A wild and strange place

June 21.

Now there is a dense mass of weeds along the waterside, where the muskrats lurk, and overhead a canopy of leaves conceals the birds and shuts out the sun. 

In the little meadow pool, or bay, in Hubbard's shore, I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. The former are slate-colored. The latter are about half an inch long and very black, forming a dark mass from eight to twelve inches in diameter. The old are constantly circling around them, -over and under and through, as if anxiously endeavoring to keep them together, from time to time moving off five or six feet to reconnoitre. The whole mass of the young and there must be a thousand of them at least is incessantly moving, pushing forward and stretching out. Are often in the form of a great pout, apparently keeping together by their own instinct chiefly, now on the bottom, now rising to the top. Alone they might be mistaken for polly-wogs. The old, at any rate, do not appear to be very successful in their apparent efforts to communicate with and direct them. At length they break into four parts. The old are evidently very careful parents. One has some wounds apparently . . . I think also that I see the young breams in schools hovering over their nests while the old are still protecting them. 

Up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north of Goose Pond I feel as if in a strange country, — a pleasing sense of strangeness and distance. 

Here are numerous open hollows more or less connected, where for some reason the wood does not spring up, — and I am glad of it, — filled with a fine wiry grass, with the panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom around the edges, and small black cherries and sand cherries straggling down into them. 

As wild and strange a place as you might find in the unexplored West or East. The quarter of a mile of sprout-land which separates it from the highway seems as complete a barrier as a thousand miles of earth. 

Your horizon is there all your own.

Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass , all glowing with rosy light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1854

See August 6, 1851 ("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods . . .in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him.")

June 21. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 21

The deep scarlet of

the wild moss rose, half open,

glowing in the grass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Wild and Strange Place

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-540621

The yellow-throated vireo I hear now.

June 9.

June 9, 2017

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds inhabit our woods? I hear their various notes ringing through them. What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me. 

How prominent a place the vireos hold! It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red-eye with its prelia — prelioit or tully-ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.

7 p. m. — Up Assabet.  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past. The veery rings, and the tree- toad. 

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing.

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise.  I see one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. The fishes continue to leap by moonlight. A full moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 9, 1854

 It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now, —  . . . with its prelia — prelioit or tully-ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees. See May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho on a higher key. It flits about in the tops of the trees."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-throated Vireo

The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal. See June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ...; and the fishes leap as before. . . "); June 8, 1856 (“my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”)

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

I should know the birds –

they must be forever strange 

and interesting

the yellow-throated

vireo invisible

in the tops of trees

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The yellow-throated vireo i hear now in he tops of trees

"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-540609

.

*** 

P . M . – To Well Meadow .

The summer aspect of the river begins perhaps when the Utricularia vulgaris is first seen on the surface, as yesterday.

As I go along the railroad causeway, I see in the cultivated grounds, a lark flashing his white tail, and showing his handsome yellow breast, with its black crescent like an Indian locket. For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry - birds, and seen them flying past, the only ( ? ) birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows.         

 The willow down and seeds are blowing over the causeway.         

 Veronica scutellata, apparently several days.         

 A strawberry half turned on the sand of the causeway side, — the first fruit or berry of the year that I have tasted.         

 Ladies’-slippers are going to seed. I see some white oak pincushions, nearly two inches through.         

Is that galium, out apparently some days in the woods by Deep Cut, near Linnæa, triflorum or Aparine ?. Compare that at Lee ' s. 

I should like to know the birds of the woods better, what birds in habit our woods? 

I hear their various notes ringing through them.         

What musicians compose our wood land quire ? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.         

How prominent a place the vireos hold ! It is probably the yellow - throated vireo I hear now, — a more interrupted red- eye with its prelia - prelioit or tully - ho, — invisible in the tops of the trees.      

   

 I see the thick, flower - like huckleberry apples.           

Haynes (?), Goodwin ' s comrade, tells me that he used to catch mud turtles in the ponds behind Provincetown with a toad on a mackerel hook thrown into the pond and the line tied to a stump or stake on shore.         

Invariably the turtle when hooked crawled up, following the line to the stake, and was there found waiting — Goodwin baits minks with muskrats.

Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days.

Two are almost fully out, two or three only budded.

 A large spike of peculiarly delicate pale-purple flowers growing in the luxuriant and shady swamp is remarkable that this, one of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of the rarest, — for the most part not seen at all. 

I think that no other but myself in Concord annually finds it. 

That so queenly a flower should annually bloom so rarely and in such : withdrawn and secret places as to be rarely seen by man ! The village belle never sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. 

How little relation between our life and its ! Most of us never see it or hear of it. 

The seasons go by to us as if it were not. 

A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, who has never strayed beyond the convent bell.

  Only the skunk or owl or other inhabitant of the swamp beholds it. 

In the damp twilight of the swamp, where it is wet to the feet. 

 How little anxious to display its attractions ! It does not pine because man does not admire it. 

 How independent on our race ! It lifts its delicate spike amid the hellebore and ferns in the deep shade of the swamp. 

 I am inclined to think of it as a relic of the past as much as the arrowhead, or the tomahawk I found on the 7th.       

Ferns are four or five feet high there.         

7 P. M. — Up Assabet.

         
The tupelo stamens are loose and will perhaps shed pollen to- morrow or next day. 

 It is twilight, and the river is covered with that dusty lint, as was the water next the shore at Walden this afternoon.

  Chimney and bank swallows are still hovering over the river, and cherry-birds fly past.

 The veery rings, and the tree toad. 

The air is now pretty full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for such as are struggling on the surface ; it sounds like the lapsing of a swift stream, sucking amid rocks.

 The fishes make a business of thus getting their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops as far as I can see, sometimes making a loud plashing. 

Meanwhile the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise, and I saw one dive in the twilight and go off utter ing his cr-r-ack, cr-r-rack. 

The mosquitoes encircle my head and torment me, and I see a great moth go fluttering over the tree-tops and the water, black against the sky, like a bat. 

The fishes continue to leap by moonlight.

 A full moon.

 Covered with disgrace, this State has sat down coolly to try for their lives the men who attempted to do its duty for it.

         And this is called justice! They who have shown that they can behave particularly well, — they alone are put under bonds “for their good behavior !” Such a judge and court are an impertinence. 

           Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a court.

            It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

            What is any political organization worth, when it is in the service of the devil ? I see that the authorities — the Governor, Mayor, Commissioner, Marshal, etc.     — are either weak or unprincipled men, - i. e.         , well disposed but not equal to the occasion, — or else of dull moral perception, with the unprincipled and servile in their pay.

            All sound moral sentiment is opposed to them.

            I had thought that the Governor, was in some sense the executive officer of the State ; that it was his business to see that the laws of the State were executed ; but, when there is any special use for him, he is useless, permits the laws to go unexecuted, and is not heard from.

            But the worst I shall say of the Governor is that he was no better than the majority of his constituents - he was not equal to the occasion.

            While the whole military force of the State, if need be, is at the service of a slaveholder, to enable him to carry back a slave, not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped.

           Is this what all these arms, all this “training,” has been for these seventy-eight years past  

What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority.

            The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.

            Justice is sweet and musical to hear; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

            The judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of the handle. He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers just the same as before.

This is our black sea.

May 8

A. M. — To Nawshawtuct. 

A female red-wing. I have not seen any before. Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char-char. No great flocks of blackbirds on tree-tops now, nor so many of robins. 

Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin — tail with black bars — probably a sparrow hawk; probably the same I have seen before. Saw one at Boston next day; mine was the pigeon hawk [No; for that is barred with white. Could mine have been the F. fuscus and so small?], slaty above (the male) and coarsely barred with black on tail. I saw these distinct bars at a distance as mine flew. It appeared hardly larger than a robin. 

Probably this the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. The sparrow hawk is a rather reddish brown and finely and thickly barred above with black.  [Could the Boston pigeon hawk have been barred with black ?]

I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now. The first of any consequence go by now. 

P. M. — By boat to Fair Haven.

The water has fallen a foot or more, but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road. There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail up stream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon. 

It is long since I have sailed on so broad a tide. How dead would the globe seem, especially at this season, if it were not for these water surfaces! We are slow to realize water, — the beauty and magic of it. It is interestingly strange to us forever. Immortal water, alive even in the superficies, restlessly heaving now and tossing me and my boat, and sparkling with life!

I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me. I am even obliged to head across them and not get into their troughs, for I can hardly keep my legs. 

They are so black, — as no sea I have seen, — large and powerful, and make such a roaring around me. You see a perfectly black mass about two feet high and perhaps four or five feet thick and of indefinite length, round-backed, or perhaps forming a sharp ridge with a dirty-white crest, tumbling like a whale unceasingly before you. 

They are melainai — what is the Greek for waves? This is our black sea. 

I am delighted to find that our usually peaceful river could toss me so. How much more exciting than to be planting potatoes with those men in the field! What a different world!

Lee's Cliff is now a perfect natural rockery for flowers. These gray cliffs and scattered rocks, with upright faces below, reflect the heat like a hothouse. The ground is whitened with the little white cymes of the saxifrage, now shot up to six or eight inches, and more flower-like dangling scarlet columbines are seen against the gray rocks, and here and there the earth is spotted with yellow crowfoots and a few early cinque-foils (not to mention houstonias, the now mostly effete sedge, the few Viola ovata, — whose deep violet is another kind of flame, as the crowfoot is yellow, — hanging their heads low in the sod, and the as yet inconspicuous veronica); while the early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented, — as if it had drunk cherry-bounce and you smelled its breath. To which is to be added the scent of bruised catnep and the greenness produced by many other forward herbs, and all resounding with the hum of insects. And all this while flowers are rare elsewhere. It is as if you had taken a step suddenly a month forward, or had entered a greenhouse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1854

Saw a small hawk flying low, the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. See October 17, 1858 ("Saw a small hawk come flying over the Assabet, . . . it had a very distinct black head, with apparently a yellowish-brown , breast and beneath and a brown back, — both, however, quite light, — and a yellowish tail with a distinct broad black band at the tip. . . .Could it have been a sparrow hawk?")


I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves. See March 16, 1860(" I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. . . . I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat.”); April 29, 1856 ("It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it.”); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so angry and black.”); October 27, 1857 (“It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. . . .How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other!”) See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing


They are melaina — what is the Greek for waves?-- Greek μελαινα (melaina) meaning "black, dark”. See note  February 10, 1860 (“The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated.”)

Go to new trees and you hear new birds.

April 24.

A. M. — Up railroad. 

The river slightly risen again owing to rain of yesterday morn and day before. As I stand still listening on the frosty sleepers at Wood's crossing by the lupines, I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself.

P. M. — Up Assabet, and thence to Cedar Swamp.

The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. 

The larch will apparently blossom in one or two days at least, both its low and broad purple-coned male flowers and its purple-tipped female cones.  

The white cedar female blossoms are open, and as the brown male ones are loosened the next day in the house, I think the 25th may be called their first day. 

Hear amid the white cedars the fine, clear singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th, very clear and fast. 

April 24, 2022

Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds.  They increase the strangeness. Also other strange plants are found there. I have also observed that the early birds are about the early trees, like maples, alders, willows, elms, etc.   

New plant (Racemed andromeda)  flower-budded at Cedar Swamp amid the high blueberry, panicled andromeda, clethra, etc.— upright dense racemes of reddish flower-buds on reddish terminal shoots. 

See a very large hawk, slaty above and white beneath, low over river. 

The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack and a limping or flitting flight from tree to tree before us, and finally, after a third of a mile, circles round to our rear. He sits rather low over the water. Now that he has come I suppose that the fishes on which he preys rise within reach.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1854

The river slightly risen again. See April 22, 1857 ("The river higher than before and rising.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, People do not remember so great a flood

The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting See April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The larch will apparently blossom in one or two days. See May 1, 1854 ("The flowers of the larch which I examined on the 24th ult. have enlarged somewhat and may now certainly be considered in blossom, though the pollen is not quite distinct. I am not certain whether the 26th was not too early. The crimson scales of the female cones are still more conspicuous.") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Larch

Cedar Swamp and white cedar female blossom See April 23, 1856 ("The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open”); April 24, 1855 ("The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich . . . [Its pollen] is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon.”); April 26, 1856 ("The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow."); April 26, 1857 ("The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier")

Go to new trees. . . and you hear new birds. They increase the strangeness. Also other strange plants are found there. See June 9, 1854 ("What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.") See also April 16, 1856 ("By the discovery of one new plant all bounds seem to be infinitely removed."); May 29, 1856 ("Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones."); July 31, 1859 ("Where there are rare, wild, rank plants, there too some wild bird will be found.")

Singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th. See April 18, 1854 ("More like the Tennessee warbler than any, methinks. Light-slate or bluish-slate head and shoulders, yellowish backward, all white beneath, and a distinct white spot on the wing; a harsh grating note[?]"); April 23, 1854 ("Had a glimpse of a very small warbler  on a pitch pine, and heard a pleasant and unusual whistle from him.")

New plant (Racemed andromeda) flower-budded. See June 3, 1857 (“The racemed andromeda (Leucothoe) has been partly killed, — the extremities of the twigs, — so that its racemes are imperfect.”);   June 8, 1856 (“I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens?”); June 10, 1857 ("The Leucothoe racemosa, not yet generally out, but a little (it being mostly killed) a day or two.")

The kingfisher flies with a crack cr-r-r-ack. See April 23, 1854 ("A kingfisher with his crack, — cr-r-r-rack"); April 25, 1852 ("Saw the first kingfisher, and heard his most unmusical note.")  and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

Now that he has come I suppose that the fishes on which he preys rise within reach. See April 23, 1852 ("Vegetation . . . follows the sun. Insects . . . follow vegetation. The fishes, the small fry, start probably for this reason . . . fish hawks, etc., follow the small fry;")

Go to new trees

like cedars and firs 

and you hear new birds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Go to new trees and you hear new birds

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/hdt570424

Kindred rocks

January 17.

Janiuary 17, 2020

Surveying for William O. Benjamin in east part of Lincoln. Saw a red squirrel on the wall, it being thawing weather. 

Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inanimate matter, — rocks or earth. Looking on the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 17, 1854

Saw a red squirrel on the wall. See January 17, 1860 ("They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling,"); See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Red Squirrel.

I feel as if rocks or earth were my kindred. See January 14, 1852 ("We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate"); August 30 1856 (“I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter.); February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.")

Janauary 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 17

January 17, 2023

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/hdt18540117

The vastness and strangeness of nature.

March 29.

It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night. 

Sometimes in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you that you have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but it is as strange to you as if it were in Tartary. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater.

We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, and if we go beyond our usual course we still preserve the bearing of some neighboring cape, and not till we are completely lost or turned round, - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. 

Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. 

A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away.

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

To be lost... See Walden, The Village ("Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”)

The mysterious relation between myself and these things: see May 1850 ("It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is"); November 21, 1850 ("What are these things?"); February 14, 1851 ("What are these things?");September 7, 1851 ("We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery"); August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?"); November 30, 1858 ("I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream");November 22, 1860 ("...and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.”)

[N]ot till we are completely lost or turned round . . . do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. . . . [N]ot till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. See 1850 (“What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?”) See also

The Maine Woods ("daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”)

The Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet. See  A Book of the Seasons: at the Leaning Hemlocks

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

March 29. 6 A. M. — To Leaning Hemlocks, by boat. 

The sun has just risen, but there is only a now clear saffron belt next the east horizon; all the rest of the sky is covered with clouds, broken into lighter and darker shades. An agreeable yellow sunlight falls on the western fields and the banks of the river. Whence this yellow tinge? Probably a different light would be reflected if there were no dark clouds above. A somewhat milder morning than yesterday, and the river as usual quite smooth. 

From Cheney’s boat-house I hear very distinctly the tapping of a woodpecker at the Island about a quarter of a mile. Undoubtedly could hear it twice as far at least, if still, over the water. At every stroke of my paddle, small silvery bubbles about the size of a pin-head, dashed from the surface, slide or roll over the smooth surface a foot or two. On approaching the Island, I am surprised to hear the scolding, cackle-like note of the pigeon woodpecker, a prolonged loud sound somewhat like one note of the robin. This was the tapper, on the old hollow aspen which the small woodpeckers so much frequent. Unless the latter make exactly the same sound with the former, then the pigeon woodpecker has come! ! But I could not get near enough to distinguish his size and colors. He went up the Assabet, and I heard him cackling and tapping far ahead.

The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.1 

It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds. Methinks I may have seen the female red-wing within a day or two; or what are these purely black ones without the red shoulder? It is pleasant to see them scattered about on the drying meadow. The red-wings will stand close to the water’s edge, looking larger than usual, with their red shoulders very distinct and handsome in that position, and sing 0kolee, or bob-y-lee, or what-not. Others, on the tops of trees over your head, out of a fuzzy beginning spit forth a clear, shrill whistle incessantly, for what purpose I don’t know. Others, on the elms over the water, utter still another note, each time lifting their wings slightly. Others are flying across the stream with a loud char-r, char-r.

Looking at the mouth of a woodchuck-hole and at low places, as on the moss, in the meadows, [I see] that those places are sprinkled with little pellets or sometimes salt-shaped masses of frost some inches apart, apparently like snow. This is one kind of frost. 

There is snow and ice still along the edge of the meadows on the north side of woods; the latter even five or six inches thick in some places.

The female flowers of the white maple, crimson stigmas from the same rounded masses of buds with the male, are now quite abundant. I think they have not come out more than a day or two. I did not notice them the 26th, though I did not look carefully for them. The two sorts of flowers are not only on the same tree and the same twig and sometimes in the same bud, but also sometimes in the same little cup. 

The recent shoot of the white maple is now a yellowish brown, sprinkled with ashy dots. 

I am in some uncertainty about whether I do not confound several kinds under the name of the downy woodpecker. It not only flies volat-u undoso, but you hear, as it passes over you, the strong ripple of its wings. 

Two or three times, when a visitor stayed into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of my house and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. 

One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond, who would otherwise have been at a loss what course to take. They lived about a mile off, and were quite used to the woods. A day or two after, one of them told me that they wandered about the greater ‘part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there were several heavy showers in the course of the night, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. 

I have heard of many going astray, even in the village sheets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the phrase is. Some who lived in the outskirts, having come to town shopping with their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night, and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only and not knowing when they turned, and were obliged to inquire the way at the first house they discovered. Even one of the village doctors was thus lost in the heart of the village on a nocturnal mission, and spent nearly the whole night feeling the fences and the houses, being, as he said, ashamed to inquire. If one with the vision of an owl, or as in broad daylight, could have watched his motions, they would have been ludicrous indeed. 

It is a novel and memorable acquaintance one may make thus with the most familiar objects. 

It is a surprising and memorable and, I may add, valuable experience to be lost in the woods, especially at night. Sometimes in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though your reason tells you that you have travelled it one hundred times, yet no object looks familiar, but it is as strange to you as if it were in Tartary. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. 

We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, and if we go beyond our usual course we still preserve the bearing of some neighboring cape, and not till we are completely lost or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, — do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. 

Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations.

A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away. This is a favorite voyage for ladies to make, down one stream and up the other, plucking the lilies by the way and landing on the Island, and concluding with a walk on Nawshawtuct Hill.

This which Gilbert White says of the raven is applicable to our crow: “There is a peculiarity belonging 'to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and cufling each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish.”

P. M. — To early willow behind Martial Miles’s. 

A bright, sunny, but yet rather breezy and cool afternoon. On the railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre that is as old as the world. I put my ear to the post, and the sound seems to be in the core of the post, directly against my ear. This is all of music. The utmost refinements of art, methinks, can go no further. 

This is one of those days divided against itself, when there is a cool wind but a warm sun, when there is little or no coolness proper to this locality, but it is wafted to us probably from the snow-clad northwest, and hence in sheltered places it is very warm. However, the sun is rapidly prevailing over the wind, and it is already warmer than when I came out. 

Four ducks, two by two, are sailing conspicuously on the river. There appear to be two pairs. In each case one two-thirds white and another grayish-brown and, I think, smaller. They are very shy and fly at fifty rods’ distance. Are they whistlers ? The white are much more white than those I saw the other day and at first thought summer ducks.

Would it not be well to carry a spy-glass in order to watch these shy birds such as ducks and hawks? In some respects, methinks, it would be better than a gun. The latter brings them nearer dead, but the former alive. You can identify the species better by killing the bird, because it was a dead specimen that was so minutely described, but you can study the habits and appearance best in the living specimen.

These ducks first flew north, or somewhat against the wind (was it to get under weigh?), then wheeled, flew nearer me, and went south up-stream, where I saw them afterward.

In one of those little holes which I refer to the skunk, I found part of the shell of a reddish beetle or dor-bug. Both hole and beetle looked quite fresh. Saw small ants there active. 

Under the south side of Clamshell Hill, in the sun, the air is filled with those black fuzzy gnats, and I hear a fine hum from them. The first humming of insects — unless of those honey-bees the other day— of the season. 

I can find no honey-bees in the skunk cabbage this pleasant afternoon. 

I find that many of the oak-balls are pierced, and their inhabitants have left them; they have a small round hole in them. The rest have still thirty or forty small white maggots about one twelfth of an inch long. Thus far I have not seen these balls but on the black oak, and some are still full of them, like apples.

Walking along near the edge of the meadow under Lupine Hill, I slumped through the sod into a muskrat’s nest, for the sod was only two inches thick over it, which was enough when it was frozen. I laid it open with my hands. 

There were three or four channels or hollowed paths, a rod or more in length, not merely worn but made in the meadow, and centring at the mouth of this burrow. They were three or four inches deep, and finally became indistinct and were lost amid the cranberry vines and grass toward the river. 

The entrance to the burrow was just at the edge of the upland, here a gently sloping bank, and was probably just beneath the surface of the water six weeks ago. It was about twenty five rods distant from the true bank of the river. From this a straight gallery, about six inches in diameter every way, sloped upward about eight feet into the bank just beneath the turf, so that the end was about a foot higher than the entrance. 

There was a somewhat circular enlargement about one foot in horizontal diameter and the same depth with the gallery; and [in] it was nearly a peek of coarse meadow stubble, showing the marks of the scythe, with which was mixed accidentally a very little of the moss which grew with it. Three short galleries, only two feet long, were continued from this centre somewhat like rays toward the high land, as if they had been prepared in order to be ready for a sudden rise of the water, or had been actually made so far under such an emergency. 

The nest was of course thoroughly wet and, humanly speaking, uncomfortable, though the creature could breathe in it. But it is plain that the muskrat cannot be subject to the toothache. I have no doubt this was made and used last winter, for the grass was as fresh as that in the meadow (except that it was pulled up), and the sand which had been taken out lay partly in a flattened heap in the meadow, and no grass had sprung up through it.

In the course of the above examination I made a very interesting discovery. When I turned up the thin sod from over the damp cavity of the nest, I was surprised to see at this hour of a pleasant day what I took to be beautiful frost crystals of a rare form, — frost bodkins I was in haste to name them, for around the fine white roots of the grass, apparently the herd’s-grass, which were from one to two or more inches long, reaching downward into the dark, damp cavern (though the green blades had scarcely made so much growth above; indeed, the growth was scarcely visible there), appeared to be lingering still into the middle of this warm after noon rare and beautiful frost crystals exactly in the form of a bodkin, about one sixth of an inch wide at base and tapering evenly to the lower end, sometimes the upper part of the core being naked for half an inch, which last gave them a slight resemblance to feathers, though they were not flat but round, and at the abrupt end of the rootlet (as if cut off) a larger, clear drop. On examining them more closely, feeling and tasting them, I found that it was not frost but a clear, crystal line dew in almost invisible drops, concentrated from the dampness of the cavern, and perhaps melted frost still reserving by its fineness its original color, thus regularly arranged around the delicate white fibre; and, looking again, incredulous, I discerned extremely minute white threads or gossamer standing out on all sides from the main rootlet in this form and affording the core for these drops. Yet on those fibres which had lost their dew, none of these minute threads appeared. There they pointed downward somewhat like stalactites, or very narrow caterpillar brushes. 

It impressed me as a wonderful piece of chemistry, that the very grass we trample on and esteem so cheap should be thus wonderfully nourished, that this spring greenness was not produced by coarse and cheap means, but in sod, out of sight, the most delicate and magical processes are going on. 

The half is not shown. The very sod is replete with mechanism far finer than that of a watch, and yet it is cast under our feet to be trampled on. The process that goes on in the sod and the dark, about the minute fibres of the grass, — the chemistry and the mechanics, —before a single green blade can appear above the withered herbage, if it could [be] adequately described, would supplant all other revelations. We are acquainted with but one side of the sod. 

I brought home some tufts of the grass in my pocket, but when I took it out I could not at first find those pearly white fibres and thought that they were lost, for they were shrunk to dry brown threads; and, as for the still finer gossamer which supported the roseid droplets, with few exceptions they were absolutely undiscoverable, — they no longer stood out around the core, — so fine and delicate was their organization. It made me doubt almost if there were not actual, substantial, though invisible cores to the leaflets and veins of the boar frost. And can these almost invisible and tender fibres penetrate the earth where there is no cavern? Or is what we call the solid earth porous and cavernous enough for them? 

A wood tortoise in Nut Meadow Brook. 

I see a little three-spotted sparrow,— apparently the same seen March 18th, —with its mate, not so spotted. The first apparently the female, quite tame. The male sings a regular song sparrow strain, and they must be that, I think. Keep up a faint chip. Apparently thinking of a nest. 

The trout glances like a film from side to side and under the bank. 

Saw a solid mass of green conferva at the bottom of the brook, waved with the sand which had washed into it, which made'it look exactly like a rock partly covered with green lichens. I was surprised when I thrust a stick into it and was undeceived. 

Observe the shadow of water flowing rapidly over a shelving bottom in this brook, producing the appearance of sand washing along. 

Tried several times to catch a skater. Got my hand close to him; grasped at him as quick as possible; was sure I had got him this time; let the water run out between my fingers; hoped I had not crushed him; opened my hand; and Lo! he was not there. I never succeeded in catching one. 

What are those common snails in the mud in ditches, with their feet out, for some time past? 

The early willow will bloom to-morrow. Its catkins have lost many of their scales. The crowded yellow anthers are already bursting out through the silvery down, like the sun of spring through the clouds of winter. How measuredly this plant has advanced, sensitive to the least change of temperature, its expanding not to be foretold, unless you can foretell the weather. This is the earliest willow that I know.  Yet it is on a dry upland. There is a great difference in localities in respect to warmth, and a correspond ing difference in the blossoming of plants of the same species. But can this be the same species with that early one in Miles’s Swamp? Its catkins have been picked off, by what? 

Dugan tells me that three otter were dug out the past winter in Deacon Farrar’s wood-lot, side of the swamp, by Powers and Willis of Sudbury. He has himself seen one in the Second Division woods. 

He saw two pigeons to-day. Prated [sic] for them; they came near and then flew away. He saw a woodchuck yesterday. 

I believe I saw the slate-colored marsh hawk to-day. 

I saw water-worn stones by the gates of three separate houses in Framingham the other day. 

The grass now looks quite green in those places where the water recently stood, in grassy hollows where the melted snow collects. 

Dugan wished to get some guinea-hens to keep off the hawks. 

Those fine webs of the grass fibres stood out as if drawn out and held up by electricity.

March 29, 1853