The railroad runs very straight for long distances here through a primitive forest.

June 4. 

Friday. 

At 6 A. M. we began to descend. 

Near the upper edge of the wood, I heard, as I had done in ascending, a very peculiar lively and interesting strain from some bird, which note was new to me. At the same time I caught sight of a bird with a very conspicuous deep-orange throat and otherwise dark, with some streaks along the head. This may have been the Blackburnian warbler, if it was not too large for that, and may have been the singer. 

We descended or continued along the base of the mountain southward, taking the road to the State Line Station and Winchendon, through the west part of Rindge. 

It is remarkable how, as you are leaving a mountain and looking back at it from time to time, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression. The lofty beaked promontory which, when you were on the summit, appeared so far off and almost equal to it, seen now against the latter, scarcely deepens the tinge of bluish, misty gray on its side. 

The mountain has several spurs or ridges, bare and rocky, running from it, with a considerable depression between the central peak and them; i.e., they attain their greatest height half a mile or more from the central apex. There is such a spur, for instance, running off southward about a mile. When we looked back from four or five miles distant on the south, this, which had appeared like an independent summit, was almost totally lost to our view against the general misty gray of the side of the principal summit.

We should not have suspected its existence if we had not just come from it, and though the mountain ranges northeasterly and southwesterly, or not far from north and south, and is much the longest in that direction, it now presented a pretty regular pyramidal outline with a broad base, as if it were broadest east and west. 

That is, when you are on the mountain, the different peaks and ridges appear more independent; indeed, there is a bewildering variety of ridge and valley and peak, but when you have with drawn a few miles, you are surprised at the more or less pyramidal outline of the mountain and that the lower spurs and peaks are all subordinated to the central and principal one. 

The summit appears to rise and the surrounding peaks to subside, though some new prominences appear. Even at this short distance the mountain has lost most of its rough and jagged outline, considerable ravines are smoothed over, and large boulders which you must go a long way round make no impression on the eye, being swallowed up in the air. 

We had at first thought of returning to the railroad at Fitzwilliam, passing over Gap Mountain, which is in Troy and Fitzwilliam quite near Monadnock, but concluded to go to Winchendon, passing through the western part of Rindge to the State Line Station, the latter part of the road being roundabout. We crossed the line between Jaffrey and Rindge three or four miles from the mountain. 

Got a very good view of the mountain from a high hill over which the road ran in the western part of Rindge. 

But the most interesting part of this walk was the three miles along the railroad between State Line and Winchendon Station. It was the best timbered region we saw, though its trees are rapidly falling. The railroad runs very straight for long distances here through a primitive forest. 

To my surprise I heard the tea-lea of the myrtle-bird here, as in Maine, and suppose that it breeds in this primitive wood. There was no house near the railroad but at one point, and then a quarter of a mile off. The red elder was in full bloom and filled the air with its fragrance. 

I saw some of the handsomest white pines here that I ever saw, – even in Maine, — close by the railroad. One by which I stood was at least three and a half feet in diameter at two feet from the ground, and, like several others about it, rose perfectly straight without any kind of limb to the height of sixty feet at least. 

What struck me most in these trees, as I was passing by, was not merely their great size, for they appeared less than they were, but their perfect perpendicularity, roundness, and apparent smoothness, tapering very little, like artificial columns of a new style. Their trunks were so very round that for that reason they appeared smoother than they were, marked with interrupted bands of light-colored lichens. 

Their regular beauty made such an impression that I was forced to turn aside and contemplate them. They were so round and perpendicular that my eyes slid off, and they made such an impression of finish and even polish as if they had had an enamelled surface. Indeed they were less rough than I might have expected. 

Beneath them grew the Trillium pictum and clintonia, both in bloom. 

For last expedition to Monadnock, vide September, 1852. 

I find the Cornus florida out in my pitcher when I get home June 4th, though it was not out on Island May 31st, and it is well out on Island when I look June 6th. I will say, therefore, that it opened June 3d.

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

It is remarkable how, as you are leaving a mountain and looking back at it from time to time, it gradually gathers up its slopes and spurs to itself into a regular whole, and makes a new and total impression.  See May 23, 1841 ("When I have travelled a few miles I do not recognize the profile of the hills of my native village.")

A January Thaw.

December 28

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. A January thaw. 

December 28, 2023

The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond forming; unfathomable water beneath the snow. 

Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here. 

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. 

Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1851

Tommy Wheeler house. See February 22, 1857 ("The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside.")

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them. See November 29, 1850 ("The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. "); December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. A steady but gentle, warm rain."); See also December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist . . . They eclipse the trees they cover.");  May 13, 1852 ("A May storm, yesterday and to-day;. . . The fields are green now, and all the expanding leaves and flower-buds are much more beautiful in the rain, - covered with clear drops.") And A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

 

White pines look greener, 

a drop on every needle

in this gentle rain.

tinyurl.com/hdt511228

Primitive forest

October 23

More or less rain to-day and yesterday.

Anthony Wright tells me that he cut a pitch pine on Damon's land between the Peter Haynes road and his old farm, about '41, in which he counted two hundred and seventeen rings, which was therefore older than Concord, and one of the primitive forest.

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood, between the Harvard turnpike and Stow, sometimes called Stow Woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 23, 1860

He tells me of a noted large and so-called primitive wood, Inches Wood. See ;November 9, 1860 ("Inches’ Woods in Boxboro. This wood is some one and three quarters miles from West Acton, .. . . in the east part of Boxboro, on both sides of the Harvard turnpike.");  November 10, 1860 ("I have lived so long in this neighborhood and but just heard of this noble forest, - probably as fine an oak wood as there is in New England, only eight miles west of me.Seeing this, I can realize how this country appeared when it was discovered - a full-grown oak forest stretching uninterrupted for miles, consisting of sturdy trees from one to three and even four feet in diameter, whose interlacing branches form a complete and uninterrupted canopy")

The joy of firewood.

November 28

Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it "ivory- leaf.") Is it not singular that probably only one tea-drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberry-tea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. 

There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. 

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. This has been Hubbard's practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them.

Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. 

Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. 

He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. 

Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. 

Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. 

I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, therefore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. 

We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1859

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. See November 28, 1858 ("Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery.") See also October 22, 1853 ("One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season.")

Early twilights of these November days. See  December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight”); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”);  and note to December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); 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")

These November days

twilight makes so large a part

of the afternoon.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The joy of firewood.

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 ©  2009-2025

***

Today I bring the chainsaw into the woods to clear fallen trees from the trails. A sunny refreshing afternoon. Careful with the saw, it does not bind except in one old rotten log I think will be like butter. I kick the log open and retrieve the saw.

On the porcupine trail a snarl of grape vines pulls the trees down. I cleared this same spot a few years ago. And here, on the upper trail a log across the main path with two old cuts where I ran out of gas long ago. I finish the work and head to the stream.

Next to the crossing a large maple is uprooted across the trail. The stream is rushing by with last night's rain. I cut a narrow opening for the trail, leaving the maple as a bench by the stream.

Now kneeling I put the saw to the side so it won't get wet, bring my mouth to the water and take two large gulps. The water is cold and fresh.

Zphx 20091128

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)