A Book of the Seasons: The Sweet-Fern

  

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Climbing the steep hills

through furnace-like heat / sweet-fern

as high as one's head.

August 10, 1853

I would rather sit at this table 

with the sweet-fern twigs 

between me and the sun 

than at the king’s. 

December 7, 1857

A warm reddish color –

wild and jagged leaf

alternately serrated

revealed by the snow.

 January 14, 1860

March 9. Scare up a rabbit on the hillside by these ponds, which was gnawing a smooth sumach. See also where they have gnawed the red maple, sweet-fern, Populus grandidentata, white and other oaks (taking off considerable twigs at four or five cuts), amelanchier, and sallow; but they seem to prefer the smooth sumach to any of these. With this variety of cheap diet they are not likely to starve.  March 9, 1855

March 12.  As I passed the Joe Hosmer (rough-cast) house, I thought I never saw any bank so handsome as the russet hillside behind it. It is a very barren, exhausted soil, where the cladonia lichens abound, and the lower side is a flowing sand, There was the pale brown of the grass, red browns of some weeds (sarothra and pinweed probably), dark browns of huckleberry and sweet-fern stems, and the very visible green of the cladonias thirty rods off, and the rich brown fringes where the broken sod hung over the edge of the sand-bank. I did not see the browns of withered vegetation so rich last fall . . . A peculiar and unaccountable light seemed to fall on that bank or hillside, though it was thick storm all around. A sort of Newfoundland sun seemed to be shining on it. It was such a light that you looked around for the sun that might be shining on it . . . These tints of brown were as softly and richly fair and sufficing as the most brilliant autumnal tints . . . This kind of light, the air being full of rain and all vegetation dripping with it, brings out the browns wonderfully. March 12, 1859

March 26. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields — withered grass lit by the sun — is the color of a teamster’s coat. It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year. There is certainly a singular propriety in that color for the coat of a farmer or teamster or shepherd or hunter, who is required to be much abroad in our landscape at this season. It is in harmony with nature, and you are less conspicuous in the fields and can get nearer to wild animals for it . . . I had a suit once in which, methinks, I could glide across the fields unperceived half a mile in front of a farmer's windows. It was such a skillful mixture of browns, dark and light properly proportioned, with even some threads of green in it by chance. It was of loose texture and about the color of a pasture with patches of withered sweet-fern and lechea. I trusted a good deal to my invisibility in it when going across lots, and many a time I was aware that to it I owed the near approach of wild animals. March 26, 1860

April 4.  On the barren railroad causeway, of pure sand, grow chiefly sallows, a few poplars, and sweet-fern and blackberry vines. When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. April 4, 1859

April 25. Though I see some amber on the sweet-fern, I am in doubt whether to say to-day or to-morrow. April 25, 1854

April 26. Sweet-fern (that does not flower) leafing. April 26, 1860

April 27.   The meadow-sweet and sweet-fern are beginning to leaf, and the currant in garden. April 27, 1854

April 29.  Sweet-fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp. April 29, 1857

May 3.  Sweet-fern opened apparently yesterday.  May 3, 1855

May 3.  Comptonia well out, how long? May 3, 1858

May 4. The second amelanchier, sweet-fern, and early thorn begin to leaf to-day. May 4, 1855 

May 5. The sweet-fern now begins to shed its yellow pollen. May 5, 1852

May 10.  From the hill, I look westward over the landscape. The deciduous woods are in their hoary youth, every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs. . . . (The sweet-fern leaves among odors now.)  May 10, 1853

May 10.  I observe that the fertile flowers of many plants are more late than the barren ones, as the sweet-gale (whose fertile are now in prime), the sweet-fern, etc.  May 10, 1857

May 13. The sweet-fern shows minute green leaves expanding.  May 13, 1852

May 17.  I just notice the fertile sweet-fern bloom on tall plants, where the sterile catkins are falling off above it. Most plants have none.  May 17, 1857

May 25.  See the effect of frost on the sweet-fern. May 25, 1860

May 26.  The air is full of terebinthine odors to-day, — the scent of the sweet-fern, etc.  May 26, 1859

May 29. Farmer says that he finds the nests or holes or forms of the gray rabbit in holes about a foot or a foot and a half deep, made sideways into or under a tussock, especially amid the sweet-fern, in rather low but rather open ground. Has found seven young in one. May 29, 1860

June 9. The green fruit of the sweet-fern now. June 9, 1853

June 11.  I perceive that scent from the young sweet-fern shoots and withered blossoms which made the first settlers of Concord to faint on their journey.  June 11, 1856

June 14.  Evening. — Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch. Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased fragrance from the ground-sweet-fern, etc.-as in the night, and for the like reason probably. June 14, 1851

July 5. It is growing warm again, but the warmth is different from that we have had. We lie in the shade of locust trees. Haymakers go by in a hay-rigging. I am reminded of berrying. I scent the sweet-fern and the dead or dry pine leaves . . . The warmth is something more normal and steady, ripening fruits . . . We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity. July 5, 1852

July 11. Passing now near Well Meadow Head toward Baker's orchard. The sweet-fern and indigo-weed fill the path up to one's middle, wetting us with dews so high. The leaves are shining and flowing. We wade through the luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom. July 11, 1851

July 13. Looking across the river to Conantum from the open plains, I think how the history of the hills would read, since they have been pastured by cows, if every plowing and mowing and sowing and chopping were recorded. These plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens, hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and huckleberry bushes and epilobium, now in bloom, and much fine grass. July 13, 1851

August 10.   The heat is furnace-like while I am climbing the steep hills covered with shrubs on the north of Walden, sweet-fern as high as one's head. The goldfinch sings.  August 10, 1853 

August 23.  High blackberries now in their prime, their great racemes of shining black fruit, mixed with red and green, bent over amid the sweet-fern and sumach on sunny hill sides, or growing more rankly with larger fruit by rich roadsides and in lower ground . . . I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. August 23, 1858

September 30.   The pearly everlasting is an interesting white at present . . . Its very brown centre now affects us as a fresh and original color. It monopolizes a small circle, in the midst of sweet-fem perchance, on a dry hillside.  September 30, 1858

October 12.  The sweet-fern is losing its leaves. October 12, 1851

October 12.  Young sweet-fern, where it had been burned in the spring, is quite green. October 12, 1858

October 20.  Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.  October 20, 1856

October 20. . . .one of those frosty hollows so common in Walden Woods, where little grows, sheep’s fescue grass, sweet-fern, hazelnut bushes, and oak scrubs whose dead tops are two or three feet high, while the still living shoots are not more than half as high at their base. They have lingered so long and died down annually. October 20, 1860

October 22.  Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets; and little wasp (?) nests, one and a half inches wide, on huckleberry (?) and sweet-fern (?). October 22, 1858

October 22.  I notice that the first shrubs and trees to spring up in the sand on railroad cuts in the woods are sweet-fern, birches, willows, and aspens, and pines, white and pitch; but all but the last two chiefly disappear in the thick wood that follows.  The former are the pioneers. October 22, 1860 

November 10. The Jersey tea is fallen, all but the terminal leaves. These, however, are the greenest and apparently least changed of any indigenous plant, unless it be the sweet-fern. November 10, 1858

November 14. Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare), the red or crimson twigs and buds of the high blueberry. The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights. November 14, 1858

November 16.  The sweet-fern in some places has still many green [leaves], more than any indigenous shrub or tree, though far the greater part of them (the sweet-ferns) are bare or withered. November 16, 1858

November 17.  We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. It was quite like the sunlight reflected from grass and weeds covered with hoar frost. Yet in an ordinary light these are but dark or dusky looking twigs with scarcely a noticeable downiness. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. November 17, 1858

November 20. In the woods and about swamps, as Ministerial, also, there are several kinds of twigs, this year’s shoots of shrubs, which have a slight down or hairiness, hardly perceptible in ordinary lights though held in the hand, but which, seen toward the sun, reflect a cheering silvery light. Such are not only the sweet-fern, but the hazel in a less degree, alder twigs, and even the short huckleberry twigs, also lespedeza stems. It is as if they were covered with a myriad fine spiculae which reflect a dazzling white light, exceedingly warming to the spirits and imagination. This gives a character of snug warmth and cheerfulness to the swamp, as if it were a place where the sun consorted with rabbits and partridges. Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. November 20, 1858

November 26.  A good many leaves of the sweet-fern, though withered now, still hold on; so that this shrub may be put with the oaks in this respect. So far as I remember, it is peculiar among shrubs in this. November 26, 1858

November 27.  Those barren hollows and plains in the neighborhood of Walden are singular places. I see many which were heavily wooded fifteen or thirty years ago now covered only with fine sedge, sweet-fern, or a few birches, willows, poplars, small wild cherries, panicled cornels, etc. November 27, 1858

December 7.   It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners on the middle of the line, amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very unfrequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them down for a dry and springy seat.  As I sit there amid the sweet-fern, talking with my man Briney, I observe that the recent shoots of the sweet-fern — which, like many larger bushes and trees, have a few leaves in a tuft still at their extremities – toward the sun are densely covered with a bright, warm, silvery down, which looks like frost, so thick and white. Looking the other way, I see none of it, but the bare reddish twigs. Even this is a cheering and compensating discovery in my otherwise barren work. I get thus a few positive values, answering to the bread and cheese which make my dinner. I owe thus to my weeks at surveying a few such slight but positive discoveries  . . . I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s. December 7, 1857

December 17.  The snow being some three or four inches deep, I see rising above it, generally, at my old bean-field, only my little white pines set last spring in the midst of an immense field of Solidago nemoralis, with a little sweet-fern. December 17, 1859

December 23.  You find in the cluster of the sweet-fern fruit now one or two rather large flattish conical hard-shelled seeds with a small meat.  December 23, 1859

December 24. In Weston's field, in springy land on the edge of a swamp, I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons within a rod or two, and probably there are many more about a foot from the ground, commonly on the main stem — though sometimes on a branch close to the stem — of the alder, sweet-fern, brake, etc., etc. The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them . . . Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it. December 24, 1853

January 14. Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.  January 14, 1860

January 17.  I see a large downy owl's feather adhering to a sweet-fern twig, looking like the down of a plant blowing in the wind.  January 17, 1858

January 19.  The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. January 19, 1859

Sweet Fern, Comptonia peregrina, is not a fern but a low-growing shrub and member of the Bay (Laurel) family of plants. The fern-like leaves give off a pleasant fragrance when crushed. The genus Comptonia is named in honor of Rev. Henry Compton (1632-1713), bishop of Oxford. The species name peregrina literally means one that travels.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

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

I love very well this cloudy afternoon.

October 12

October 12, 2018

Sunday.

Yesterday afternoon, saw by the brook-side above Emerson's the dwarf primrose in blossom, the Norway cinquefoil and fall dandelions which are now drying up, the houstonia, buttercups, small goldenrods, and various asters, more or less purplish.

The seeds of the bidens,-without florets, beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen.

How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race. By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft.

What are those seeds, big as skunk-cabbage seeds, amid leafless stalks like pontederia in the brooks, now bending their stems ready to plant themselves at the bottom? 

The swamp-pink buds begin to show.

Blackbirds and larks are about, and the flicker or yellow-hammer, so beautifully spotted (in the hand), and the goldfinches.

I see a cow in the meadow with a new-dropped calf by her side.

The Anemone nemorosa in bloom and the Potentilla sarmentosa, or running cinquefoil, which springs in April, now again springing.

I love very well this cloudy afternoon, 

so sober and favorable to reflection

 after so many bright ones.

What if the clouds shut out the heavens, 

provided they concentrate my thoughts 

and make a more celestial heaven below! 

I hear the crickets plainer; 

I wander less in my thoughts, 

am less dissipated; 

am aware how shallow 

was the current of my thoughts before.

Deep streams are dark, 

as if there were a cloud in their sky; 

shallow ones are bright and sparkling, 

reflecting the sun from their bottoms.

The very wind on my cheek 

seems more fraught with meaning.

Many maples around the edges of the meadows are now quite bare, like smoke.

I seem to be more constantly merged in nature; my intellectual life is more obedient to nature than formerly, but perchance less obedient to spirit. I have less memorable seasons. I exact less of myself. I am getting used to my meanness, getting to accept my low estate. O if I could be discontented with myself. If I could feel anguish at each descent.

The sweet-fern is losing its leaves.

I see where a field of oats has been cradled, by the railroad, — alternate white and dark green stripes, the width of a swath, running across the field.

I find it arises from the stubble being bent a particular way by the cradle, as the cradler advanced, and accordingly reflecting the light but one way, and if I look over the field from the other side, the first swath will be dark and the latter white.

Minott shells all his corn by hand. He has got a boxful ready for the mill.  He will not winnow it, for he says the chaff (? ) makes it lie loose and dry faster.

He tells me that Jacob Baker, who raises as fair corn as any body, gives all the corn of his own raising to his stock, and buys the flat yellow corn of the South for bread; and yet the Northern corn is worth the most per bushel.

Minott did not like this kind of farming any better than I. Baker also buys a great quantity of “shorts” below for his cows, to make more milk.

He remembers when a Prescott, who lived where E. Hosmer does, used to let his hogs run in the woods in the fall, and they grew quite fat on the acorns, etc., they found, but now there are few nuts, and it is against the law.

He tells me of places in the woods which to his eyes are unchanged since he was a boy, as natural as life.  He tells me, then, that in some respects he is still a boy.

And yet the gray squirrels were ten then to one now.

But for the most part, he says, the world is turned upside down.

P. M. – To Cliffs.

I hear Lincoln bell tolling for church.

At first I thought of the telegraph harp.

Heard at a distance, the sound of a bell acquires a certain vibratory hum, as it were from the air through which it passes, like a harp.

All music is a harp music at length, as if the atmosphere were full of strings vibrating to this music.

It is not the mere sound of the bell, but the humming in the air, that enchants me, just [as the] azure tint which much air or distance imparts delights the eye.

It is not so much the object, as the object clothed with an azure veil.

All sound heard at a great distance thus tends to produce the same music, vibrating the strings of the universal lyre.

There comes to me a melody which the air has strained, which has conversed with every leaf and needle of the woods.

It is by no means the sound of the bell as heard near at hand, and which at this distance I can plainly distinguish, but its vibrating echoes, that portion of the sound which the elements take up and modulate,-a sound which is very much modified, sifted, and refined before it reaches my ear.

The echo is to some extent an independent sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of my voice, but it is in some measure the voice of the wood.

A cloudy, misty day with rain more or less steady. This gentle rain is fast loosening the leaves, — I see them filling the air at the least puff, — and it is also flattening down the layer which has already fallen.

The pines on Fair Haven have shed nearly all their leaves.

Butter-and-eggs still blooms.

Barrels of apples lie under the trees.

The Smiths have carried their last load of peaches to market.

To-day no part of the heavens is so clear and bright as Fair Haven Pond and the river.

Though the air [is] quite misty, yet the island wood is distinctly reflected.

Ever and anon I see the mist thickening in the southwest and concealing trees which were before seen, and revealing the direction and limits of the valleys, precursor of harder rain which soon passes again.

Minott calls the stake-driver “belcher-squelcher.” Says he has seen them when making the noise.  They go slug-toot, slug-toot, slug-toot.

Told me of his hunting gray squirrels with old Colonel Brooks's hound. How the latter came into the yard one day, and he spoke to him, patted him, went into the house, took down his gun marked London, thought he would go a-squirrel-hunting. Went over among the ledges, away from Brooks's, for Tige had a dreadful strong voice and could be heard as far as a cannon, and he was plaguy afraid Brooks would hear him. How Tige treed them on the oaks on the plain below the Cliffs. He could tell by his bark when he had treed one; he never told a lie.  And so he got six or seven.

How Tige told him from a distance that he had got one, but when he came up he could see nothing; but still he knew that Tige never told a lie, and at length he saw his head, in a crotch high up in the top of a very tall oak, and though he didn't expect to get him, he knocked him over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 12, 1851

The seeds of the bidens,-without florets, beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes. See September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside."); October 20, 1858 ("Bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes"); October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. . . . In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there.")

Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. See September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! ")

I love very well this cloudy afternoon, so sober and favorable to reflection. See September 21, 1851 ("Moonlight is peculiarly favorable to reflection."); August 4, 1852("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this");  April 4, 1853 ("We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual.")  August 7, 1853 (" It is worth the while to walk in wet weather;. . .The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts"); November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . . The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection.")

The Norway cinquefoil. See August 30, 1851 ("I perceive in the Norway cinquefoil (Potentilla Norvegica), now nearly out of blossom, that the alternate five leaves of the calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them. There is one door closed, of the closing year.")

Many maples around the edges of the meadows are now quite bare, like smoke. See October 10, 1851 ("Some maples which a week ago were a mass of yellow foliage are now a fine gray smoke, as it were, and their leaves cover the ground."); October 13, 1857 (“Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps.”); October 13, 1852 ("Many maples have lost all their leaves and are shrunk all at once to handsome clean gray wisps on the edge of the meadows. Crowded together at a distance they look like smoke.”); October 13, 1855 ("The maples now stand like smoke along the meadows"); October 18, 1853 ("The red maples have been bare a good while. In the sun and this clear air, their bare ashy branches even sparkle like silver. "); October 18, 1855 ("The maple swamps, bare of leaves, here and there about the meadow, look like smoke blown along the edge of the woods."); October 18, 1858  ("I am struck by the magical change which has taken place in the red maple swamps . . . like the smoke that is seen where a blaze is extinguished")

I hear Lincoln bell tolling for church. . . . Heard at a distance, the sound of a bell acquires a certain vibratory hum .. the voice of the wood. See January 2, 1842 ("The ringing of the church bell is a much more melodious sound than any that is heard within the church."); May 3, 1852 ("There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, . . . filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound"); April 5, 1855 ("It being Fast-Day, we on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns."); April 15, 1855 ("The sound of church bells . . ., sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day") and  Walden ("Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood"). See also October 14, 1857 ("The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo.")

https://tinyurl.com/HDT511012

A warm reddish color revealed by the snow / blueness of the air.

January 14

About an inch more snow fell this morning. An average snow-storm is from six to eight inches deep on a level. 

The snow having ceased falling this forenoon, I go to Holden Wood, Conantum, to look for tracks. It is too soon. I see none at all but those of a hound, and also where a partridge waded through the light snow, apparently while it was falling, making a deep gutter. 

Yesterday there was a broad field of bare ice on each side of the river, i. e. on the meadows, and now, though it is covered with snow an inch deep, as I stand on the river or even on Fair Haven Hill a quarter to half a mile off, I can see where the ice is through the snow, plainly, trace its whole outline, it being quite dark compared with where the snow has fallen on snow. In this case a mantle of light snow even an inch thick is not sufficient to conceal the darkness of the ice beneath it, where it is contrasted with snow on snow. 

Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.

It is a mild day, and I notice, what I have not observed for some time, that blueness of the air only to be perceived in a mild day. I see it between me and woods half a mile distant. The softening of the air amounts to this. The mountains are quite invisible. You come forth to see this great blue presence lurking about the woods and the horizon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1860

Too soon to look for tracks. See January 14, 1853 ("It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.")

I see where a partridge waded through the light snow, apparently while it was falling, making a deep gutter.  See January 26, 1855 ("This morning it snows again. . .I see where a partridge has waddled through the snow still falling, making a continuous track. I look in the direction to which it points, and see the bird just skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off.")

A warm reddish color revealed by the snow. See November 14, 1858 ("Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare). "); November 17, 1858 ("Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner"); November 26, 1858 ("A good many leaves of the sweet-fern, though withered now, still hold on; so that this shrub may be put with the oaks in this respect. So far as I remember, it is peculiar among shrubs in this.");December 7, 1857 ("I observe that the recent shoots of the sweet-fern — which, like many larger bushes and trees, have a few leaves in a tuft still at their extremities – toward the sun are densely covered with a bright, warm, silvery down, which looks like frost, so thick and white . . .I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s."); January 19, 1859 ("The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

January 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 14

Warm reddish color.

A wild and jagged leaf

revealed by the snow.

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/hdt18600114

A green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour.

December 23. 

The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day.

P. M. — To Ball's Hill across meadow. 

The gardener at Sleepy Hollow says that they caught many small pouts and some pickerel that weighed half a pound (!) in the little pond lately dug there. I think this pond, say a third of an acre, was commenced about three years ago and completed last summer. It has no inlet and a very slight outlet, a shallow ditch that previously existed in the meadow, but in digging they have laid open two or three very deep spring-holes, and the pickerel were found in them. These fishes, no doubt, came up the shallow ditch. This proves that if you dig a pond in a meadow and connect it by the smallest rill or ditch with other water in which fishes live, however far off, the pond will be at once stocked with fishes. They are always ready to extend their territory. 


The Great Meadows are more than half covered with ice, and now I see that there was a very slight fall of snow last night. It is only betrayed here, having covered the ice about an eighth of an inch thick, except where there are cracks running quite across the meadow, where the water has oozed a foot or two each way and dissolved the snow, making conspicuous dark lines. 

In this slight snow I am surprised to see countless tracks of small birds, which have run over it in every direction from one end to the other of this great meadow since morning. By the length of the hind toe I know them to be snow buntings. 

Indeed, soon after I see them running still on one side of the meadow. I was puzzled to tell what they got by running there. Yet I [saw them] stopping repeatedly and picking up something. Of course I thought of those caterpillars which are washed out by a rain and freshet at this season, but I could not find one of them. It rained on the 18th and again the 20th, and over a good part of the meadow the top of the stubble left by the scythe rises a little above the ice, i. e. an inch or two, not enough to disturb a skater. The birds have run here chiefly, visiting each little collection or tuft of stubble, and found their food chiefly in and about this thin stubble. 

I examined such places a long time and very carefully, but I could not find there the seed of any plant whatever. It was merely the stubble of sedge, with never any head left, and a few cranberry leaves projecting. All that I could find was pretty often (in some places very often) a little black, or else a brown, spider (sometimes quite a large one) motionless on the snow or ice; and therefore I am constrained to think that they eat them, for I saw them running and picking in exactly such places a little way from me, and here were their tracks all around. Yet they are called graminivorous. 

Wilson says that he has seen them feeding on the seeds of aquatic plants on the Seneca River, clinging to their heads. I think he means wool-grass. Yet its seeds are too minute and involved in the wool. Though there was wool-grass hereabouts, the birds did not go near it. To be sure, it has but little seed now. If they are so common at the extreme north, where there is so little vegetation but perhaps a great many spiders, is it not likely that they feed on these insects ?

It is interesting to see how busy this flock is, exploring this great meadow to-day. If it were not for this slight snow, revealing their tracks but hardly at all concealing the stubble, I should not suspect it, though I might see them at their work. Now I see them running briskly over the ice, most commonly near the shore, where there is most stubble (though very little); and they explore the ground so fast that they are continually changing their ground, and if I do not keep my eye on them I lose the direction. 

Then here they come, with a stiff rip of their wings as they suddenly wheel, and those peculiar rippling notes, flying low quite across the meadow, half a mile even, to explore the other side, though that too is already tracked by them. Not the fisher nor skater range the meadow a thousandth part so much in a week as these birds in a day. They hardly notice me as they come on. Indeed, the flock, flying about as high as my head, divides, and half passes on each side of me. Thus they sport over these broad meadows of ice this pleasant winter day. The spiders lie torpid and plain to see on the snow, and if it is they that they are after they never know what kills them. 

I have loitered so long on the meadow that before I get to Ball's Hill those patches of bare ice (where water has oozed out and frozen) already reflect a green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour. You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. 

Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy light, the sun having reached the grosser atmosphere of the earth. These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. 

Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home; or perhaps he leaves them to freeze in. In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light. 

I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. How red its light at this hour! I covered its orb with my hand, and let its rays light up the fine woollen fibres of my glove. They were a dazzling rose-color. It takes the gross atmosphere of earth to make this redness. 

You notice the long and slender light-brown or grayish downy racemes of the clethra seeds about the edges of ponds and pond-holes. The pods contain many very minute chaffy-looking seeds. 

You find in the cluster of the sweet-fern fruit now one or two rather large flattish conical hard-shelled seeds with a small meat. 

The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds. They are hard and abundant. 

That large juncus (paradoxus-like ?) of the river meadows — long white-tailed seed — just rising above the ice is full of seed now, glossy, pale-brown, white-tailed, chaffy to look at. 

The wool-grass wool is at least half gone, and its minute almost white [ ? ] seed or achenium in it; but a little is left, not more than the thirtieth of an inch long. It looks too minute and involved in the wool for a snow bunting to eat. The above plants are all now more or less recurved, bent by the cold and the blasts of autumn. 

The now bare or empty heads of the liatris look somewhat like dusky daisies surmounted by a little button instead of a disk. The last, a stiff, round, parchment-like skin, the base on which its flowerets stood, is pierced by many little round holes just like the end of a thimble, where the cavities are worn through, and it is convex like that. It readily scales off and you can look through it. 

I noticed on the 18th that the plumes of the pine which had been covered with snow and glaze and were then thawed and wet with the mist and rain were very much contracted or narrowed, — and this gave a peculiar and more open character to the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1859

By the length of the hind toe I know them to be snow buntings. See. March 2, 1858 (" Their track is much like a small crow’s track, showing a long heel and furrowing the snow between with their toes")  See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. See January 7, 1856 (“ It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); January 10, 1859 ("About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6°), I observe all the sheets of ice (and they abound everywhere now in the fields), when I look from one side about at right angles with the sun’s rays, reflect a green light. This is the case even when they are in the shade"); January 19, 1859 ("To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all.") ; January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. See June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature."); August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man.”)

A mackerel sky.

January 19. 

Wednesday. P. M. —To Great Meadows 'via Sleepy Hollow. 

It is a remarkably warm, still, and pleasant afternoon for winter, and the wind, as I discover by my handkerchief, southwesterly. 

I noticed last night, just after sunset, a sheet of mackerel sky far in the west horizon, very finely imbricated and reflecting a coppery glow, and again I saw still more of it in the east this morning at sunrise, and now, at 3.30 P. M., looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky. 

January 15, 2014 2:57 P.M.

This indicates a peculiar state of the atmosphere. The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. 

Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. Is not the peculiar propriety of this term lost sight of by the meteorologists? 

It is a luxury for the eye to rest on it. What curtains, what tapestry to our halls! Directly overhead, of course, the scales or cloudlets appear large and coarse, while far on one side toward the horizon they appear very fine. It is as if we were marching to battle with a shield, a testudo, over our heads. 

I thus see a flock of small clouds, like sheep, some twenty miles in diameter, distributed with wonderful regularity. But they are being steadily driven to some new pasture, for when I look up an hour afterward not one is to be seen and [the] sky is beautifully clear. 

The form of these cloudlets is, by the way, like or akin to that of waves, of ripple-marks on sand, of small drifts, wave-like, on the surface of snow, and to the first small openings in the ice of the midstream. 

I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak. 

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. 

By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, chiefly in the snow, two or more inches deep, on a broad frozen ditch where mud has been taken out. The perpendicular sides of the ditch expose a foot or two of dark, sooty mud which had attracted the crows, and I see where they have walked along beneath it and peeked it. Even here also they have alighted on any bare spot where a foot of stubble was visible, or even a rock. 

Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday. 

The same crow, or one of the same, has come again to-day, and, the snow being sticky this warm weather, has left a very distinct track. The width of the whole track is about two and three quarters inches, length of pace about seven inches, length of true track some two inches (not including the nails), but the mark made in setting down the foot and withdrawing it is in each case some fifteen or eighteen inches long, for its hind toe makes a sharp scratch four or five inches long before it settles, and when it lifts its foot again, it makes two other fine scratches with its middle and outer toe on each side, the first some nine inches long, the second six. 

The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. It must be that they require but little and glean that very assiduously. 

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. 

Walking along the river eastward, I notice that the twigs of the black willow, many of which were broken off by the late glaze, only break at base, and only an inch higher up bend without breaking. 

I look down the whole length of the meadows to Ball’s Hill, etc. In a still, warm winter day like this, what warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun. 

At this season we do not want any more color. 

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. I know him (looking with my glass) by the axe over his shoulder, with basket of fish and fish-lines hung on it, and the tin pail of minnows in his hand. The pail shines brightly more than a mile off, reflecting the setting sun. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. 

To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all. 

The water (where open) is also green. 

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening. At least such were the two evenings on which I saw it this winter.

Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1859

Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet [in] diameter at three feet from ground. Compare November 9, 1860 ("To Inches’ Woods in Boxboro . . .the trees which I measured were (all at three feet from ground except when otherwise stated) : a black oak, ten feet circumference,. . .scarlet oak, seven feet three inches, by Guggins Brook.")

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. See November 27, 1858 (“I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak”); September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Scarlet Oak

There is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”);  Compare February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”) See also  January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. See January 14, 1860 ("Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.");   January 17, 1858 ("I see a large downy owl's feather adhering to a sweet-fern twig.."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

At this season we do not want any more color. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau Winter Colors

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. See December 23, 1859 ("Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home.. . . In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun. See January 10,1859 (“This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.”); December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); Decemberr 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); "January 1, 1855 ("We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us")

I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view . . . than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. See December 3, 1856 (“The pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.”); December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky."); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.");; January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky."). See also May 8, 1853 ("The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

A mackerel sky

far in the west horizon

just after sunset

.

The pyramidal

tops of a white pine forest

in the horizon.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A mackerel sky

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

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