Witch-hazel in prime – Yellow leaves by their color conceal the flowers.

October 4

October 4, 2018

 

P. M.  Paddled up the Assabet. Strong north wind, bringing down leaves. 

Many white and red maple, bass, elm, and black willow leaves are strewn over the surface of the water, light, crisp colored skiffs. The bass is in the prime of its change, a mass of yellow. 

See B a-fishing notwithstanding the wind. A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. Yet methinks his “misfortune” is good for him, and he is the more mellow and humane. Perhaps he begins to perceive more clearly that the object of life is something else than acquiring property, and he really stands in a truer relation to his fellow-men than when he commanded a false respect of them. There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. It is better than a poor debtors’ prison, better than most successful money-getting. 

I see some rich-weed in the shade of the Hemlocks, for some time a clear, almost ivory, white, and the boehmeria is also whitish. 

Rhus Toxicodendron in the shade is a pure yellow; in the sun, more scarlet or reddish. 

Grape leaves apparently as yellow as ever.

Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime. The leaves are often richly spotted reddish and greenish brown. 

The white maples that changed first are about bare. 

The brownish-yellow clethra leaves thickly paint the bank. 

Salix lucida leaves are one third clear yellow. 

The Osmunda regalis is yellowed and partly crisp and withered, but a little later than the cinnamon, etc. 

Scare up two ducks, which go off with a sharp creaking ar-r-week, ar-r-week, ar-r-week. Is not this the note of the wood duck? 

Hornets are still at work in their nests. 

Ascend the hill. 

The cranberry meadows are a dull red. 

See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools.

The Great Meadows, where not mown, have long been brown with wool-grass. 

The hickories on the northwest side of this hill are in the prime of their color, of a rich orange; some intimately mixed with green, handsomer than those that are wholly changed. The outmost parts and edges of the foliage are orange, the recesses green, as if the outmost parts, being turned toward the sunny fire, were first baked by it.

Going by Dr. Barrett’s, just at the edge of evening, I saw on the sidewalk something bright like fire, as if molten lead were scattered along, and then I wondered if a drunkard’s spittle were luminous, and proceeded to poke it on to a leaf with a stick. It was rotten wood. I found that it came from the bottom of some old fence-posts which had just been dug up near by and there glowed for a foot or two, being quite rotten and soft, and it suggested that a lamp-post might be more luminous at bottom than at top. 

I cut out a handful and carried it about. It was quite soft and spongy and a very pale brown — some almost white — in the light, quite soft and flaky; and as I withdrew it gradually from the light, it began to glow with a distinctly blue fire in its recesses, becoming more universal and whiter as the darkness increased. Carried toward a candle, it is quite a blue light. 

One man whom I met in the street was able to tell the time by his watch, holding it over what was in my hand. 

The posts were oak, probably white. 

Mr. Melvin, the mason, told me that he heard his dog barking the other night, and, going out, found that it was at the bottom of an old post he had dug up during the day, which was all aglow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1858

Rhus Toxicodendron in the shade is a pure yellow; in the sun, more scarlet or reddish. See September 30, 1857 (“Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown.”); October 3, 1857 ("The Rhus radicans also turns yellow and red or scarlet, like the Toxicodendron."); October 11, 1857 ("I see some fine clear yellows from the Rhus Toxicodendron on the bank by the hemlocks and beyond.")

Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime.  See September 24, 1853 ("Witch-hazel well out."); September 27, 1857 ("Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. "); September 29, 1853 ("The witch-hazel . . .has but begun to blossom . . . Its leaves are yellowed."); October 9, 1851 ("The sunlight from over the top of the hill lights up its top-most sprays and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other. I lie on my back with joy under its bough. While its leaves fall, its blossoms spring.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

Osmunda regalis is yellowed and partly crisp and withered, but a little later than the cinnamon. See  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds"); October 11, 1857 ("The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. The O. regalis is the least generally withered of them"); October 12, 1858 ("The Osmunda regalis . . . in and about the swamps, are generally brown and withered, though with green ones intermixed. They are still, however, interesting, with their pale brown or cinnamon-color and decaying scent.")

Hornets are still at work in their nests. See October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.")

See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools. See October 2, 1859 ("Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. ") See also note to See note to September 21, 1859 ("And now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over)"

Holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. See June 26, 1853 ("They might go there a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, — before they began to angle for the pond itself."); December 2, 1856 ("There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.") 

See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools. See note to October 20, 1856 (“I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter.")

The hickories on the northwest side of this hill are in the prime of their color, of a rich orange; some intimately mixed with green, handsomer than those that are wholly changed. See October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing."); October 15, 1858 ("Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods. ");  October 22, 1858 ("The leaves of the hickory are a very rich yellow, though they may be quite withered and fallen, but they become brown.");  October 24, 1853 ("Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves. "); October 24, 1858 ("Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least."); November 13, 1858 ("One hickory at least (on the hill) has not lost its leaves yet, i. e., has a good many left. So they are a month falling.") See also AA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

I saw on the sidewalk something bright like fire.  See October 5, 1858 ("My phosphorescent wood of last night still glows somewhat, but I improve it much by putting it in water. The little chips which remain in the water or sink to the bottom are like so many stars in the sky."); October 6, 1858 ("My phosphorescent wood still glows a little, though it has lain on my stove all day, and, being wet, it is much improved still.") See also July 24, 1857 and The Maine Woods ("Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see . . . I did not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it.")

October 4. See A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, October 4

Witch-hazel in prime –

Yellow leaves by their color

conceal the flowers.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow leaves by their color

conceal the flowers.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581004 

Steel-blue in the shade, but, seen against the sun, it is a rich purple.

September 30. 

September 30, 2018

A large flock of grackles amid the willows by the riverside, or chiefly concealed low in the button bushes beneath them, though quite near me. There they keep up their spluttering notes, though somewhat less loud, methinks, than in spring. These are the first I have seen, and now for some time, I think, the red wings have been gone. These are the first arrivers from the north where they breed. 

I observe the peculiar steel-bluish purple of the nightshade, i. e. the tips of the twigs, while all beneath is green, dotted with bright berries, over the water. Perhaps this is the most singular color of any autumnal tint. It is almost black in some lights, distinctly steel-blue in the shade and contrasting with the green beneath, but, seen against the sun, it is a rich purple, its veins full of fire. The form of the leaf, too, is peculiar. 

The pearly everlasting is an interesting white at present. Though the stem and leaves are still green, it is dry and unwithering like an artificial flower. Its white flexuous cotton. Its amaranthine quality is instead of high color. Neither is there any scent to betray it. Its very brown centre now afiects us as a fresh and original color. It monopolizes a small circle, in the midst of sweet-fem perchance, on a dry hillside. 

I see undoubtedly the little dipper by the edge of the pads this afternoon, and I think I have not seen it before this season. It is much smaller than I have seen this season, and is hard to detect even within four or five rods. It warily dives and comes up a rod or two further off amid the pads, scarcely disturbing the surface. 

The wind is northerly these afternoons, blowing pretty strong early in the afternoon, so that I can sail up the stream; but later it goes down, leaving the river glassy smooth, and only a leaping fish or an insect dimples it or makes a sparkle on it. 

Some young black cherry leaves are completely changed some time to their deep cherry-red. Also they are rather dull, but beneath quite lively, like the juice of a freshly crushed cherry. 

In our late walk on the Cape, we entered Gloucester each time in the dark at mid-evening, travelling partly across lots till we fell into a road, and as we were simply seeking a bed, inquiring the way of villagers whom we could not see, the town seemed far more homelike to us than when we made our way out of it in the morning. It was comparatively still, and the inhabitants were sensibly or poetically employed, too, and then we went straight to our chamber and saw the moonlight reflected from the smooth harbor and lighting up the fishing vessels, as if it had been the harbor of Venice. 

By day we went remarking on the peculiar angles of the bevelled roofs, of which there is a remarkable variety there. There are also many large, square, three-story houses with short windows in the upper story, as if the third story were as good as a gig for respectability. 

When entering the town in the moonlight we could not always tell whether the road skirted the back yards or the front yards of the houses, and the houses did not so impertinently stare after the traveller and watch his coming as by day. 

Walking early in the day and approaching the rocky shore from the north, the shadows of the cliffs were very distinct and grateful and our spirits were buoyant. Though we walked all day, it seemed the days were not long enough to get tired in. Some villages we went through or by without communicating with any inhabitant, but saw them as quietly and distantly as in a picture.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, September 30, 1858

A large flock of grackles amid the willows by the riverside keep up their spluttering notes, See October 14, 1857 ("I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing. They never succeed; make a sort of musical spluttering.”)

I observe the peculiar steel-bluish purple of the nightshade . . . against the sun, it is a rich purple, its veins full of fire. See September 26, 1859 ("The peduncle and its branches are green, the pedicels and sepals only that rare steel-blue purple, and the berries a clear translucent cherry red."); October 4, 1857 (“Some nightshade leaves are a very dark purple.”)

The pearly everlasting is an interesting white at present. It monopolizes a small circle, in the midst of sweet-fem perchance, on a dry hillside. See August 23, 1858 (“I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green.”)

Steel-bluish purple

nightshade seen against the sun –

its veins full of fire.

Though we walk all day

it seems the days are not long

enough to get tired.

All day a driving snow-storm.

December 29

We survive, in one sense, in our posterity and in the continuance of our race, but when a race of men, of Indians for instance, becomes extinct, is not that the end of the world for them? 

Is not the world forever beginning and coming to an end, both to men and races? 

Suppose we were to foresee that the Saxon race to which we belong would become extinct the present winter, — disappear from the face of the earth, -would it not look to us like the end, the dissolution of the world? 

Such is the prospect of the Indians. 

All day a driving snow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads. No school to-day. 

I cannot see a house fifty rods off from my window through [it] ; yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. [In an ordinary snow-storm, when snowing fast, Jan. 1st, '54, I can see E. Wood's house, or about a mile.]

The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices under doors and side of windows. 

P. M. — Tried my snow-shoes. 

They sink deeper than I expected, and I throw the snow upon my back. When I returned, twenty minutes after, my great tracks were not to be seen. 

It is the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember. 

The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way, it is so thick. 

Yet in spite, or on account, of all, I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note. 

An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in each pocket of my greatcoat. 

What a contrast between the village street now and last summer! The leafy elms then resounding with the warbling vireo, robins, bluebirds, and the fiery hang bird, etc., to which the villagers, kept indoors by the heat, listen through open lattices. 

Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla,-- if they were to have any there. I wade to the post-office as solitary a traveller as ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. 

The snow is mid-leg deep, while drifts as high as one's head are heaped against the houses and fences, and here and there range across the street like snowy mountains. You descend from this, relieved, into capacious valleys with a harder bottom, or more fordable. 

The track of one large sleigh alone is visible, nearly snowed up. 

There is not a track leading from any door to indicate that the in habitants have been forth to-day, any more than there is track of any quadruped by the wood-paths. It is all pure untrodden snow, banked up against the houses now at 4 P. M., and no evidence that a villager has been abroad to-day. 

In one place the drift covers the front yard fence and stretches thence upward to the top of the front door, shutting all in, and frequently the snow lies banked up three or four feet high against the front doors, and the windows are all snowed up, and there is a drift over each window, and the clapboards are all hoary with it. 

It is as if the inhabitants were all frozen to death, and now you threaded the desolate streets weeks after that calamity. 

There is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the Mill-Dam, but one saddled horse on which a farmer has come into town. 

The cars are nowhere. 

Yet they are warmer, merrier than ever there within. 

At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' --or how deep the snow is on a level. 

Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they appear in the northern parts of the United States “early in December, or with the first heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high winds.” 

This day answers to that description exactly. 

The wind is northerly. 

He adds that "they are . . . universally considered as the harbingers of severe cold weather.” 

They come down from the extreme north and are common to the two continents; quotes Pennant as saying that they

 “inhabit not only Greenland but even the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen, where vegetation is nearly extinct, and scarcely any but cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore excites wonder, how birds, which are graminivorous in every other than those frost-bound regions, subsist: yet are there found in great flocks both on the land and ice of Spitzbergen.” 

P. also says that they inhabit in summer "the most naked Lapland Alps,” and “descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads and fields; on which account the Uplanders call them "hardwarsfogel,” hard-weather birds. 

Also P. says “they overflow [in winter] the more southern countries in amazing multitudes.” 

W. says their colors are very variable, "and the whiteness of their plumage is observed to be greatest towards the depth of winter.” 

Also W. says truly that they seldom sit long, “being a roving restless bird.” 

Peabody says that in summer they are “pure white and black,” but are not seen of that color here. 

Those I saw to-day were of that color, behind A. Wheeler's. 

He says they are white and rusty brown here. 

These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. I could hardly see them, the air was so full of driving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night? 

The woodchopper goes not to the wood to-day. His axe and beetle and wedges and whetstone he will find buried deep under a drift, perchance, and his fire all extinguished. 

As you go down the street, you see on either hand, where erst were front yards with their parterres, rolling pastures of snow, unspotted blankness swelling into drifts. All along the path lies a huge barrow of snow raised by the arctic mound-builder. It is like a pass through the Wind River Mountains or the Sierra Nevada, -- a spotless expanse of drifted snow, sloping upward over fences to the houses, deep banks all along their fronts closing the doors. It lies in and before Holbrook's piazza, dwarfing its columns, like the sand about Egyptian temples. The windows are all sealed up, so that the traveller sees no face of inhabitant looking out upon him. 

The housekeeper thinks with pleasure or pain of what he has in his larder. 

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. 

The farmer considers how much pork he has in his barrel, how much meal in his bin, how much wood in his shed. 

Each family, perchance, sends forth one representative before night, who makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or post-office to learn the news; i. e., to hear what others say to it, who can give the best account of it, best can name it, has waded farthest in it, has been farthest out and can tell the biggest and most adequate story; and hastens back with the news. 


I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. I was trying to get a point d'appui within him, a shelf to spring an arch from, to suggest some employment and aim for life. 

“Satisfied!” said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another, by George. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table; that will satisfy him, by gorry."

When I met him the other day, he asked me if I had made any improvement. 

Yet I could never by any manæuvring get him to take what is called a spiritual view of things, of life. He allowed that study and education was a good thing, but for him it was too late. He only thought of its expediency; nothing answering to what many call their aspirations. 

He was humble, if he can be called humble who never aspires. 

He cut his trees very low, close to the ground, because the sprouts that came from such stumps were better. Perhaps he distinguished between the red and scarlet oak; one had a pale inner bark, the other a darker or more reddish one. 

Without the least effort he could defend prevailing institutions which affected him, better than any philosopher, because he implicitly accepted them and knew their whole value. 

He gave the true reason for their prevalence, because speculation had never suggested to him any other. Looking round among the trees, he said he could enjoy himself in the woods chopping alone in a winter day; he wanted no better sport. 

The trees were frozen, -- had been sometimes, — but would but would frequently thaw again during the day. Split easier for it, but did not chop better. 

The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.

The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.  Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. 

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

Wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you.  See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face . . ."); December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”); February3, 1856 (“We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back.”);  January 19, 1857 ("A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. . . .A fine dry snow, intolerable to face");

The cars are nowhere. At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' See January 19, 1857 ("It is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.!"); February 18, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow drifting. No cars from above or below till 1 P. M.”)

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. See December 30, 1855 ("About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps.")

I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note.These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. See December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic.");  March 20, 1852 ("As to the winter birds, — those which came here in the winter, - I saw . . .  in midwinter, the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. See November 15, 1851 ("Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer."); December 24, 1853 ("How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough.") See also Walden (" One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living.")

Thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds.  See February 3, 1852 ("The scenery is wholly arctic. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now."); February 9, 1851 ("We have forgotten summer and autumn. Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever."); February 27, 1852 ("We have almost completely forgotten summer."); February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer.")

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

Thoughts of summer and 

autumn are departed as 

leaves blown from the trees.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Rose-colored ice

February 23

Clear, but a very cold north wind. 

I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).

See at Walden this afternoon that the grayish ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge. 

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1855

Ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.  See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...") Also January 27, 1854 (" Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”)  See also note to January 24, 1855 (" Andromeda Ponds . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?")

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. See  February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”); February 26, 1855 ("I see some cracks in a plowed field”);  December 19, 1856 (“In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front.”); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 (“The ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before, this winter. It was so when I went to Amherst a winter or two ago.”)

I see from my window the bright-blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow

February 20.

A strong wind drying the earth which has been so very wet. The sand begins to be dry in spots on the railroad causeway. The northerly wind blows me along, and when I get to the cut I hear it roaring in the woods, all reminding me of March, March. 

The sides of the cut are all bare of snow, and the sand foliage is dried up. It is decided March weather, and I see from my window the bright- blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow.

I know that we have here in Concord are at least twenty-one and perhaps twenty-six quadrupeds,—five and possibly six families of the Order Carnivora, and three families of the Order Rodentia; none of the Order Ruminantia. Nearly half of our quadrupeds belong to the Muridoe, or Rat Family, and a quarter of them to the Mustelidoe, or Weasel Family. 

Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. Others are very rare, like the otter and raccoon.

The striped squirrel is the smallest quadruped that we commonly notice in our walks in the woods, and we do not realize, especially in summer, when their tracks are not visible, that the aisles of the wood are threaded by countless wild mice, and no more that the meadows are swarming in many places with meadow mice and moles. 

The cat brings in a mole from time to time, and we see where they have heaved up the soil in the meadow. 

We see the tracks of mice on the snow in the woods, or once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1855

The sides of the cut are all bare of snow, and the sand foliage is dried up. See  December 31, 1851 ("I am too late, perhaps, to see the sand foliage in the Deep Cut; should have been there day before yesterday; it is now too wet and soft. Yet in some places it is perfect."); February 24, 1852 ("I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut"); February 24, 1857 (" The best of the sand foliage is already gone")

I see from my window the bright- lue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow. See

And for the first time

I see the water looking

blue on the meadows.

March 5, 1854

The first sight of the

blue water in the spring is

exhilarating.

April 5, 1856

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

We have here in Concord are at least twenty-one and perhaps twenty-six quadrupeds. See March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”); Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly..”); September 9, 1856) ("The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther . . .It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here."); September 29, 1856 (Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago.”); September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . ."); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past."); October 17, 1860 ("[I]t belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.")

The striped squirrel is the smallest quadruped that we commonly notice in our walks in the woods See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the striped squirrel comes out

Others are very rare, like the otter. See February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday.") April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); see January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.”).

Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals [moles], though their tracks are so common. ")

Once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet. See May 27, 1856 ("Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches. "); August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long . . .Its nose is not sharp.”);December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath . . . I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse"); May 31, 1858 ("I see . . . a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see . . .but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

February 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 20

The bright-blue water

here and there between the ice 

and on the meadow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. I see from my window

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

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