The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets.

December 19. 

December 19, 2021

Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new- fallen snow, till I came to where she took to flight, and I could track her no further. 

I see where the snowbirds have picked the seeds of the Roman wormwood and other weeds and have covered the snow with the shells and husks. 

The smilax berries are as plump as ever. 

The catkins of the alders are as tender and fresh-looking as ripe mulberries. 

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. 

The witch-hazel is covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still remaining. 

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. 

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider. I am astonished that the animals make no more use of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1850

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. See December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island.")

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. Compare August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near House-leek Rock begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable.")

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets. See November 11, 1853 ("Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket."); December 18, 1859 ("Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.")

Boiling bayberries for the tallow.

April 7. 

Tuesday. 

April 7, 2019

he would deliberate which course i would take

Went to walk in the woods. When I had got half a mile or more away in the woods alone, and was sitting on a rock, was surprised to be joined by R.’s large Newfoundland dog Ranger, who had smelled me out and so tracked me. Would that I could add his woodcraft to my own! 

He would trot along before me as far as the winding wood-path allowed me to see him, and then, with the shortest possible glance over his shoulder, ascertain if I was following. At a fork in the road he would pause, look back at me, and deliberate which course I would take. 

At sundown I went out to gather bayberries to make tallow of. Holding a basket beneath, I rubbed them off into it between my hands, and so got about a quart, to which were added enough to make about three pints. 

They are interesting little gray berries clustered close about the short bare twigs, just below the last year’s growth. The berries have little prominences, like those of an orange, encased with tallow, the tallow also filling the interstices, down to the nut. 

They require a great deal of boiling to get out all the tallow. The outmost case soon melted off, but the inmost part I did not get even after many hours of boiling. The oily part rose to the top, making it look like a savory black broth, which smelled just like balm or other herb tea. 

I got about a quarter of a pound by weight from these say three pints of berries, and more yet remained. Boil a great while, let it cool, then skim off the tallow from the surface: melt again and strain it.

What I got was more yellow than what I have seen in the shops. A small portion cooled in the form of small corns (nuggets I called them when I picked them out from amid the berries), flat hemispherical, of a very pure lemon yellow, and these needed no straining. The berries were left black and massed together by the remaining tallow.

Cat-briar (Smilax) they call here “the devil’s wrapping yarn.” 

I see several emperor moth cocoons, with small eggs on the back, apparently of the ichneumon-fly, that has destroyed the nymph.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1857

In the woods alone, and was sitting on a rock, was surprised to be joined by R.’s large Newfoundland dog Ranger, who had smelled me out and so tracked me. See April 22, 1852 ("A strange dog accompanies us today, a hunting dog, gyrating about us at a great distance, beating every bush and barking at the birds, with great speed, gyrating his tail too all the while."); October 10, 1856 ("With what tireless energy and abandonment they dash through the brush and up the sides of hills! I meet two white foxhounds, led by an old red one. How full of it they are! How their tails work! They are not tied to paths; they burst forth from the thickest shrub oak lot, and immediately dive into another as the fox did.")

The berries have little prominences, like those of an orange, encased with tallow . . . Compare December 14, 1850 ("When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island."); April 13, 1855 ("Great quantities of odoriferous sweetgale seed are collected with the scum at the outlet of Nut Meadow, for they float"); .April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars").

I see several emperor moth cocoons . . . see January 14, 1857 ("Almost every one is already empty, or contains only the relics of a nymph. It has been attacked and devoured by some foe. "); June 2 , 1855 ("I had pinned the cocoon to the sash at the upper part of my window and quite forgotten it. About the middle of the forenoon Sophia came in and exclaimed that there was a moth on my window.")

With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

June 2 

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. 

Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. 

P. M. —With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction. Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. 

See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April. 

Returned by bridle-road. 

Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more.

English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.

Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 

5 P. M. —To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.

Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? 

White maple keys conspicuous. 

In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton ” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1856

Perez Blood (1785  - 1856) was an amateur astronomer living in Concord near the Carlisle border. In 1847 HDT and Emerson looked through Blood’s 85 power telescope and saw "Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion . . ..”   On July 7, 1851 with Anthony Wright HDT looked through  Blood's telescope a second time, and concluded " I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.” See September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”)

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. See June 3, 1855 ("Caraway in garden apparently three days out.")

Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. . .  Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece.")

Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade. See July 4, 1860 ("Rich and luxuriant uncut grass-lands , now waving under the easterly wind. It is a beautiful Camilla, sweeping like waves of light and shade over the whole breadth of his land") [HDT oft compared  Thoreau compares waves of light and shade passing over a rye field to the speed and lightness of Camilla, a warrior-maiden from Virgil's Aeneid who was said to be able to run over grain fields without bending a blade.]

Not 19th of April. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,")

Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet . . . Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more. See May 30, 1855 ("The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot.");  June 12, 1857 ("Bayberry well out")

Ranunculus recurvatus [in prime] See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")

To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. See  June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime. What splendid masses of pink! with a few glaucous green leaves sprinkled here and there —just enough for contrast.”); "): See also  May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora . . . Azalea nudiflora, -purple azalea, pinxter-flower,... It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink,...With a broader, somewhat downy pale-green leaf."); May 31, 1853"); May 24, 1858 ("The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out[ in New York)”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden");  May 26, 1857 ("Pink azalea in garden");  May 27, 1859 (“Azalea nudiflora blooms generally.”) May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden")

White maple keys conspicuous. See . May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects");May 30, 1853 ("The white maple keys falling and covering the river. ");June 2, 1855 ("From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia which I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. ");  June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen. It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out.");  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021