A great part of the meadow once belonged to the pond.

June 9..

James Wood, Senior, told me to-day that Asa (?) Melvin's father told him that he had seen ale wives caught (many of them) in the meadow which we were crossing, on the west of Bateman's Pond, where now there is no stream, and though it is wet you can walk everywhere; also one shad. He thinks that a great part of the meadow once belonged to the pond.

Gathered the Linnæa borealis.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1851

Twinflower
(Linnaea borealis)

Gathered the Linnæa borealis. See June 1, 1855 ("I find the Linnaea borealis growing near the end of the ridge in this lot toward the meadow, near a large white pine stump recently cut."); June 4, 1855 ("The Linnaea borealis has grown an inch."); June 10, 1856 ("I find some linnaea well out, after all, within a rod of the top of the hill, apparently two or three days. If it flowered more abundantly, probably it would be earlier."); and July 15, 1858 ("At about one mile or three quarters below the summit [of Lafayette], just above the limit of trees, we came to a little pond. . . In the dwarf fir thickets above and below this pond, I saw the most beautiful linnaeas that I ever saw. They grew quite densely, full of rose-purple flowers, — deeper reddish purple than ours, which are pale, — perhaps nodding over the brink of a spring, altogether the fairest mountain flowers I saw.")

June 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 9

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

AMERICAN TWINFLOWER There are about 21 references to this in Thoreau’s Journal. 

His first mention of it is on June 9, 1851 where he records gathering it but not specifying where

• On January 21, 1852 he lists “Linnaea Borealis Wood” among other woodlands being cut down that winter more seriously than ever. 
• On June 19, 1852 he notes not being able to find the Linnaea in Loring’s [woods?]|, perhaps because the woods are cut down. This suggests that this is the site referred to as Linnaea Borealis Wood in January of that year. 
• On June 24, 1852 while in the vicinity of or returning from White Pond he remarks on finding this just going out of blossom and how he should have found it long ago, and how its leaves densely cover the ground. 
• On June 3, 1853 he mentions going to Annursnack Hill by way of the Linnaea which was not yet flowering. The next sentence refers to “that thick pine wood” in connection with the Linnaea. 
• On June 6, 1853 he visits the Linnaea Woods, a famous place for tanagers, and finds the Linnaea in flower. 
• On May 30, 1854 he finds this budded in Stow’s Wood by Deep Cut. 
• On June 7, 1854 he records going to Dugan Desert via the Linnaea Hills and finding it abundantly in flower. 
• On June 1, 1855 he discovers a station for this at the end of a ridge while surveying the Holden wood-lot (in the vicinity of Nut Meadow Brook). 
• On June 10, 1856 on his way to Dugan Desert he notes finding some of it in flower within a rod of the top of the hill [Linnaea Hills]. In the same paragraph he mentions sproutland of Loring’s thick wood that was. 
• On August 28, 1856 going along Marlborough road he refers to going over “linnaea sprout-lands.”

From the above Journal references it appears that Thoreau knew Linnaea from three sites in Concord: the Loring’s Wood west of Loring’s Pond [Linnaea Borealis Wood, Linnaea Hill(s), Linnaea Wood-lot] Stow’s Wood by Deep Cut in the Walden Woods, and in the Holden wood-lot near Nut Meadow Brook   ~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord Massachusetts,  American Twinflower; See also

Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest, 19; On the Trail of Twinflower

Painting by Hendrik Hollander, 1853. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Linnaeus adopted the twinflower as his personal symbol.

The river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow.

 

April 6.

April 6, 2021

Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow.

But I read in Blodget that the equivalent in water is about one tenth. Say one ninth in this case, and you have one and one third inches, and this falling on an unfrozen surface, the river at the same time falling from a height, shows why it was no more retarded (far from being absolutely raised).

There is now scarcely a button-ball to be seen on Moore's tree, where there were many a month ago. The balls have not fallen entire, but been decomposed and the seed dispersed gradually, leaving long, stringy stems and their cores dangling still.  It is the storms of February and March that disperse them.

The (are they cinnamon?) sparrows are the finest singers I have heard yet, especially in Monroe's garden, where I see no tree sparrows. Similar but more prolonged and remarkable and loud.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1861

Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow. See April 6, 1858 ("They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season.");April 7, 1858 ("The ground about the outmost willow at my boat's place is high and dry. . . . There is no water anywhere on these meadows now — except the one or two permanent pools — which I cannot walk through in my boots. ") Compare  April 8, 1856 ("River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge, but was obliged to find a round stick and roll my boat over the road.”) and  April 12, 1856 ("The river . . . was at its height when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday.")

But I read in Blodget that the equivalent in water is about one tenth. See L Blodgett, Climatology of the United States 320 (1857) ("one-tenth of the recorded depth of snow has been taken as its equivalent in water. This rule is sufficiently near to accuracy for any general purpose,")

There is now scarcely a button-ball to be seen on Moore's tree, where there were many a month ago. See February 28. 1861 ("The buttonwood seed has apparently scarcely begun to fall yet — only two balls under one tree, but they loose and broken. [Almost entirely fallen March 7th, leaving the dangling stems and bare receptacles.]") Note, per Wikipedia ("The Buttonball Tree is an exceptionally large American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) located in Sunderland, Massachusetts. The nickname "buttonball" has been used for all like trees")

A stream meanders as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

August 29.

The 25th and 26th I was surveying Tuttle's farm.

The northeast side bounds on the Mill Brook and its tributary and is very irregular.

I find, after surveying accurately the windings of several brooks and of the river, that their meanders are not such regular serpentine curves as is commonly supposed, or at least represented. 

They flow as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

The eye is very much deceived when standing on the brink, and one who had only surveyed a brook so would be inclined to draw a succession of pretty regular serpentine curves.

But, accurately plotted, the regularity disappears, and there are found to be many straight lines and sharp turns.

I want no better proof of the inaccuracy of some maps than the regular curving meanders of the streams, made evidently by a sweep of the pen.

No, the Meander no doubt flowed in a very crooked channel, but depend upon it, it was as much zigzag as serpentine.

This last brook I observed was doubly zigzag, or compoundly zigzag; i. e., there was a zigzag on a large scale including the lesser.

To the eye this meadow is perfectly level.

Probably all streams are (generally speaking) far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths, where they flow slowly, than in high and rugged ground which offers more obstacles.

The meadow being so level for long distances, no doubt as high in one direction as another, how, I asked myself, did the feeble brook, with all its meandering, ever find its way to the distant lower end?

What kind of instinct conducted it forward in the right direction?

How unless it is the relict of a lake which once stood high over all these banks, and knew the different levels of its distant shores?

How unless a flow which commenced above its level first wore its channel for it?

Thus, in regard to most rivers, did not lakes first find their mouths for them, just as the tide now keeps open the mouths of sluggish rivers?

And who knows to what extent the sea originally channelled the submerged globe?

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them.

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples.

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

Probably all streams are far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths. See July 18, 1852 ("Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that. . . The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast."); March 24, 1855 ("Rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. "); July 7, 1859 ("I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river . . . winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows."); July 22, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. ")


I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off. See August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); see also  August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house"); August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first."); September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.");  September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”); September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal )is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside!");September 13, 1856 ("Up Assabet. Gather quite a parcel of grapes, quite ripe.. . . the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity.");October 9, 1853 ("I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable."

The year is in its manhood now.

June 15.

Tuesday. Silene Antirrhina, sleepy catch-fly, or snapdragon catch-fly, the ordinarily curled-up petals scarcely noticeable at the end of the large oval calyx. Gray says opening only by night or cloudy weather. Bigelow says probably nocturnal, for he never found it expanded by day. (I found it June 16th at 6 a. m. expanded, two of its flowers, — and they remained so for some hours, in my chamber.) 

By railroad near Badger's. 

Yesterday we smelt the sea strongly; the sea breeze alone made the day tolerable. 

This morning, a shower! The robin only sings the louder for it. He is inclined to sing in foul weather. 

To Clematis Brook, 1.30 p. m. Very warm. Now for a thin coat. This melting weather makes a stage in the year. 

The crickets creak louder and more steadily; the bullfrogs croak in earnest. 

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. 

The potatoes are of that height to stand up at night.

Bathing cannot be omitted. The conversation of all boys in the streets is whether they will or not or who will go in a-swimming, and how they will not tell their parents. You lie with open windows and hear the sounds in the streets.

The seringo sings now at noon on a post; has a light streak over eye.

The autumnal dandelion (Leontodon, or Apargia). Erigeron integrifolius of Bigelow (strigosus, i. e. narrow- leaved daisy fleabane, of Gray) very common, like a white aster. I will note such birds as I observe in this walk, beginning on the railroad causeway in middle of this hot day.

The chuckling warble of martins heard over the meadow, from a village box. The lark. 

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. The epilobium shows some color in its spikes. 

How rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold.

It is a flowery revolution, to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers. We follow, we march after, the highest color; that is our flag, our standard, our "color." 

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. 

There have been many flower men who have rambled the world over to see them. The flowers robbed from an Egyptian traveller were at length carefully boxed up and forwarded to Linnaeus, the man of flowers. 

The common, early cultivated red roses are certainly very handsome, so rich a color and so full of blossoms; you see why even blunderers have introduced them into their gardens. 

Ascending to pigeon-place plain, the reflection of the heat from the dead pine-needles and the boughs strewn about, combined with the dry, suffocating scent, is oppressive and reminds me of the first settlers of Concord.

The oven-bird, chewink, pine warbler (?), thrasher, swallows on the wire, cuckoo, phoebe, red eye, robin, veery. 

The maple-leaved viburnum is opening with a purplish tinge. 

Wood thrush. 

Is not that the Prunus obovata, which I find in fruit, a mere shrub, in Laurel Glen, with oval fruit and long pedicels in a raceme? And have I not mistaken the P. Virginiana, or northern red cherry, for this? 

Vide Virginiana and also vide the P. depressa. 

Golden and coppery reflections from a yellow dor-bug's coat of mail in the water. 

Is it a yellowbird or myrtle-bird? 

Huckleberry-bird. 

Walden is two inches above my last mark. It must be four or five feet, at least, higher than when I sounded it. 

Men are inclined to be amphibious, to sympathize with fishes, now. I desire to get wet and saturated with water. 

The North River, Assabet, by the old stone bridge, affords the best bathing-place I think of, — a pure sandy, uneven bottom, — with a swift current, a grassy bank, and overhanging maples, with transparent water, deep enough, where you can see every fish in it. Though you stand still, you feel the rippling current about you. 

First locust. 

The pea-wai. 

There is considerable pollen on the pond; more than last year, notwithstanding that all the white pines near the pond are gone and there are very few pitch. It must all come from the pitch pine, whose sterile blossoms are now dry and empty, for it is earlier than the white pine. Probably I have never observed it in the river because it is carried away by the current.

The umbellefl pyrola is just ready to bloom. 

Young robins, dark-speckled, and the pigeon woodpecker flies up from the ground and darts away. 

I forget that there are lichens at this season. 

The farmhouses under their shady trees (Baker's) look as if the inhabitants were taking their siesta at this hour. I pass it  in the rear, through the open pitch pine wood. 

Why does work go forward now? No scouring of tubs or cans now. The cat and all are gone to sleep, preparing for an early tea, excepting the indefatigable, never-resting hoers in the corn-field, who have carried a jug of molasses and water to the field and will wring their shirts to-night.

I shall ere long hear the horn blow for their early tea. The wife or the hired Irish woman steps to the door and blows the long tin horn, a cheering sound to the laborers in the field. 

The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. 

A town must pay its engineers so well that they shall not feel that they are working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific ends. 

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. 

On Mt. Misery, panting with heat, looking down the river. The haze an hour ago reached to Wachusett; now it obscures it. 

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depositing their sediment? 

The year is in its manhood now. 

The very river looks warm, and there is none of that light celestial blue seen in far reaches in the spring. I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. The very sight of distant water is refreshing, though a bluish steam appears to rest on it. 

Catbird. 

The waxwork is just in blossom and groves [of] hickories on the south of Mt. Misery. How refreshing the sound of the smallest waterfall in hot [weather]

I sit by that on Clematis Brook and listen to its music. The very sight of this half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely. 

They speak to our blood, even these stagnant, slimy pools. It, too, no doubt, has its falls nobler than Montmorenci, grander than Niagara, in the course of its circulations. 

Here is the primitive force of Egypt and the Nile, where the lotus grows. 

Some geraniums are quite rose-colored, others pale purplish-blue, others whitish. 

The blossom of the Zentago is rather sweet smelling.

Orobanche uniflora, sin gle-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray), grows by this brook-side, — a naked, low, bluish-white flower, even re minding you of the tobacco-pipe. 

Cattle walk along in a brook or ditch now for coolness, lashing their tails, and browse the edges; or they stand concealed for shade amid thick bushes. How perfectly acquainted they are with man, and never run from him! 

Thorn bushes appear to be just out of blossom. I have not observed them well. 

Woodchucks and squirrels are seen and heard in a walk. 

How much of a tortoise is shell! But little is gone with its spirit. It is well cleaned out, I trust. It is emptied of the reptile. It is not its exuviae. 

I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it, — r- shrill, harsh, fitted to excite terror in sparrows and to issue from his split and curved bill. I see his open bill the while against the sky. Spit with force from his mouth with an undulatory quaver imparted to it from his wings or motion as he flies. A hawk's ragged wing will grow whole again, but so will not a poet's. 

By half past five, robins more than before, crows, of course, and jays. 

Dogsbane is just ready to open. 

Swallows. 

It is pleasant walking through the June-grass (in Pleasant Meadow), so thin and offering but little obstruction. 

The nighthawk squeaks and booms. 

The Veratrum viride top is now a handsome green cluster, two feet by ten inches. 

Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, — a large spike of purple flowers. 

I find two, — the grandiflora of Bigelow and fimbriata of Gray. Bigelow thinks it the most beautiful of all the orchises. 

I am not prepared to say it is the most beautiful wild flower I have found this year. Why does it grow there only, far in a swamp, remote from public view? It is somewhat fragrant, reminding me of the lady's-slipper. 

Is it not significant that some rare and delicate and beautiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. 

A beautiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have a fair stem and leaves. 

This stem is rather naked, and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fairest seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its lower part or rather naked stem concealed. 

Where the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man's spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-colored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no pains to exhibit [it], and few that bloom are ever seen by mortal eyes. 

The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen. 

Disturbed a company of tree-toads amid the bushes. They seemed to bewilder the passer by their croaking; when he went toward one, he was silent, and another sounded on the other side. 

The hickory leaves are fra grant as I brush past them. 

Quite a feast of strawberries on Fair Haven, — the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. 

The night-warbler. 

There are few really cold springs. I go out of my way to go by the Boiling Spring. How few men can be believed when they say the spring is cold! There is one cold as the coldest well water. What a treasure is such a spring! Who divined it? 

The cistuses are all closed. Is it because of the heat, and will they be open in the morning? 

C. found common hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) by railroad. 

8 p. m. — On river. No moon. 

A deafening sound from the toads, and intermittingly from bullfrogs. What I have thought to be frogs prove to be toads, sitting by thousands along the shore and trilling short and loud, — not so long a quaver as in the spring, — and I have not heard them in those pools, now, indeed, mostly dried up, where I heard them in the spring. (I do not know what to think of my midsummer frog now.) 

The bullfrogs are very loud, of various degrees of baseness and sonorousness, answering each other across the river with two or three grunting croaks. They are not nearly so numerous as the toads. 

It is candle-light. The fishes leap. 

The meadows sparkle with the coppery light of fireflies. The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. 

The reflections of the trees are grandly indistinct.

There is a low mist slightly enlarging the river, through which the arches of the stone bridge are' just visible, as a vision. The mist is singularly bounded, collected here, while there is none there; close up to the bridge on one side and none on the other, depending apparently on currents of air. A dew in the air for it is, which in time will wet you through. 

See stars reflected in the bottom of our boat, it being a quarter full of water. There is a low crescent of northern light and shooting stars from time to time. 

(We go only from Channing's to the ash above the railroad.) I paddle with a bough, the Nile boatman's oar, which is rightly pliant, and you do not labor much. Some dogs bay. A sultry night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1852

The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. See June 14, 1853 ("Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat.")

The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven."); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height.")

Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and meadowy.See July 19, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, while it may be encroaching on the bank on one side, preserves its ordinary breadth by filling up the other side") See also August 7, 1858 ("The most luxuriant groves of black willow are on the inside curves, —but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore. “); August 15, 1858 (“I notice the black willows . . . to see where they grow, distinguishing ten places. In seven instances they are on the concave or female side distinctly.”); July 5, 1859 ("The deepest part of the river is generally rather toward one side, especially where the stream is energetic. On a curve it is generally deepest on the inside bank, and the bank most upright.")

The year is in its manhood now. See June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); June 15, 1853 ("The rude health of the sorrel cheek has given place to the blush of clover.")

I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. See  note to June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)


I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful. See note to June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Fringed Orchids

Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. See August 22, 1852 ("Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them.”); March 18, 1860 (“There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. . . .No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring.”)

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. See December 12, 1859("Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his."); March 31, 1842 ("The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work , but will saunter to his task sur- rounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure . . .Those who work much do not work hard."). See also Do it Well

A witness.

August 9. 

I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring, not revealed till this low water, and this is now dense with a thrifty growth of bulrushes. 

Minott says that some used to wonder much at the windings of the Mill Brook and could not succeed in accounting for them, but his Uncle Ben Prescott settled the difficulty by saying that a great eel came out of Flint’s Pond and rooted its way through to the river and so made the channel of the Mill Brook. 

Minott says that he can remember when (it may be forty or fifty years ago) the Great Meadows were so dry one year that, they having got off all the grass and cut it quite smoothly, they talked seriously of having a regimental muster there. He assured me it would have been a good place, for the grass was cut smooth, and the earth was baked so hard that you could ride in a carriage right through the middle from the west end clear to Neck. Cannon could have been dragged about there perfectly well. I was thinking it would be rather tussocky ground for soldiers to wheel and manoeuvre on, and rather damp to camp on, but he declared not. 

This appeared to be good evidence for the river meadow proprietors. 

But when I asked him if he thought the meadows were more wet now than fifty years ago, he answered that he did “not think they were,” nor the grass any poorer. 

As he remembered, in one of those years, not far from the dry one referred to, there came a rain in August, when the meadows were partly cut, which raised the water so that it floated off what was left cut and went over the tops of the standing grass, and you could have gone all over the meadows in a boat, and he saw there on the meadows such an immense swarm of sea-birds of various kinds — peeps, plover, yellow-legs, etc. — as he never saw before nor since. He thinks he saw so many in one flock as could not have been packed into his kitchen. He had never seen anything at all like it but once since, and that was the day after he had been to a muster with his company at Waltham — when he was a young man — and had saved the greater part of his allowance of powder all the field. The next day, after getting home, the yellow-legs were so thick on the Mill Brook meadows that he killed a bushel of them. 

I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. Many of the scales two-thirds off, turned up all around.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1859

I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring. See April 12, 1859 ("I look again at the meadow-crust carried off by the ice. There is one by the railroad bridge, say three rods by one, covered with button-bushes and willows. ");  August 3, 1859 ("The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year.")


Evidence for the river meadow proprietors.  HDT had been frequently called as an expert witness to give testimony against dams, which he did in 1851 1853 and 1854. On June 4, 1859 Simon Brown and three other men commissioned HDT to study and measure all the bridges from Wayland to Billerica. On June 20 the ConcordTownship hired him to survey the entire river bed.  The Middlesex Canal Company had recently added a 3 foot riser to Billerica dam, and the meadow farmers brought suit. See August 25, 1856 ("It is commonly supposed that our river meadows were much drier than now originally, or when the town was settled. They were probably drier before the dam was built at Billerica"); August 31, 1856 ("Hubbard says he has heard that they have just lowered their dam a foot at Billerica. He sees that the water has fallen a little in his meadow. It leaves a scum on the grass and gives it a smell and taste, which makes the cattle reject it.");;June 24, 1859 ("The 22d, 23d, and 24th, I have been surveying the bridges and river from Heard's Bridge to the Billerica dam.”). See also THE GREAT BILLERICA DAM CONTROVERSY ("Witnesses from Sudbury, Concord, Bedford, Carlisle, Wayland, Lincoln and Billerica testified to recent changes from the good old days, when they could drive wagons onto the meadows to harvest the hay. Now only an inferior type of grass grew there, and the meadows were so soggy that it could not even be harvested. The damage was caused by the wetness which made access onto the meadows impossible, and by the stagnant water which spoiled the quality of the grass.")

I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales"); September 15, 1855 ("See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs. ") September 22, 1855 ("Many tortoise-scales about the river now."); October 12, 1855 ("Is not this the only way they get rid of the moss, etc., which adhere to them?")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

 

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

The grassy sea.

August 3

6 A. M. — River fallen one inch since 2.30 P. M. yesterday; i.e., it is now a quarter of an inch above summer level. 

AUGUST 3, 2019

Juncus Greenei grows in river meadow opposite Dodd’s; long done. I saw (the 31st ult.) that the river was narrowed to a third its width by a large mass of button-bushes sunk in the middle of it_above the Sudbury causeway. 

The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year.  

I should say the origin of these holes was that the river, being shallow and therefore crowded, runs swiftly and digs into the bank and so makes a deep hole and a bend. The three large lakes may perhaps be considered as three deep holes made by a larger river or ocean current in former ages. The almost constant occurrence of a bay, or stagnant expansion, on the convex side at the bends is remarkable. It seems to be a place where the river has formerly flowed, but which, by wearing into the opposite bank, it has left. 

There are about twenty-one weedy places (i. e., where the weeds extend quite across), all together about two miles in length. These weedy places, you may say (not withstanding the frequent winding of the river), generally occur at bends (the Island shoal, perhaps, and Barrett’s Bar, and above Middlesex Turnpike Bridge are exceptions).  The most remarkable bend between Framingham and the Dam is the Ox-Bow in Framingham. 

Since our river is so easily affected by wind, the fact that its general course is northeast and that the prevailing winds in summer are southwest is very favorable to its rapid drainage at that season. If by fall you mean a swifter place occasioned by the bottom below for a considerable distance being lower than the bottom above for a considerable distance, I do not know of any such between Pelham Pond and the Falls. 

These swifter places are produced by a contraction of the stream,— chiefly by the elevation of the bottom at that point, — also by the narrowing of the stream. 

The depths are very slight compared with the lengths. The average depth of this twenty-five miles is about one seventeen thousandth the length; so that if this portion of the river were laid down on a map four feet long the  depth would be about equal to the thickness of ordinary letter paper, of which it takes three hundred and fifty to an inch. Double the thickness of the letter paper, and it will contain the deep holes which are so unfathomed and mysterious, not to say bottomless, to the swimmers and fishermen. 

Methinks the button-bushes about Fair Haven indicate a muddy but not deep pond.

The deepest reach of this twenty-five miles is from E. Davis Hill to Skelton Bend. 

Methinks I saw some of the fresh-water sponge in the river in Framingham. 

Undoubtedly, in the most stagnant parts of the river, when the wind blows hard up-stream, a chip will be drifted faster up-stream than ever it floats downward there in a calm. 

P. M. — I see two or three birds which I take to be rose-breasted grosbeaks of this year. They are speckled brown and white (with considerable white) birds, and no rose on breast that I see. I hear them singing a little in a grosbeak-like strain, but a more partial warble. Heard one July 28th on an oak high up Assabet, and to-day on an apple tree near Brister’s. 

Warren Miles tells me that in mowing lately he cut in two a checkered “adder,” — by his account it was the chicken snake, — and there was in its stomach a green snake, dead and partly digested, and he was surprised to find that they ate them. 

Water-bugs are collected in dense swarms about my boat, at its stagnant harbor. They gyrate in a very leisurely manner under my face, occasionally touching one another by their edges a moment. When I move or disturb the water, they at once begin to gyrate rapidly. After the evening has set in, I perceive that these water bugs, which all day were collected in dense swarms in the stagnant water amid the weeds at the sides, are dispersed over the river (quite across it here) and gyrating rapidly in the twilight.

The haymakers are quite busy on the Great Meadows, it being drier than usual. It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked. 

As I wade through the middle of the meadows in sedge up to my middle and look afar over the waving and rustling bent tops of the sedge (all are bent northeast by the southwest wind) toward the distant mainland, I feel a little as if caught by a rising tide on flats far from the shore. I am, as it were, cast away in the midst of the sea. It is a level sea of waving and rustling sedge about me. The grassy sea. 

You feel somewhat as you would if you were standing in water at an equal distance from the shore. To-day I can walk dry over the greater part of the meadows, but not over the lower parts, where pipes, etc., grow; yet many think it has not been so dry for ten years!

Goodwin is there after snipes. I scare up one in the wettest part. High blackberries begin to be ripe.

A novel phenomenon of dry weather and a low stage of water is the sight of dense green beds of Eleocharis acicularis, still in bloom, which grows at the bottom of muddy pools, but now, they being dry, looks like a dense fine bed of green moss, denser than grass. I recline on such a bed, perfectly dry and clean, amid the flags and pontederia, where lately was water and mud. It covers the mud with a short dense green mat of culms fine as a hair, quite agreeable to rest on and a rather novel sight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 3, 1859

It is a level sea of waving and rustling sedge about me. The grassy sea. See July 4, 1860 ("We are wading and navigating at present in a sort of sea of grass, which yields and undulates under the wind like water")

High blackberries begin to be ripe. See August 3, 1856 ("High blackberries beginning; a few ripe."); August 4, 1856 ("Here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

A string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers.

July 30

A. M. — On river to ascertain the rate of the current.

This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. At five feet it is strewn clear across with sium, heart-leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, etc. It is quite green and verdurous, especially with the first. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. 

I see more moss (?) covered rocks on the bottom and some rising quite near the surface, — three or four be tween my boat's place and thirty rods above, — and a good many three feet over on the bottom, revealed in the sunny water, and little suspected before. 

Indeed, the bottom may be considered rocky from above Dodd's to my boat's place, though you would suspect it only when looking through this clear water. They are so completely covered with moss-like weeds or tresses that you do not see them, — like the heads of mermaids. 

A rock there is a nucleus or hard core to a waving mass of weeds, and you must probe it hard with a paddle to detect the hard core. No doubt many a reach is thus rock-strewn which is supposed to have an uninterruptedly muddy bottom. They sleep there concealed under these long tresses on the bottom, suggesting a new kind of antiquity. 

There is nothing to wear on and polish them there. They do not bear the paint rubbed off from any boat. Though unsuspected by the oldest fisher, they have eyed Concord for centuries through their watery veil without ever parting their tresses to look at her. 

Perchance the increased stagnancy of the river at this season makes the water more transparent, it being easier to look into stagnant water than when the particles are in rapid motion. 

The outside heart-leaves above Dodd's grow in six feet of water, and also the kalmiana lily. 

Trying the current there, there being a very faint, chiefly side, wind, commonly not enough to be felt on the cheek or to ripple the water, — what would be called by most a calm, — my bottle floats about seventy-five feet in forty minutes, and then, a very faint breeze beginning to drive it back, I cannot wait to see when it will go a hundred. It is, in short, an exceedingly feeble current, almost a complete standstill. 

My boat is altogether blown up-stream, even by this imperceptible breath. Indeed, you can in such a case feel the pulse of our river only in the shallowest places, where it preserves some slight passage between the weeds. It faints and gives up the ghost in deeper places on the least adverse wind, and you would presume it dead a thousand times, if you did not apply the nicest tests, such as a feather to the nostrils of a drowned man. 

It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill. 

Yet by sinking a strawberry box beneath the surface I found that there was a slight positive current there, that when a chip went pretty fast up-stream in this air, the same with the box sunk one foot and tied to it went slowly down, at three feet deep or more went faster than when the box was sunk only one foot. The water flowed faster down at three feet depth than at one, there where it was about seven feet deep, and though the surface for several inches deep may be flowing up in the wind, the weeds at bottom will all be slanted down. 

Indeed, I suspect that at four or five feet depth the weeds will be slanted downward in the strongest wind that blows up, in that the current is always creeping along downward underneath. 

After my first experiments I was surprised to find that the weeds at bottom slanted down-stream. I have also been surprised to find that in the clear channel between the potamogetons, though it looked almost stagnant, it was hard to swim against it; as at Rice's Bend. 

See many cowbirds about cows.

P. M. — Left boat at Rice's Bend. 

I spoke to him of the clapper rail. He remembered that his father once killed a bird, a sort of mud-hen, which they called the tinker, since he made [a] noise just like a tinker on brass, and they used to set it agoing in the meadows by striking two coppers together. His father stuffed it and did not know what it was. It had a long body. 

Yet the river in the middle of Concord is swifter than above or below, and if Concord people are slow in consequence of their river's influence, the people of Sudbury and Carlisle should be slower still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1859

I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. See  July 18, 1854 ("I do not know why the water should be so remarkably clear and the sun shine through to the bottom of the river, making it so plain.“);  July 27, 1860 ("The water has begun to be clear and sunny, revealing the fishes and countless minnows of all sizes and colors”); July 28, 1859 ("The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, — see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes, especially the perch, scuttling in and out amid the weeds.."); July 30, 1856 ("The wonderful clearness of the water, enabling you to explore the river bottom and many of its secrets now...”)

My bottle floats about seventy-five feet in forty minutes, and then, a very faint breeze beginning to drive it back, I cannot wait to see when it will go a hundred. Compare June 24, 1859 ("Simonds of Bedford, who is measuring the rapidity of the current at Carlisle Bridge, says that a board with a string attached ran off there one hundred yards in fifteen minutes");   July 25, 1859 ("a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet . . . in four and a half minutes.")

It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill. See April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. ")

July 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 30

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

I measure the rapidity of the river's current.

July 25. 

July 25, 2019

The Rice boy brings me what he thought a snipe's egg, recently taken from a nest in the Sudbury meadows. It is of the form of a rail's egg, but is not whitish like mine, but olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? 

He has also a little egg, as he says taken out of a thrasher's nest, apparently one third grown. 

Flagg says that the chimney swallow is sometimes abroad "the greater part of the night;" is informed by Fowler that the rose-breasted grosbeak often sings in the light of the moon. 

P. M. — Water three and a half inches above summer level. 

I measure the rapidity of the river's current. At my boat's place behind Channing's, a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet in five minutes; one hundred feet higher up, in four and a half minutes. (I think the last the most correct.) It came out a rod and a half ahead of two chips.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1859

Olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? See note to December 7, 1858 ("The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) . . . Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)?")

Water three and a half inches above summer level. See July 9, 1859 ("July 9th, water is eleven and a half inches above summer level.")

From the factory dam to the powder-mills.

July 21. 

P. M. — To Assabet, above factory. 

July 21, 2019

For about one third the way from the factory dam to the powder-mills the river is broad and deep, in short a mill-pond. 

Harrington has what he calls his Elm Hole, where he thinks he finds the old bed of the river some ten rods from the present. The river in many places evidently once washed the base of hills, from which it is now separated by fifty rods of meadow. 

The pontederia on the Assabet is a very fresh and clear blue to-day, and in its early prime, — very handsome to see. 

The nesaea grows commonly along the river near the powder-mills, one very dense bed of it at the mouth of the powder-mill canal. The canal is still cluttered with the wreck of the mills that have been blown up in times past, — timber, boards, etc., etc., — and the steep hill is bestrewn with the fragments of the mills, which fell on it more than half a dozen years ago (many of them), visible half a mile off. 

As you draw near the powder-mills, you see the hill behind bestrewn with the fragments of mills which have been blown up in past years, — the fragments of the millers having been removed, — and the canal is cluttered with the larger ruins. 

The very river makes greater haste past the dry-house, as it were for fear of accidents.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1859

Harrington has what he calls his Elm Hole.See July 20, 1859 ("Hosmer says that when he digs down in his millet- field, twenty rods or more from the river, in his interval, at three or four feet depth he comes to coarse stones which look like an old bed of the river. ")

The pontederia on the Assabet is a very fresh and clear blue to-day, and in its early prime. See  July 18, 1852 ("The pontederias are now in their prime . . .They are very freshly blue. In the sun, when you are looking west, they are of a violaceous blue."); July 18, 1853 ("The fields of pontederia are in some places four or five rods wide and almost endless")

The steep hill is bestrewn with the fragments of the mills, which fell on it more than half a dozen years ago . See January 7, 1853 ("Timber six inches square and eighteen feet long was thrown over a hill eighty feet high.")

Powder-mills. Nathan Pratt purchased a  mill pond dam on the Assabet River and converted the former sawmill to a powder mill in 1835. The first explosion, in the first year the mills were operating, killed four men in 1836. The last three explosions in 1940 ended gunpowder production, and the dam at the original mill pond site is now being used to generate hydroelectricity for municipal Concord. The body of water created by the dam goes by the name Ripple Pond, and is located in Acton and Maynard.~ Wikipedea