A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin

March 18

Fair in the forenoon, but more or less cloudy and windy in the afternoon.

P. M. — Round by Hollowell place 'via Clamshell. 

I see with my glass as I go over the railroad bridge, sweeping the river, a great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin which rises just above the water opposite the Hubbard Bath. When I get round within sixty rods of him, ten minutes later, he still stands on the same spot, constantly turning his head to every side, looking out for foes. 

Like a wooden image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look at; head, breast, beneath, and rump pure white; slate-colored wings tipped with black and extending beyond the tail,— the herring gull. I can see clear down to its webbed feet. But now I advance, and he rises easily, goes off northeastward over the river with a leisurely flight. 

At Clamshell Hill I sweep the river again, and see, standing midleg deep on the meadow where the water is very shallow with deeper around, another of these wooden images, which is harder to scare. I do not fairly distinguish black tips to its wings. It is ten or fifteen minutes before I get him to rise, and then he goes off in the same leisurely manner, stroking the air with his wings, and now making a great circle back on its course, so you cannot tell which way it is bound. 

By standing so long motionless in these places they may perchance accomplish two objects, i. e., catch passing fish  like a heron and escape the attention of man. 

Its utmost motion was to plume itself once and turn its head about. If it did not move its head, it would look like a decoy. 

Our river is quite low for the season, and yet it is here without freshet or easterly storm. It seems to take this course on its migrations without regard to the state of the waters. 

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. 

For the last two or three days very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow; which also has slightly swollen the small streams.

Notwithstanding the water on the surface, it is easier crossing meadows and swamps than it will be a month hence, on account of the frost in the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1855

Like a wooden image of a bird See March 16, 1860 ("I also see two gulls nearly a mile off . . . Thus they will stand for an hour, at least . . . like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.");   See also March 8, 1853 ("I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks."; March 16, 1859 ("We meet one great gull beating up the course of the river against the wind, at Flint's Bridge. (One says they were seen about a week ago, but there was very little water then.) Its is a very leisurely sort of limping flight, tacking its way along like a sailing vessel, yet the slow security with which it advances suggests a leisurely contemplativeness in the bird, as if it were working out some problem quite at its leisure. As often as its very narrow, long, and curved wings are lifted up against the light, I see a very narrow distinct light edging to the wing where it is thin. Its black- tipped wings. Afterwards, from Ball's Hill, looking north, I see two more circling about looking for food over the ice and water. "); March 18, 1859 ("Rice thinks that he has seen two gulls on the Sudbury meadows."); March 22, 1858 ("We see many gulls on the very opposite side of the meadow, near the woods. They look bright-white, like snow on the dark-blue water. It is surprising how far they can be seen, how much light they reflect, and how conspicuous they are."); March 23, 1859 ("I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice."); March 24, 1860 ("There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow . . .Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions."); March 27,1858 ("We hear a squeaking note, as if made by a pump, and presently see four or five great herring gulls wheeling about. Sometimes they make a sound like the scream of a hen-hawk. They are shaped somewhat like a very thick white rolling-pin, sharpened at both ends. "); March 27, 1859 ("I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? "); March 28, 1858 (" I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. . . . But when one kind of life goes, another comes. ");  March 29, 1854 ("A gull of pure white, - a wave of foam in the air. How simple and wave-like its outline, two curves, - all wing - like a birch scale."); April 4, 1855") ("A gull is circling round Fair Haven Pond, seen white against the woods and hillsides, looking as if it would dive for a fish every moment, and occasionally resting on the ice."); April 4, 1857 ("Am not sure what kind of large gulls I see there, some more white, some darker, methinks, than the herring gull."); April 7, 1853 ("A great gull, though it is so fair and the wind northwest, fishing over the flooded meadow. He slowly circles round and hovers with flapping wings in the air over particular spots, repeatedly returning there and sailing quite low over the water, with long, narrow, pointed wings, trembling throughout their length. "); April 13, 1859 ("Saw a great bird flying rather low and circling more or less over the Great Meadows, which I at first thought was a fish hawk, having a fair sight of it from Ball's Hill, but with my glass I saw that it was a gull, but, I should say, wholly slate-color and dark at that, — though there may have been small spots which made no impression of another color. It was at least as large, maybe larger than the herring gull. Was it the saddle back gull ? "); April 15, 1855 ("It is remarkable how much light those white gulls . . . absorb and reflect through that sombre atmosphere, — conspicuous almost as candles in the night."); See also Weisner X, 

9:06 AM · Mar 18, 2024

Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal. See  March 24, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick . . . shot three black ducks and two green-winged teal, – though the latter had no green on their wings, it was rather the color of his boat, but Wesson assured him that so they looked in the spring. "); March 25, 1854 ("Is not the small duck or two I see one at a time and flying pretty high a teal?"); April 15, 1855 ("We scare up but few ducks — some apparently black, which quacked—and some small rolling-pins, probably teal.")

Very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow. See March 16, 1858 ("I walk in muddy fields, hearing the tinkling of new born rills.”)

March 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 18

A great gull standing 

far away on the top of 

a muskrat-cabin. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau A great gull standing far away on the top of a muskrat-cabin 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550318

The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection.

September 7.

September 7, 2014

Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. 

The wind has gone down, and it is a still, warm night, and no mist. It is just after sundown. The moon not yet risen, one star, Jupiter, visible, and many bats over and about our heads, and small skaters creating a myriad dimples on the evening waters. 

There are many clouds about and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish golden sky, looking up the river. All this is reflected in the water. The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. 

The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.

In harmony with this fair evening we paddle over the liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly toward those clouds in the sunset sky. We advance without  sound, by gentle influences, as the twilight gradually fades away. 

The height of the railroad bridge is doubled by the reflection, and the piers appear to rise from the lowest part of the reflection to the rail above, about fifty feet. We float directly under it, between the piers, as if in mid-air, not being able to distinguish the surface of the water, and look down more than twenty feet to the reflected flooring through whose intervals we see the starlit sky. The ghostly piers stretch downward on all sides, and only the angle made by their meeting the real ones betrays the water surface.

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all. The trees and hills are distinctly black between us and the moon, and the water black or gleaming accordingly. 

It is dry and warm. Above the Cliffs we hear one or two owls at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1854


Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. See May 8, 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light."); July 12, 1859 ("In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs.")

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all .See June 16, 1852 ("Owing to the reflections of the distant woods and hills, you seem to be paddling into a vast hollow country, doubly novel and interesting.") See also November 2, 1857("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections.")

Paddling without sound

toward clouds in the sunset sky

as the twilight fades.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The beauty of the sunset

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-540907

In the evening some lightning in the horizon – soon a gentle rain. (An irresistible necessity for mud turtles.)

August 26. 

August 26, 2016

I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it.  

I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. 

I think I hear a red-eye. 

Rudbeckia, — the small one, — still fresh. 

Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. Its eyes are open. It puts out its head, stretches forth its claws, and liberates its tail. With its great head it has already the ugliness of the full-grown, and is already a hieroglyphic of snappishness. 

If Iliads are not composed in our day, snapping turtles are hatched and arrive at maturity. It already thrusts forth its tremendous head, — for the first time in this sphere, — and slowly moves from side to side, — opening its small glistening eyes for the first time to the light, — expressive of dull rage, as if it had endured the trials of this world for a century. 

When I behold this monster thus steadily advancing toward maturity, all nature abetting, I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. With what tenacity Nature sticks to her idea!

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain ...

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1854

There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it .) See August 25, 1854 ("Many refer all this to smoke . . . This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light."") See also note to August 31, 1854 ("There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.")

I hear part of a phoebe's [sic] strain . . . It is the voice of dying summer. See  April 14, 1852 ("I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?"); August 20, 1854 ("The pewees sit still on their perch a long time . . . It often utters a continous pe-e-e. ");  August 21, 1853 ("The peawai still,"); August 22, 1853 ("Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. See September 11, 1852 ("Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head."); September 11, 1854 ("It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. "); September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest . . . At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water."); April 1, 1858 ("I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year . . . Talk of great heads, look at this one!"). See also August 28, 1856 ("I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th,\ and find a young turtle partly out of his shell. . . .What's a summer? Time for a turtle's eggs to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. "); September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.”)

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. See May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day"); October 20, 1859 ("I learn the next day that snow fell to-day in northern New York and New Hampshire . . . We feel the cold of it here as soon as the telegraph can inform us.")

In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain See  March 25, 1860 (" The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening"); June 16, 1852 (“Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager.”); July 23, 1854 ("As so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind. ") July 29, 1857 ("Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. ")

August 26.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 26

 In the evening some

 lightning in the horizon –

 soon a gentle rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, lightning in the horizon

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-540826

Shad-bush in blossom

May 10

 To Tall's Island, taking boat at Cliffs. 

May 10, 2023

Rain about daylight makes the weather uncertain for the day. Damp, April-like mistiness in the air. I take an umbrella with me. 

The wind is southwest, and I have to row or paddle up. The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hill sides, seen afar amid gray twigs, before even its own leaves are much expanded.

I drag and push my boat over the road at Deacon Farrar's brook, carrying a roller with me. It is warm rowing with a thick coat. 

I make haste back with a fair wind and umbrella for sail.  

A sprinkling rain ceases when I reach Bittern Cliff, and the water smooths somewhat. I see many red maple  blossoms on the surface.  Their keys now droop gracefully about the stems.

A fresh, growing scent comes from the moistened earth and vegetation, and I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway. 

Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1854

The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hillsides.  See May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom.");  May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods.")

I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway.. See May 12, 1855 ("I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, . . ."); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, ")

May 10. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

Shad-bush in blossom

seen afar amid gray twigs

before its own leaves.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush in blossom

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540510

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge

February 10. 

Up railroad to Assabet and return via Hollowell place. The river has risen again, and, instead of ice and snow, there is water over the ice on the meadows. This is the second freshet since the snows. The ice is cracked, and in some places heaved up in the usual manner. 

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1854

The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge. See April 19, 1852 ("That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tempests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles");  December 22, 1852 ("A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them."); See also  March 25, 1853 ("Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings's new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,-twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread."); May 19, 1856 ("Returning, stopped at Barrett’s sawmill . . . He was sawing a white oak log. . . Said that about as many logs were brought to his mill as ten years ago, — he did not perceive the difference, — but they were not so large, and perhaps they went further for them"); October 29, 1860 ("I am surprised to find on this[E. Hubbard’s ] hill (cut some seven or eight years ago) many remarkably old stumps wonderfully preserved, especially on the north side the hill, — walnuts, white oak and other oaks, and black birch. One white oak is eighteen and a half inches in diameter and has one hundred and forty-three rings. This is very one-sided in its growth, the centre being just four inches from the north side, or thirty - six rings to an inch. Of course I counted the other side.Another, close by, gave one hundred and forty-one rings, another white oak fifteen and a half inches in diameter had one hundred and fifty-five rings. It has so smooth (sawed off) and solid, almost a polished or marble-Like, surface that I could not at first tell what kind of wood it was. Another white oak the same as last in rings, i. e. one hundred and fifty-five, twenty-four inches in diameter. All these were sound to the very core, so that I could see the first circles. . . For aught that appeared, they might have continued to grow a century longer. The stumps are far apart, so that this formed an open grove,"); November 13, 1860 ("On the Moore and Hosmer lot, cut in’52 (I think), west of railroad, south of Heywood’s meadow, an oak stump fifteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety three rings; another, white oak, fourteen and a half inches in diameter, ninety-four rings . . .It was a good hundred years since that old stump was cut . . .A white oak standing by the fence west of Spanish Brook dam on Morse’s lot, circumference six feet and two twelfths at three feet."); Novemberf 28 28, 1860 ("On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.'s oaks, many oaks were sawed off about a year ago . . . One white oak, 17 inches diameter, has 100 rings.A second, 16 1/2 inches diameter, also 100 rings.")

Cutting old trees. See  January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods. ... It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not"); March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?").

Old growth specimens. In 1860, as part of his study of forest succession HDT was to measure old trees in detail. See October 19, 1860 (" I can easily find in countless numbers in our forests, frequently in the third succession, the stumps of the oaks that were cut near the end of the last century. Perhaps I can recover thus generally the oak woods of the beginning of the last century." October 20, 1860 ("[At Hubbard's wood] the very oldest evidences of a tree are a hollow three or four feet across, - the grave of an oak that was cut or died eighty or a hundred years ago there."); November 1, 1860 ("Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land, about that now frosty hollow, cut ... four years ago. One, having 164 rings, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635"); November 13, 1860 ("A white birch (Betula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches circumference at three feet"); November 14, 1860 ("The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet"); December 1, 1860 ("Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet") ; see also January 27, 1856 ("The white maple at Derby’s Bridge measures fifteen feet in circumference at ground,").

See also November 10, 1860 (Inches Wood); November 5, 1860 (Blood's oak lot.) and November 2, 1860 (Wetherbee's old oak lot).

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10

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