. . . Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!"); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?"). 

Lost on the water. Nantucket.

December 29

Nantucket to Concord at 7.30 A. M. 

Still in mist. The fog was so thick that we were lost on the water; stopped and sounded many times. The clerk said the depth varied from three to eight fathoms between the island and Cape. 

Whistled and listened for the locomotive’s answer, but probably heard only the echo of our own whistle at first, but at last the locomotive’s whistle and the life-boat bell.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1854

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

Getting lost

August 15.

Walk all day with Channing, northwest into Acton and Carlisle. 

A dog-day, comfortably cloudy and cool as well as still. 

The river meadows, where no mowing, have a yellowish and autumnal look.  

I see large flocks of bobolinks on the Union Turnpike. 

Ford the Assabet at the bathing-place. 

Panicled cornel berries on College Road. 

Many of the trees in Barrett's orchard on Annursnack touch the ground all around, weighed down with fruit.

Cross from top of Annursnack to top of Strawberry Hill.  The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell. 

From Strawberry Hill we steer northeast toward the east point of a wood in the direction of Hutchinson's, perhaps two miles off.

Before starting on this walk I had studied the map to discover a new walk, and decided to go through a large wooded tract west and northwest of the Paul Dudley house, where there was no road, there at last to strike east across the head of Spencer Brook Meadow, perhaps to the old Carlisle road.

A mile and a half northeast of Strawberry Hill, keeping on through a somewhat swampy upland, we fall  into a path, which Channing preferring, though it leads us through woods widely out of our course westward. 

I soon correct it, and, descending through swampy land, at length see through the trees and bushes into a small meadow completely surrounded by woods, in which is a man haying only eight or ten rods off. 

Soon after, we follow an indistinct path through a dense birch wood, leading quite out of our course, westward.

At length, when I endeavor to correct my course by compass, it points so that I lose my faith in it, and we continue to go out of our way, till we come out on a side-hill immediately overlooking a stream and mill and several houses and a small mill-pond. 

We are completely lost, and see not one familiar object. 

At length see steeples which we think Westford, but the monument proves it Acton. Take their bearings, calculate a new course, and pursue it at first east-northeast, then east, and finally southeast, along rocky hillsides covered with weeds, where the fall seems further advanced than in Concord, with more autumnal colors, through dense oak woods and scrub oak, across a road or two, over some pastures, through a swamp or two, where the cinnamon fern is as high as our heads.   

After travelling about five miles, for the most part in woods, without knowing where we are, we come out on a hill from which we see, far to the south, the open valley at head of Spencer Brook.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 15, 1854

A large flocks of bobolinks... See August 15, 1852 ("I see a dense, compact flock of bobolinks going off in the air over a field. They cover the rails and alders, and go rustling off with a brassy, tinkling note as I approach, revealing their yellow breasts and bellies. This is an autumnal sight, that small flock of grown birds in the afternoon sky.")

Cross from top of Annursnack to top of Strawberry Hill.  See September 6, 1851  ("From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight, glimpse of Nagog Pond by standing up on the wall. That is enough to relate of a hill, methinks, that its elevation gives you the first sight of some distant lake.")

We are completely lost, . See March 29, 1853 ("It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night")

August 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Just after sunrise and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 15

Far in the southwest

the locomotive whistle

sounds like a bell.

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

A peculiar light

July 23

July 23, 2014

There is a peculiar light reflected from the shorn fields, as later in the fall, when rain and coolness have cleared the air. Hazel leaves in dry places have begun to turn yellow and brown. 

I see broods of partridges later than the others, now the size of the smallest chickens.   

The white orchis at same place, four or five days at least; spike one and three quarters by three inches. 

Small flocks of song sparrows rustle along the walls and fences.  

See a thunder-cloud coming up in northwest, but as I walk and wind in the woods, lose the points of compass and cannot tell whether it is travelling this way or not. At length the sun is obscured by its advance guard, but, as so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1854

I see broods of partridges later than the others, now the size of the smallest chickens. See June 26, 1857 ("See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least."); July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails.");
 July 7, 1854 ("Disturb two broods of partridges this afternoon, — one a third grown, flying half a dozen rods over the bushes, yet the old, as anxious as ever, rushing to me with the courage of a hen."); July 10, 1854 ("Partridge, young one third grown.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

The white orchis . . . spike one and three quarters by three inches. See August 8, 1858 (" I find at Ledum Swamp, near the pool, the white fringed orchis, quite abundant but past prime, only a few, yet quite fresh. It seems to belong to this sphagnous swamp and is some fifteen to twenty inches high, quite conspicuous, its white spike, amid the prevailing green. The leaves are narrow, half folded, and almost insignificant. It loves, then, these cold bogs"); August 11, 1852 ("Platanthera blephariglottis, white fringed orchis.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Fringed Orchis

See a thunder-cloud coming up in northwest. See July 20, 1854 ("A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning."); July 24, 1854 ("Now, at 2 p. m., I hear again the loud thunder and see the dark cloud in the west.")

As I walk and wind in the woods, lose the points of compass. See March 29, 1853 ("Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction.")

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

But, as so often, 

the rain comes, leaving thunder 

and lightning behind.

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

Amid the red shirts of the lumbermen

September 20.

There was one woman on board, who got in at the Kineo House, who looked oddly in the one saloon for gentlemen and ladies, amid the red shirts of the lumbermen. It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer. We had a small sloop in tow, and another stopped to speak with us, to inquire after a man who was missing. 

A fortnight before, he had left his horse and carriage at Sawyer's, saying that he was going to get a moose and should be back in two days. He set out in a birch alone from the south end of the lake. At length they had sent the horse home, which brought on his friends, who were now looking for him and feared that he was lost in the lake. It was not very wise to set out in a canoe from the south end of the lake to kill a moose in two days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1853

The vastness and strangeness of nature.

March 29.

It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night. 

Sometimes in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you that you have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but it is as strange to you as if it were in Tartary. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater.

We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, and if we go beyond our usual course we still preserve the bearing of some neighboring cape, and not till we are completely lost or turned round, - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. 

Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. 

A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1853

To be lost... See Walden, The Village ("Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”)

The mysterious relation between myself and these things: see May 1850 ("It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is"); November 21, 1850 ("What are these things?"); February 14, 1851 ("What are these things?");September 7, 1851 ("We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery"); August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?"); November 30, 1858 ("I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream");November 22, 1860 ("...and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.”)

[N]ot till we are completely lost or turned round . . . do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. . . . [N]ot till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. See 1850 (“What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?”) See also

The Maine Woods ("daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”)

The Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet. See  A Book of the Seasons: at the Leaning Hemlocks

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

March 29. 6 A. M. — To Leaning Hemlocks, by boat. 

The sun has just risen, but there is only a now clear saffron belt next the east horizon; all the rest of the sky is covered with clouds, broken into lighter and darker shades. An agreeable yellow sunlight falls on the western fields and the banks of the river. Whence this yellow tinge? Probably a different light would be reflected if there were no dark clouds above. A somewhat milder morning than yesterday, and the river as usual quite smooth. 

From Cheney’s boat-house I hear very distinctly the tapping of a woodpecker at the Island about a quarter of a mile. Undoubtedly could hear it twice as far at least, if still, over the water. At every stroke of my paddle, small silvery bubbles about the size of a pin-head, dashed from the surface, slide or roll over the smooth surface a foot or two. On approaching the Island, I am surprised to hear the scolding, cackle-like note of the pigeon woodpecker, a prolonged loud sound somewhat like one note of the robin. This was the tapper, on the old hollow aspen which the small woodpeckers so much frequent. Unless the latter make exactly the same sound with the former, then the pigeon woodpecker has come! ! But I could not get near enough to distinguish his size and colors. He went up the Assabet, and I heard him cackling and tapping far ahead.

The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.1 

It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds. Methinks I may have seen the female red-wing within a day or two; or what are these purely black ones without the red shoulder? It is pleasant to see them scattered about on the drying meadow. The red-wings will stand close to the water’s edge, looking larger than usual, with their red shoulders very distinct and handsome in that position, and sing 0kolee, or bob-y-lee, or what-not. Others, on the tops of trees over your head, out of a fuzzy beginning spit forth a clear, shrill whistle incessantly, for what purpose I don’t know. Others, on the elms over the water, utter still another note, each time lifting their wings slightly. Others are flying across the stream with a loud char-r, char-r.

Looking at the mouth of a woodchuck-hole and at low places, as on the moss, in the meadows, [I see] that those places are sprinkled with little pellets or sometimes salt-shaped masses of frost some inches apart, apparently like snow. This is one kind of frost. 

There is snow and ice still along the edge of the meadows on the north side of woods; the latter even five or six inches thick in some places.

The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. I think they have not come out more than a day or two. I did not notice them the 26th, though I did not look carefully for them. The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup. 

The recent shoot of the white maple is now a yellowish brown, sprinkled with ashy dots. 

I am in some uncertainty about whether I do not confound several kinds under the name of the downy woodpecker. It not only flies volat-u undoso, but you hear, as it passes over you, the strong ripple of its wings. 

Two or three times, when a visitor stayed into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of my house and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. 

One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond, who would otherwise have been at a loss what course to take. They lived about a mile off, and were quite used to the woods. A day or two after, one of them told me that they wandered about the greater ‘part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there were several heavy showers in the course of the night, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. 

I have heard of many going astray, even in the village sheets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the phrase is. Some who lived in the outskirts, having come to town shopping with their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night, and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only and not knowing when they turned, and were obliged to inquire the way at the first house they discovered. Even one of the village doctors was thus lost in the heart of the village on a nocturnal mission, and spent nearly the whole night feeling the fences and the houses, being, as he said, ashamed to inquire. If one with the vision of an owl, or as in broad daylight, could have watched his motions, they would have been ludicrous indeed. 

It is a novel and memorable acquaintance one may make thus with the most familiar objects. 

It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night. Sometimes in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you that you have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but it is as strange to you as if it were in Tartary. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. 

We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, and if we go beyond our usual course we still preserve the bearing of some neighboring cape, and not till we are completely lost or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, — do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. 

Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations.

A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away. This is a favorite voyage for ladies to make, down one stream and up the other, plucking the lilies by the way and landing on the Island, and concluding with a walk on Nawshawtuct Hill.

This which Gilbert White says of the raven is applicable to our crow: “There is a peculiarity belonging 'to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and cufling each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish.”

P. M. — To early willow behind Martial Miles’s. 

A bright, sunny, but yet rather breezy and cool afternoon. On the railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre that is as old as the world. I put my ear to the post, and the sound seems to be in the core of the post, directly against my ear. This is all of music. The utmost refinements of art, methinks, can go no further. 

This is one of those days divided against itself, when there is a cool wind but a warm sun, when there is little or no coolness proper to this locality, but it is wafted to us probably from the snow-clad northwest, and hence in sheltered places it is very warm. However, the sun is rapidly prevailing over the wind, and it is already warmer than when I came out. 

Four ducks, two by two, are sailing conspicuously on the river. There appear to be two pairs. In each case one two-thirds white and another grayish-brown and, I think, smaller. They are very shy and fly at fifty rods’ distance. Are they whistlers ? The white are much more white than those I saw the other day and at first thought summer ducks.

Would it not be well to carry a spy-glass in order to watch these shy birds such as ducks and hawks? In some respects, methinks, it would be better than a gun. The latter brings them nearer dead, but the former alive. You can identify the species better by killing the bird, because it was a dead specimen that was so minutely described, but you can study the habits and appearance best in the living specimen.

These ducks first flew north, or somewhat against the wind (was it to get under weigh?), then wheeled, flew nearer me, and went south up-stream, where I saw them afterward.

In one of those little holes which I refer to the skunk, I found part of the shell of a reddish beetle or dor-bug. Both hole and beetle looked quite fresh. Saw small ants there active. 

Under the south side of Clamshell Hill, in the sun, the air is filled with those black fuzzy gnats, and I hear a fine hum from them. The first humming of insects — unless of those honey-bees the other day— of the season. 

I can find no honey-bees in the skunk cabbage this pleasant afternoon. 

I find that many of the oak-balls are pierced, and their inhabitants have left them; they have a small round hole in them. The rest have still thirty or forty small white maggots about one twelfth of an inch long. Thus far I have not seen these balls but on the black oak, and some are still full of them, like apples.

Walking along near the edge of the meadow under Lupine Hill, I slumped through the sod into a muskrat’s nest, for the sod was only two inches thick over it, which was enough when it was frozen. I laid it open with my hands. 

There were three or four channels or hollowed paths, a rod or more in length, not merely worn but made in the meadow, and centring at the mouth of this burrow. They were three or four inches deep, and finally became indistinct and were lost amid the cranberry vines and grass toward the river. 

The entrance to the burrow was just at the edge of the upland, here a gently sloping bank, and was probably just beneath the surface of the water six weeks ago. It was about twenty five rods distant from the true bank of the river. From this a straight gallery, about six inches in diameter every way, sloped upward about eight feet into the bank just beneath the turf, so that the end was about a foot higher than the entrance. 

There was a somewhat circular enlargement about one foot in horizontal diameter and the same depth with the gallery; and [in] it was nearly a peek of coarse meadow stubble, showing the marks of the scythe, with which was mixed accidentally a very little of the moss which grew with it. Three short galleries, only two feet long, were continued from this centre somewhat like rays toward the high land, as if they had been prepared in order to be ready for a sudden rise of the water, or had been actually made so far under such an emergency. 

The nest was of course thoroughly wet and, humanly speaking, uncomfortable, though the creature could breathe in it. But it is plain that the muskrat cannot be subject to the toothache. I have no doubt this was made and used last winter, for the grass was as fresh as that in the meadow (except that it was pulled up), and the sand which had been taken out lay partly in a flattened heap in the meadow, and no grass had sprung up through it.

In the course of the above examination I made a very interesting discovery. When I turned up the thin sod from over the damp cavity of the nest, I was surprised to see at this hour of a pleasant day what I took to be beautiful frost crystals of a rare form, — frost bodkins I was in haste to name them, for around the fine white roots of the grass, apparently the herd’s-grass, which were from one to two or more inches long, reaching downward into the dark, damp cavern (though the green blades had scarcely made so much growth above; indeed, the growth was scarcely visible there), appeared to be lingering still into the middle of this warm after noon rare and beautiful frost crystals exactly in the form of a bodkin, about one sixth of an inch wide at base and tapering evenly to the lower end, sometimes the upper part of the core being naked for half an inch, which last gave them a slight resemblance to feathers, though they were not flat but round, and at the abrupt end of the rootlet (as if cut off) a larger, clear drop. On examining them more closely, feeling and tasting them, I found that it was not frost but a clear, crystal line dew in almost invisible drops, concentrated from the dampness of the cavern, and perhaps melted frost still reserving by its fineness its original color, thus regularly arranged around the delicate white fibre; and, looking again, incredulous, I discerned extremely minute white threads or gossamer standing out on all sides from the main rootlet in this form and affording the core for these drops. Yet on those fibres which had lost their dew, none of these minute threads appeared. There they pointed downward somewhat like stalactites, or very narrow caterpillar brushes. 

It impressed me as a wonderful piece of chemistry, that the very grass we trample on and esteem so cheap should be thus wonderfully nourished, that this spring greenness was not produced by coarse and cheap means, but in sod, out of sight, the most delicate and magical processes are going on. 

The half is not shown. The very sod is replete with mechanism far finer than that of a watch, and yet it is cast under our feet to be trampled on. The process that goes on in the sod and the dark, about the minute fibres of the grass, — the chemistry and the mechanics, —before a single green blade can appear above the withered herbage, if it could [be] adequately described, would supplant all other revelations. We are acquainted with but one side of the sod. 

I brought home some tufts of the grass in my pocket, but when I took it out I could not at first find those pearly white fibres and thought that they were lost, for they were shrunk to dry brown threads; and, as for the still finer gossamer which supported the roseid droplets, with few exceptions they were absolutely undiscoverable, — they no longer stood out around the core, — so fine and delicate was their organization. It made me doubt almost if there were not actual, substantial, though invisible cores to the leaflets and veins of the boar frost. And can these almost invisible and tender fibres penetrate the earth where there is no cavern? Or is what we call the solid earth porous and cavernous enough for them? 

A wood tortoise in Nut Meadow Brook. 

I see a little three-spotted sparrow,— apparently the same seen March 18th, —with its mate, not so spotted. The first apparently the female, quite tame. The male sings a regular song sparrow strain, and they must be that, I think. Keep up a faint chip. Apparently thinking of a nest. 

The trout glances like a film from side to side and under the bank. 

Saw a solid mass of green conferva at the bottom of the brook, waved with the sand which had washed into it, which made'it look exactly like a rock partly covered with green lichens. I was surprised when I thrust a stick into it and was undeceived. 

Observe the shadow of water flowing rapidly over a shelving bottom in this brook, producing the appearance of sand washing along. 

Tried several times to catch a skater. Got my hand close to him; grasped at him as quick as possible; was sure I had got him this time; let the water run out between my fingers; hoped I had not crushed him; opened my hand; and Lo! he was not there. I never succeeded in catching one. 

What are those common snails in the mud in ditches, with their feet out, for some time past? 

The early willow will bloom to-morrow. Its catkins have lost many of their scales. The crowded yellow anthers are already bursting out through the silvery down, like the sun of spring through the clouds of winter. How measuredly this plant has advanced, sensitive to the least change of temperature, its expanding not to be foretold, unless you can foretell the weather. This is the earliest willow that I know.  Yet it is on a dry upland. There is a great difference in localities in respect to warmth, and a correspond ing difference in the blossoming of plants of the same species. But can this be the same species with that early one in Miles’s Swamp? Its catkins have been picked off, by what? 

Dugan tells me that three otter were dug out the past winter in Deacon Farrar’s wood-lot, side of the swamp, by Powers and Willis of Sudbury. He has himself seen one in the Second Division woods. 

He saw two pigeons to-day. Prated [sic] for them; they came near and then flew away. He saw a woodchuck yesterday. 

I believe I saw the slate-colored marsh hawk to-day. 

I saw water-worn stones by the gates of three separate houses in Framingham the other day. 

The grass now looks quite green in those places where the water recently stood, in grassy hollows where the melted snow collects. 

Dugan wished to get some guinea-hens to keep off the hawks. 

Those fine webs of the grass fibres stood out as if drawn out and held up by electricity.

March 29, 1853