The cool peep of the robin calling to its young.

June 10.

Friday.

June 10, 2016

Another great fog this morning.

Haying commencing in front yards.

P. M. – To Mason ‘s pasture in Carlisle.

Cool but agreeable easterly wind.

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon.

By the way, I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass, at the tops of the woods in the horizon.

It was pleasant to bring them so near and individualize the trees, to examine in detail the tree-tops which before you had beheld only in the mass as the woods in the horizon.

It was an exceedingly rich border, seen thus against (sic), and the imperfections in a particular tree-top more than two miles off were quite apparent.

I could easily have seen a hawk sailing over the top of the wood, and possibly his nest in some higher tree.

Thus to contemplate, from my attic in the village, the hawks circling about their nests above some dense forest or swamp miles away, almost as if they were flies on my own premises! I actually distinguished a taller white pine with which I am well acquainted, with a double top rising high above the surrounding woods, between two and three miles distant, which, with the naked eye, I had confounded with the nearer woods.

But to return, as C. and I go through the town, we hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly.

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness, but it is more agreeable to my eye than my nose.

The curled dock out.

The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface.

By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early, then, they had matured their seed!

Cow-wheat out, and Iris Virginica, and the grape.

The mountain laurel will begin to bloom to-morrow.

The frost some weeks since killed most of the buds and shoots, except where they were protected by trees or by themselves, and now new shoots have put forth and grow four or five inches from the sides of what were the leading ones.

It is a plant which plainly requires the protection of the wood. It is stunted in the open pasture.

We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle.

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods to the Paul Adams house by Bateman‘s Pond.

Saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs and a shelter for them at night, a half-mile east of the last house, — something rare in these days here abouts.

What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?

Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures.

It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.

Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south.

There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge.

What shall the whole be called?

The old Carlisle road, which runs through the middle of it, is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many if not most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are for the most part concealed by birches and pines.

These orchards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples.

It is a paradise for walkers in the fall.

There are also boundless huckleberry pastures as well as many blueberry swamps.

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? It would make a princely estate in Europe, yet it is owned by farmers, who live by the labor of their hands and do not esteem it much.

Plenty of huckleberries and barberries here.

A second great uninhabited tract is that on the Marlborough road, stretching westerly from Francis Wheeler‘s to the river, and beyond about three miles, and from Harrington‘s on the north to Dakin‘s on the south, more than a mile in width.

A third, the Walden Woods.

A fourth, the Great Fields.

These four are all in Concord.

There are one or two in the town who probably have Indian blood in their veins, and when they exhibit any unusual irascibility, their neighbors say they have got their Indian blood roused.

C. proposes to call the first-named wild the Melvin Preserve, for it is favorite hunting-ground with George Melvin. It is a sort of Robin Hood Ground.

Shall we call it the Apple Pastures?

Now, methinks, the birds begin to sing less tumultuously, with, as the weather grows more constantly warm, morning and noon and evening songs, and suitable recesses in the concert.

High blackberries conspicuously in bloom, whitening the side of lanes.

Mention is made in the Town Records, as quoted by Shattuck, page 33, under date of 1654, of “the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," and reference is at the same time made to “the old hogepen.” The phrase is “in the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," i. e. in the hog-pasture.

There is some propriety in calling such a tract a walk, methinks, from the habit which hogs have of walking about with an independent air and pausing from time to time to look about from under their flapping ears and snuff the air.

The hogs I saw this afternoon, all busily rooting without holding up their heads to look at us, — the whole field looked as if it had been most miserably plowed or scarified with a harrow, — with their shed to retreat to in rainy weather, affected me as more human than other quadrupeds.

They are comparatively clean about their lodgings, and their shed, with its litter bed, was on the whole cleaner than an Irishman ‘s shanty.

I am not certain what there was so very human about them.

In 1668 the town had a pasture near Silas Holden‘s and a herd of fifty cattle constantly watched by a “herdsman,” etc. (page 43).

In 1672 there is an article referring to the “crane field and brickil field.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1853

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade."); June 2, 1852 ("The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them"); June 4, 1860 ("The foliage of the elms over the street impresses me as dense and heavy already."); June 9, 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath")

I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass. See June 9, 1853 ("I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks.")

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods . . . saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs. See September 19, 1851 ("Mr. Isaiah Green of Carlisle. . .spoke of one old field, now grown up, which [we] were going through, as the "hog-pasture.");  October 3, 1859 ("Looking from the hog-pasture over the valley of Spencer Brook westward, we see the smoke rising from a huge chimney above a gray roof amid the woods, at a distance, where some family is preparing its evening meal.")

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? See October 20, 1857 (“What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country . . . the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit,”); October 15, 1859 (“Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. . . All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field”)

We hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly. See June 9, 1856 ("A young robin abroad. ");  June 18, 1854 ("I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Robins in Spring

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness. See June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

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

The cool peep of the 

robin calling to its young

now learning to fly.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The cool peep of the

robin calling to its young

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530610

The duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season.

March 24. 

Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow. 

March 24, 2020

The boatman, when the chain of his boat has been broken with a stone by some scamp, and he cannot easily transport his boat to the blacksmith's to have it mended, gets the latter to bend him a very stout iron wire in the form of an S, then, hooking this to the two broken ends and setting it upright on a rock, he hammers it down till it rests on itself in the form of an 8, which is very difficult to pry open. 

2 P. M. — About 39. To Copan. 

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile, quite below the level of the wall within it. How unlike the hen-hawk in this! 

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences. 

I find on Indian ground, as to-day on the Great Fields, very regular oval stones like large pebbles, sometimes five or six inches long, water-worn, of course, and brought hither by the Indians. They commonly show marks of having been used as hammers. Often in fields where there is not a stone of that kind in place for a mile or more. 

From Holbrook's clearing I see five large dark-colored ducks, probably black ducks, far away on the meadow, with heads erect, necks stretched, on the alert, only one in water. Indeed, there is very little water on the meadows. For length of neck those most wary look much like geese. They appear quite large and heavy. They probably find some sweet grass, etc., where the water has just receded. 

There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow, but I do not detect the sheldrakes around them till I use my glass, for the latter are not only less conspicuously white, but, as they are fishing, sink very low in the water. Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions. 

The sheldrakes appear to be the most native to the river, briskly moving along up and down the side of the stream or the meadow, three-fourths immersed and with heads under water, like cutters collecting the revenue of the river bays, or like pirate crafts peculiar the stream. They come the earliest and seem to be most at home. The water is so low that all these birds are collected near the Holt. 

The inhabitants of the village, poultry fanciers, perchance, though they be, [know not] these active and vigorous wild fowl (the sheldrakes) pursuing their finny prey ceaselessly within a mile of them, in March and April. Probably from the hen-yard fence with a good glass you can see them at it. 

They are as much at home on the water as the pickerel is within it. Their serrated bill reminds me of a pickerel's snout. You see a long row of these schooners, black above with a white stripe beneath, rapidly gliding along, and occasionally one rises erect on the surface and flaps its wings, showing its white lower parts  They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. They appear to get their food wholly within the water. Less like our domestic ducks. 

I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! 

Fox-colored sparrows go flitting past with a faint, sharp chip, amid some oaks. 

According to a table in the "American Almanac" for ’49, page 84, made at Cambridge, from May, '47, to May, '48, the monthly mean force of the wind . . . March, April, and May were equal, and were inferior to July and June; for quantity of clouds March and May were equal, and were preceded by December, November, September, January, June, and August. 

For depth of rain, September stood first, and March ninth, succeeded only by May, October, and April. 

The wind's force was observed at sunrise, 9 A. M., 3 P. M., and 9 P. M., and in March the greatest force was at 3 P. M., the least at 9 P. M. So, for the whole year the greatest force was at 3 P. M., but the least at sunrise and 9 P. M. both alike. 

The clouds were observed at the same time, and in March there was the greatest quantity at 9 P. M. and the least at sunrise, but for the year the greatest quantity at 3 P. M. and the least at sunrise and 9 A. M. alike. 

At Mendon, Mass., for the whole year 1847 alone (i. e. a different January, February, March, and April from the last) it stood, for force of wind,. . . March , July , September , November , and December were equal, and were inferior to April , June , August , and October; and for clouds March was sixth . 

The wind's force for March was greatest at 9 A. M. and 3 P. M., which were equal; but for the year greatest at 9 A. M. and least at sunrise. 

For March there was the greatest quantity of clouds at 9 A. M., but for the year at both sunrise and 9 A. M. 

In the last table eight points of the wind were noticed viz. northwest, north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west. During the year the wind was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.

In March it was northwest 9 days, southwest 8, northeast 5, south 4, west 3, north 2.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1860

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them. See March 4, 1860 ("Very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds");   March 22, 1858 ("I see those peculiar spring clouds, scattered cumuli with dark level bases. No doubt the season is to be detected by the aspect of the clouds no less than by that of the earth."); March 23, 1860 ("Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon.").

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk. (C. saw it about a week ago.) It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump") See Also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. See  February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of."); and note to March 16, 1860  ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. ") See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

Cold and blustering

again with flurries of snow--

cold dark slate wind-clouds.

March 24, 1860

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cold and rather blustering again

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

The pure November season.

November 10

November 10, 2023

A pleasant day, especially the forenoon. Thermometer 46° at noon. Some would call it Indian summer, but it does not deserve to be called summer; grows cool in afternoon when I go — 

To Baker Farm aspen via Cliffs. 

Some very handsome Solidago nemoralis in bloom on Fair Haven Hill. (Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost.) 

I think I may say that about the 5th the white, swamp white, and black, and perhaps red, oaks (the last may be later) were in their November condition, i. e. for the most part fallen. The few large black oak tops, still covered with leaves above the forest (i. e. just withered), are brownish-yellow. 

The brilliancy of the scarlet oak being generally dulled, the season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. 

From Fair Haven Hill, using my glass, I think that I can see some of the snow of the 7th still left on the brow of Uncannunuc. It is a light line, lying close along under the edge of a wood which covers the summit, which has protected it. I can understand how much nearer they must feel to winter who live in plain sight of that than we do. I think that I could not have detected the edge of the forest if it had not been for the snow. 

In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple. 

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

Withered leaves generally, though they remain on the trees, are drooping. As I go through the hazel bushes toward the sun, I notice the silvery light reflected from the fine down on their tender twigs, this year’s growth. This apparently protects them against the winter. The very armor that Nature puts on reminds you of the foe she would resist. 

This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces. 

A true November seat is amid the pretty white-plumed Andropogon scoparius, the withered culms of the purple wood grass which covers so many dry knolls. There is a large patch at the entrance to Pleasant Meadow. It springs from pink-brown clumps of radical leaves, which make good seats. Looking toward the sun, as I sit in the midst of it rising as high as my head, its countless silvery plumes are a very cheerful sight. At a distance they look like frost on the plant. 

I look out westward across Fair Haven Pond. The warmer colors are now rare. A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. 

Hornbeam bare; how long? Perhaps with the ostrya. and just after elms? 

There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow. 

Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak. I could hear them break them off. They then flew to a suitable limb and, placing the acorn under one foot, hammered away at it busily, looking round from time to time to see if any foe was approaching, and soon reached the meat and nibbled at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they held it very firmly with their claws. (Their hammering made a sound like the woodpecker’s.) Nevertheless it some times dropped to the ground before they had done with it. 

Aphides on alder. Sap still flows in scarlet oak. 

Returned by Spanish Brook Path. Notice the glaucous white bloom on the thimble-berry of late, as there are fewer things to notice. 

So many objects are white or light, preparing us for winter. 

By the 10th of November we conclude with the scarlet oak dulled (and the colors of October generally faded), with a few golden spangles on the white birches and on a lingering Populus tremuliformis and a few sallows, a few green leaves on the Jersey tea, and a few lingering scarlet or yellow or crimson ones on the flowering dogwood in a sheltered place, the gooseberry, the high blueberry, Cornus sericea, the late rose and the common smooth one, and the sweet-briar, meadow-sweet, sweet-fern, and Viburnum nudum. But they are very rare or uninteresting. 

To these may be added the introduced plants of November 9th, which are more leafy. Of them the silvery abele, English cherry, and broom have been of the most interesting colors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 10, 1858

Solidago nemoralis in bloom on Fair Haven Hill. (Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost) . . . In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod. See  November 2, 1852 ("Plucked quite a handsome nosegay from the side of Heywood's Peak, - white and blue-stemmed goldenrods"); November 2, 1853 ("I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf."), November 3, 1853 ("S. nemoralis by roadside. This, though it was not so prevalent as the S. ccesia three weeks ago, is still to be seen"); November 5, 1855 (“I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers.”); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”); November 9, 1852 ("Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. "); November 14, 1852 ("Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy.");   November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc.,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

The pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods. See October 12, 1859 ("We have now fairly begun to be surrounded with the brown of withered foliage. . .  gradually the plants, or their leaves, are killed and withered that we scarcely notice it till we are surrounded with the scenery of November.");  October 23, 1853 ("Everywhere in the fields I see the white, hoary (ashy-colored) sceptres of the gray goldenrod"); October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs."); November 3, 1852 ("It is the month of withered oak leaves."); November 5, 1855 (“The hoary gray of the goldenrod.”); November 5, 1855 ("The brightness of the foliage generally ceased pretty exactly with October."); November 8, 1859 ("How richly and exuberantly downy are many goldenrod and aster heads now.") See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character."); November 28, 1858 ("In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?")

A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; all the light of November may be called an afterglow. See October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light. ”); October 27, 1858 (“the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”); November 2, 1853("We come home in the autumn twilight. . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”); November 9, 1858 (“We had a true November sunset . . .  a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year.”);  November 14, 1853 ("the clear, white, leafless twilight of November”); November 17, 1858 (“We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. . . . A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. ”); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”); November 29, 1853 (""Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape. . .I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.)

There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén,. . . Afterwards, when on the Cliff, I perceive . . .one or two poplars  (tremuliformis) . . . brighter than they were, for they hold out to burn longer than the birch."):October 31, 1858 ("The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand");  November 2, 1858 ("That small poplar seen from Cliffs on the 29th is a P. tremuloides. It makes the impression of a bright and clear yellow at a distance,"); November 13 1858 ("Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves."): November 25, 1858 ("I see aspen (tremuliformis) leaves, which have long since fallen, turned black, which also shows the relation of this tree to the willow, many species of which also turn black")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

Now a new season –

russet earth and withered leaf,

bare twigs – November.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The pure November season.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season, out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/HDT581110

  

The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.

November 4

November 4, 2018

A rainy day. 

Called to C. from the outside of his house the other afternoon in the rain. At length he put his head out the attic window, and I inquired if he didn’t want to take a walk, but he excused himself, saying that he had a cold. “But,” added he, “you can take so much the longer walk. Double it.” 

On the 1st, when I stood on Poplar Hill, I saw a man, far off by the edge of the river, splitting billets off a stump. Suspecting who it was, I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. As surely as the ants which he disturbs go into winter quarters in the stump when the weather becomes cool, so does G. revisit the stumpy shores with his axe. As usual, his powder-flask peeped out from a pocket on his breast, his gun was slanted-over a stump near by, and his boat lay a little further along. He had been at work laying wall still further off, and now, near the end of the day, betook himself to those pursuits which he loved better still. It would be no amusement to me to see a gentleman buy his winter wood. It is to see G. get his. I helped him tip over a stump or two. He said that the owner of the land had given him leave to get them out, but it seemed to me a condescension for him to ask any man’s leave to grub up these stumps. The stumps to those who can use them, I say, — to those who will split them. He might as well ask leave of the farmer to shoot the musquash and the meadow-hen, or I might as well ask leave to look at the landscape. Near by were large hollows in the ground, now grassed over, where he had got out white oak stumps in previous years. But, strange to say, the town does not like to have him get his fuel in this way. They would rather the stumps would rot in the ground, or be floated down-stream to the sea. They have almost without dissent agreed on a different mode of living, with their division of labor. They would have him stick to laying wall, and buy corded wood for his fuel, as they do. He has drawn up an old bridge sleeper and cut his name in it for security, and now he gets into his boat and pushes off in the twilight, saying he will go and see what Mr. Musquash is about. 

When the Haverhill fishermen told me that they could distinguish the Concord River stuff (i. e. driftwood) I see they were right, for much of it is chestnut rails, and of these they have but few, and those in the southern part of New Hampshire. 

If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of the town and look over the forest, you will see, amid the brown of other oaks, which are now withered, and the green of the pines, the bright-red tops or crescents of the scarlet oaks, very equally and thickly distributed on all sides, even to the horizon. Complete trees standing exposed on the edges of the forest, where you have never suspected them, or their tops only in the recesses of the forest surface, or perhaps towering above the surrounding trees, or reflecting a warm rose red from the very edge of the horizon in favorable lights. All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. 

Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is at this season sere and brown. Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, —not a grain more. 

The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. 

In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name. 

Take one of our selectmen and put him on the highest hill in the township, and tell him to look! What, probably, would he see? What would he select to look at? Sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting on the glasses that suited him best, aye, using a spy-glass if he liked, straining his optic nerve to its utmost, and making a full report. Of course, he would see a Brocken spectre of himself. 

Now take Julius Caesar, or Emanuel Swedenborg, or a Fiji-Islander, and set him up there! Let them compare notes afterward. Would it appear that they had enjoyed the same prospect? For aught we know, as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbows. It does not appear that anybody saw Shakespeare when he was about in England looking off, but only some of his raiment. 

Why, it takes a sharpshooter to bring down even such trivial game as snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what he is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance if he fired at random into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so it is with him that shoots at beauty. Not till the sky falls will he catch larks, unless he is a trained sportsman. He will not bag any if he does not already know its seasons and haunts and the color of its wing, —if he has not dreamed of it, so that he can anticipate it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step, shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in cornfields. 

The sportsman trains himself, dresses, and watches unweariedly, and loads and primes for his particular game awake and asleep, with gun and paddle and boat, he goes out after meadow-hens, — which most of his townsmen never saw nor dreamed of, — paddles for miles against a head wind, and therefore he gets them. He had them half-way into his bag when he started, and has only to shove them down. 

The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. The hen scratches, and finds her food right under where she stands; but such is not the way with the hawk. The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it, with the feathers on. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there. Twenty musquash have the refusal of each one of his traps before it is empty.

H.D Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1858

Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax . . .one of the phenomena of the season.  See October 29,1857 ("Melvin asked if I had seen “Pink-eye,” meaning Goodwin.");  November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. . . . while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips ")

The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. See Autumnal Tints. and February 22, 1859 ("Go to Worcester to lecture in a parlor") Also October 31, 1858 ("After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before")

You will see, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. See  July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”) . Also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.”);  September 2, 1856; ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”); September 9, 1858 (“A man sees only what concerns him.”);  Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”); February 25, 1859 ("I am more than ever convinced . . . that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.");January 5, 1860("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”);  Compare March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. “); March 29, 1853 (“It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --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.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”) ; December 11, 1855; ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”)

Before I see it,

the idea of a thing

occupies my thoughts.

 

A pinkish patch on side-hill.

July 28. 

July 28, 2018

P. M.—-To Conantum. 

From wall corner saw a pinkish patch on side-hill west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, a rod across. Through the glass it was as fine as a moss, but with the naked eye it might have been mistaken for a dead pine bough. This pink flower was distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile.

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. 

The under sides of maples are very bright and conspicuous nowadays as you walk, also of the curled panicled andromeda leaves. Some grape leaves, also, are blown up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1858

A pinkish patch on side-hill  west of Baker Farm, which turned out to be epilobium, distinguished perhaps three quarters of a mile. See July 28, 1852 ("Epilobium coloratum, roadside just this side of Dennis's"); August 21, 1858 ("I still see the patch of epilobium on Bee Tree Hill as plainly as ever, though only the pink seed-vessels and stems are left"): See also July 24, 1857 (“Great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color.); July 31, 1856 (“Dense fields of the great epilobium now in its prime, like soldiers in the meadow, resounding with the hum of bees.”)

Heard a kingfisher, which had been hovering over the river, plunge forty rods off. See June 12, 1854 (“As he flies off, he hovers two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dives ”); August 6, 1858 ("The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Kingfisher

July 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 28

From wall corner saw 

a pinkish patch on side-hill 

west of Baker Farm

turned out to be 

epilobium

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

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen.

April 19. 

Spend the day hunting for my boat, which was stolen. 

As I go up the riverside, I see a male marsh hawk hunting. He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs, for in such a tortuous line do the frogs sit. They probably know about what time to expect his visits, being regularly decimated.

Particular hawks farm particular meadows. It must be easy for him to get a breakfast. Far as I can see with a glass, he is still tilting this way and that over the water-line. 

At Fair Haven Pond I see, half a mile off, eight large water-fowl, which I thought at first were large ducks, though their necks appeared long. Studying them patiently with a glass, I found that they had gray backs, black heads and necks with perhaps green reflections, white breasts, dark tips to tails, and a white spot about eyes on each side of bill. At first the whole bird had looked much darker, like black ducks. I did not know but they might be brant or some very large ducks, but at length inclined to the opinion that they were geese. 

At 5.30, being on the Common, I saw a small flock of geese going over northeast. Being reminded of the birds of the morning and their number, I looked again and found that there were eight of them, and probably they were the same I had seen. 

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday; also columbines and the early potentilla April 13th !!! 

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. 

Afterwards, along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. 

In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird twenty or thirty rods off. This surprised me very much. It was equally rich and varied, and yet I did not believe it to be a thrasher. Determined to find out the singer, I sat still with my glass in hand, and at length detected the singer, a goldfinch sitting within gunshot all the while. 

This was the most varied and sprightly performer of any bird I have heard this year, and it is strange that I never heard the strain before. It may be this note which is taken for the thrasher’s before the latter comes. 

P. M. — Down river. 

I find that my Rana halecina spawn in the house is considerably further advanced than that left in the meadows. The latter is not only deeper beneath the surface now, on account of the rain, but has gathered dirt from the water, so that the jelly itself is now plainly seen; and some of it has been killed, probably by frost, being exposed at the surface. I hear the same tut tut tut, probably of the halecina, still there, though not so generally as before. 

See two or three yellow lilies nearly open, showing most of their yellow, beneath the water; say in two or three days. 

Rice tells me of winging a sheldrake once just below Fair Haven Pond, and pursuing it in a boat as it swam down the stream, till it went ashore at Hubbard’s Wood and crawled into a woodchuck’s hole about a rod from the water on a wooded bank. He could see its tail and pulled it out. 

He tells of seeing cartloads of lamprey eels in the spawning season clinging to the - stones at a dam in Saco, and that if you spat on a stone and cast it into the swift water above them they would directly let go and wiggle down the stream and you could hear their tails snap like whips on the surface, as if the spittle was poison to them; but if you did not spit on the stone, they would not let go. 

He thinks that a flock of geese will sometimes stop for a wounded one to get well. 

Hear of bluets found on Saturday, the 17th; how long? 

Hear a toad ring at 9 P. M. Perhaps I first hear them at night, though cooler, because it is still. 

R. W. E. saw an anemone on the 18th.

H.D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 19, 1858

He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs. See note to April 22, 1856 (“A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, . . .  It is looking for frogs.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

I hear the pine warblers there, and also what I thought a variation of its note, quite different, yet I thought not unfamiliar to me. See April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey"); April 15, 1859 ("Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. See April 7, 1855 (“See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew.”)


In the meanwhile I heard a faint thrasher's note, as if faintly but perfectly imitated by some bird. See April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird. . . . Also a catbird mews? [Could this have been a goldfinch?]"); August 11, 1858 ("The goldfinch is a very fine and powerful singer, and the most successful and remarkable mocking-bird that we have. In the spring I heard it imitate the thrasher exactly, before that bird had arrived, and now it imitates the purple finch.");

Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday. See April 27, 1860 ("Viola ovata common."); April 29, 1855 (“Viola ovata will open to-morrow.”); May 1, 1856 ("Viola ovata on southwest side of hill, high up near pines.”); May 5, 1853 ("The Emerson children found blue and white violets May 1st at Hubbard's Close, probably Viola ovata and blanda; but I have not been able to find any yet.");  May 6, 1855 (“Beyond Clamshell, some white Viola ovata, some with a faint bluish tinge.”); May 9, 1852 (“ That I observed the first of May was a V. ovata, a variety of sagittate. [arrowhead violet]”)

When one kind of life goes, another comes. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies.

March 28
P. M. — To Cliffs.

After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning.

Israel Rice says that he heard two brown thrashers sing this morning! Is sure because he has kept the bird in a cage. I can’t believe it.

I go down the railroad, turning off in the cut. I notice the hazel stigmas in the warm hollow on the right there, just beginning to peep forth. This is an unobserved but very pretty and interesting evidence of the progress of the season. I should not have noticed it if I had not carefully examined the fertile buds. It is like a crimson star first dimly detected in the twilight. The warmth of the day, in this sunny hollow above the withered sedge, has caused the stigmas to show their lips through their scaly shield. They do not project more than the thirtieth of an inch, some not the sixtieth. The staminate catkins are also considerably loosened. Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so these put forth their stigmas in the spring. How many accurate thermometers there are on every hill and in every valley: Measure the length of the hazel stigmas, and you can tell how much warmth there has been this spring. How fitly and exactly any season of the year may be described by indicating the condition of some flower! 

I go by the springs toward the epigaea. 

It is a fine warm day with a slight haziness. It is pleasant to sit outdoors now, and, it being Sunday, neighbors walk about or stand talking in the sun, looking at and scratching the dry earth, which they are glad to see and smell again. 

In the sunny epigaea wood I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves be fore, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies. 

It is surprising that men can be divided into those who lead an indoor and those who lead an outdoor life, as if birds and quadrupeds were to be divided into those that lived a within nest or burrow life and [those] that lived without their nests and holes chiefly. How many of our troubles are house-bred! He lives an out door life; i.e., he is not squatted behind the shield of a door, he does not keep himself tubbed. It is such a questionable phrase as an “honest man,” or the “naked eye,” as if the eye which is not covered with a spy glass should properly be called naked.

From Wheeler's plowed field on the top of Fair Haven Hill, I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. The strong and cold northwest wind of about a week past has probably detained them. Knowing that the meadows and ponds were swarming with ducks yesterday, you go forth this particularly pleasant and still day to see them at your leisure, but find that they are all gone. No doubt there are some left, and many more will soon come with the April rains. It is a wild life that is associated with stormy and blustering weather. When the invalid comes forth on his cane, and misses improve the pleasant air to look for signs of vegetation, that wild life has withdrawn itself. 

But when one kind of life goes, another comes. This plowed land on the top of the hill — and all other fields as far as I observe — is covered with cobwebs, which every few inches are stretched from root to root or clod to clod, gleaming and waving in the sun, the light flashing along them as they wave in the wind. How much insect life and activity connected with this peculiar state of the atmosphere these imply! Yet I do not notice a spider. Small cottony films are continually settling down or blown along through the air. [A gossamer day. I see them also for a week after.] Does not this gossamer answer to that of the fall? They must have sprung to with one consent last night or this morning and bent new cables to the clods and stubble all over this part of the world. 

The little fuzzy gnats, too, are in swarms in the air, peopling that uncrowded space. They are not confined by any fence. Already the distant forest is streaked with lines of thicker and whiter haze over the successive valleys. 

Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night.

Fair Haven Pond is open.

[This and Flint's and Walden all open together this year, the latter was so thinly frozen! (For C. says Flint's and Walden were each a third open on the 25th.)]

Sitting on the top of the Cliffs, I look through my glass at the smooth river and see the long forked ripple made by a musquash swimming along over the  meadow. While I sit on these warm rocks, turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here. I see, too, warm and cosy seats on the rocks, where the flies are buzzing, and probably some walker is enjoying the prospect. 

From this hilltop I overlook, again bare of snow, putting on a warm, hazy spring face, this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it, as it were of more costly manufacture. On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. I see those familiar features, that large type, with which all my life is associated, unchanged. 

Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there. There is very little mud, however, and the rill never runs more than four or five rods before it is soaked up, and the whole spring often dries up in the summer. It seems, then, that two or three frogs, the sole inhabitants of so small a spring, will bury them selves at its head. A few frogs will be buried at the puniest spring-head. 

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. 

Near the sand path above Potter's mud-hole I find what I should call twenty and more mud turtles’ eggs close together, which appear to have been dug from a hole close by last year. They are all broken or cracked and more or less indented and depressed, and they look remarkably like my pigeon's egg fungi, a dirty white covered thickly with a pure white roughness, which through a glass is seen to be oftenest in the form of minute but regular rosettes of a very pure white substance. If these are turtles' eggs, –and there is no stem mark of a fungus, – it is remarkable that they should thus come to resemble so closely another natural product, the fungus.

The first lark of the 23d sailed through the meadow with that peculiar prolonged chipping or twittering sound, perhaps sharp clucking.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1858

I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves before, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. See March 28, 1857 ("The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa’s wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools.."); March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 (" Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? "); March 26, 1857 ("As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again"); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. . . . I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.")