The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct.

December 8. 

Another Indian-summer day. 

Saw some puffballs in the woods, wonderfully full of sulphur-like dust, which yellowed my shoes, greenish-yellow. 

The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct, though like the limit of a shadow, on the alders about eighteen inches above the present level.

One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion; much more his old body, without a slight sense of guilt.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1852

Wonderfully full of sulphur-like dust, which yellowed my shoes, greenish-yellow. Compare June 29, 1858 ("Walking in the white pine wood there, I find that my shoes and, indeed, my hat are covered with the greenish-yellow pollen of the white pines,. . .My shoes are green-yellow, or yellow-green, even the next day with it.")

The recent water-line at Walden is quite distinct, See December 5, 1852 ("This great rise of the pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge")

Burn or bury old shoes.  See December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 6, 1859 ("That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.")

That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

December 6. 

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. 

It is somewhat of a lichen day. The bright-yellow sulphur lichens on the walls of the Walden road look novel, as if I had not seen them for a long time. Do they not require cold as much as moisture to enliven them? What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. Even stones of smaller size which make the walls are so finished, and piled up for what use? How naturally they adorn our works of art! 

See where the farmer has set up his post-and-rail fences along the road. The sulphur lichen has, as it were, at once leaped to occupy the northern side of each post, as in towns handbills are pasted on all bare surfaces, and the rails are more or less gilded with them as if it had rained gilt. The handbill which nature affixes to the north side of posts and trees and other surfaces. 

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. 

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. 

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. 

For two rods in width next the shore, where the water is shallowest and the sand bare, you see a strip of light greenish two or three rods in width, and then dark brown (with a few green streaks only) where the dark sediment of ages has accumulated. 

And, looking down the pond, you see on each side successive wooded promontories — with their dim reflections — growing dimmer and dimmer till they are lost in the mist. The more distant shores are a mere dusky line or film, a sort of concentration of the mistiness. 

In the pure greenish stripe next the shore I saw some dark-brown objects above the sand, which looked very much like sea turtles in various attitudes. One appeared holding its great head up toward the surface. 

They were very weird-like and of indefinite size. I supposed that they were stumps or logs on the bottom, but was surprised to find that they were a thin and flat collection of sediment on the sandy bottom, like that which covered the bottom generally further out. 

When the breeze rippled the surface some distance out, it looked like a wave coming in, but it never got in to the shore. 

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. Thus it is alternate snow and seeds.

Returning up the railroad, I see the great tufts of sedge in Heywood's meadow curving over like locks of the meadow's hair, above the snow.  These browned the meadow considerably. 

Then came a black maze, of alders moistened by the rain, which made a broad black belt between the former brown and the red-brown oaks higher up the hillside. 

The white pines now, seen through the mist, the ends of their boughs drooping a little with the weight of the glaze, resemble very much hemlocks, for the extremities of their limbs always droop thus, while pines are commonly stiffly erect or ascendant.

***

I took out my boots, which I have not worn since last spring, with the mud and dust of spring still on them, and went forth in the snow. That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

H. .D. Thoreau,  Journal, December 6, 1859

It is somewhat of a lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); and note to February 7. 1959("I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")


No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. See November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north."; )December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth."); December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds. "); December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it").


That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter. See November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage."); December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 8, 1852 ("One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion");compare March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”)

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town.

September 1

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Flint's Pond.

That reach in the road this side Britton's Camp might be called Nabalus Road, they are so abundant there. Some of them are fully six feet high, — a singularly tall and slender plant.

See, I think, my first tobacco-pipe this afternoon, now that they are about done, and have seen no pine- sap this year, abundant as both the above were last year. Like fungi, these plants are apparently scarce in a dry year, so that you might at first think them rare plants. This is a phenomenon of drought.

I see in different places small grubs splitting leaves now, and so marking them curiously with light brown or whitish on the green. Here are two at work in a Rhus Toxicodendron leaf. They appear to have been hatched within the leaf at the apex, and each has eaten upward on its own side of the midrib and equally fast, making a light-colored figure shaped like a column of smoke in the midst of the green. They perfectly split the leaf, making no visible puncture in it, even at the ribs or veins. Some creatures are so minute that they find food enough for them between the two sides of a thin leaf, without injuring the cuticle. The ox requires the meadows to be shorn for him, and cronches both blade and stalk, even of the coarsest grass, as corn; but these grubs do their browsing in narrower pastures, pastures not so wide as their own jaws, between fences (inviolable to them) of their own establishing, or along narrow lanes. There, secure from birds, they mine, and no harm can they do now that the green leaf has so commonly done its office.

If you would study the birds now, go where their food is, i. e. the berries, especially to the wild black cherries, elder-berries, poke berries, mountain-ash berries, and ere long the barberries, and for pigeons the acorns.

In the sprout-land behind Britton's Camp, I came to a small black cherry full of fruit, and then, for the first time for a long while, I see and hear cherry-birds — their shrill and fine seringo — and the note of robins, which of late are scarce. We sit near the tree and listen to the now unusual sounds of these birds, and from time to time one or two come dashing from out the sky toward this tree, till, seeing us, they whirl, disappointed, and perhaps alight on some neighboring twigs and wait till we are gone.

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles. If we stay long, they go off with a fling, to some other cherry tree, which they know of but we do not. The neighborhood of a wild cherry full of fruit is now, for the notes of birds, a little spring come back again, and when, a mile or two from this, I was plucking a basketful of elder-berries (for which it was rather early yet), there too, to my surprise, I came on a flock of golden robins and of bluebirds, apparently feeding on them.

Excepting the vacciniums, now past prime and drying up, the cherries and elder berries are the two prevailing fruits now. We had remarked on the general scarcity and silence of the birds, but when we came to the localities of these fruits, there again we found the berry-eating birds assembled, — young (?) orioles and bluebirds at the elder-berries.

Green white pine cones are thrown down. An unusual quantity of these have been stripped for some time past, and I see the ground about the bases of the trees strewn with them.

The spikenard berries in the shade at Saw Mill have but just begun to turn.

The Polygonatum biflorum with its row of bluish-green berries (the blue a bloom), pendulous from the axils of the recurved stem, apparently now in its prime.

Red choke-berry ripe.

Smooth sumach probably hardly ripe yet generally.

The fruit of the arum is the most remarkable that I see this afternoon, such its brilliancy, color, and form; perhaps in prime now. It is among the most easily detected now on the floor of the swamp, its bright- scarlet cone above the fallen and withered leaves and amid its own brown or whitish and withering leaves. Its own leaves and stem perhaps soft and decaying, while it is perfectly fresh and dazzling. It has the brightest gloss of any fruit I remember, and this makes the green ones about as remarkable as the scarlet. With, perchance, a part of the withered spathe still investing and veiling it. The scarlet fruit of the arum spots the swamp floor.

Now, also, bright-colored fungi of various colors on the swamp floor begin to compete with these fruits. I see a green one.

The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one. Are said to make a good dye. They fill your basket quickly, the cymes are so large and lie up so light.

The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon. Now, at 11 a. m., it makes quite a show, yet at 2 p. m. I do not notice it.

Bought a pair of shoes the other day, and, observing that as usual they were only wooden-pegged at the toes, I required the seller to put in an extra row of iron pegs there while I waited for them. So he called to his boy to bring those zinc pegs, but I insisted on iron pegs and no zinc ones. He gave me considerable advice on the subject of shoes, but I suggested that even the wearer of shoes, of whom I was one, had an opportunity to learn some of their qualities. I have learned to respect my own opinion in this matter. As I do not use blacking and the seller often throws in a box of blacking when I buy a pair of shoes, they accumulate on my hands.

Saw this afternoon, on a leaf in the Saw Mill woodpath, a very brilliant beetle a quarter or a third of an inch in length with brilliant green and copper reflections. The same surface, or any part of the upper surface, of the bug was green from one point of view and burnished copper from another. Yet there was nothing in its form to recommend this bug.

You must be careful not to eat too many nuts. I one winter met a young man whose face was broken out into large pimples and sores, and when I inquired what was the matter, he answered that he and his wife were fond of shagbarks, and therefore he had bought a bushel of them, and they spent their winter evenings eating them, and this was the consequence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1859

The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. See August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them."); August 29, 1854 ("Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds "); September 1, 1860: ("Cherries are especially birds' food, and . . . I shall think the birds have the best right to them..")

The fruit of the arum is the most remarkable that I see this afternoon, such its brilliancy, color, and form; perhaps in prime now. See August 22, 1852 ("The arum berries are mostly devoured, apparently by birds. . ..Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry and the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them."); September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground."); September 4, 1856 ("Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime.”); September 4, 1857 ("Arum berries ripe.”); September 24, 1856 ("Aarum berries still fresh"); September 28, 1856 ("The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide and rather flattish. . . . These singular vermilion-colored berries, about a hundred of them, surmount a purple bag on a peduncle six or eight inches long. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Arum Berries

The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now. See August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common."); September 2, 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore."); September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill")

Green white pine cones are thrown down.  See September 16, 1857("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down.")

Bought a pair of shoes the other day. See EDK August 9, 1860 (" Bot a pair of shoes for $1.25"); December 4, 1856 ("When I bought my boots yesterday, Hastings ran over his usual rigmarole.")

Alone

Alone in a dappled wood

crossing a tumbling stream

shoes in hand

sparkles on the water

your body

in the sun.

Zphx, 4/13/10