October 15.
Wednesday. 8.30 A. M. Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond with W. E. C.
(But first
- a neighbor sent in a girl to inquire if I knew where worm-seed grew, otherwise called “Jerusalem oak” (so said the recipe which she brought cut out of a newspaper), for her mistress's hen had the “gapes.” But I answered that this was a Southern plant and knew not where it was to be had. Referred her to the poultry book.
- Also the next proprietor commenced stoning and settling down the stone for a new well, an operation which I wished to witness, purely beautiful, simple, and necessary. The stones laid on a wheel, and continually added to above as it is settled down by digging under the wheel.
- Also Goodwin, with a partridge and a stout mess of large pickerel, applied to me to dispose of a mud turtle which he had found moving the mud in a ditch. Some men will be in the way to see such movements.)
The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. Some are as big as small hay cocks.
The river is still quite low, though a foot or more higher than when I was last on it.
There is quite a wind, and the sky is full of flitting clouds, so that sky and water are quite unlike that warm, bright, transparent day when I last sailed on the river, when the surface was of such oily smoothness.
You could not now study the river bottom for the black waves and the streaks of foam.
When the sun shines brightest to-day, its pyramidal-shaped sheen (when for a short time we are looking up-stream, for we row) is dazzling and blinding.
It is pleasant to hear the sound of the waves and feel the surging of the boat, — an inspiriting sound, as if you were bound on adventures. It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so angry and black.
We see objects on shore-trees, etc., — much better from the boat, — from a low point of view. It brings them against the sky, into a novel point of view at least.
The otherwise low on the meadows, as well as the hills, is conspicuous.
I perceive that the bulrushes are nibbled along the shore, as if they had been cut by a scythe, yet in such positions as no mower could have reached, even outside the flags. Probably the muskrat was the mower, for his houses.
In this cool sunlight, Fair Haven Hill shows to advantage. Every rock and shrub and protuberance has justice done it, the sun shining at an angle on the hill and giving each a shadow. The hills have a hard and distinct outline, and I see into their very texture.
On Fair Haven I see the sunlit light-green grass in the hollows where snow makes water sometimes, and on the russet slopes.
Cut three white pine boughs opposite Fair Haven, and set them up in the bow of our boat for a sail. It was pleasant to hear the water begin to ripple under the prow, telling of our easy progress. We thus without a tack made the south side of Fair Haven, then threw our sails overboard, and the moment after mistook them for green bushes or weeds which had sprung from the bottom unusually far from shore.
Then to hear the wind sough in your sail, — that is to be a sailor and hear a land sound.
The grayish-whitish mikania, all fuzzy, covers the endless button-bushes, which are now bare of leaves.
Observed the verification of the Scripture saying "as a dog returneth to his vomit.” Our black pup, sole passenger in the stern, perhaps made seasick, vomited, then cleaned the boat again most faithfully and with a bright eye, licking his chops and looking round for more.
We comment on the boats of different patterns, – dories (?), punts, bread-troughs, flatirons, etc., etc., — which we pass, the prevailing our genuine dead-river boats, not to be matched by Boston carpenters. One farmer blacksmith whom we know, whose boat we pass in Sudbury, has got a horseshoe nailed about the sculling-hole; — keeps off the witches too?
The water carriages of various patterns and in various conditions, — some for pleasure (against the gentleman's seat?); some for ducking, small and portable; some for honest fishing, broad and leaky but not cranky; some with spearing fixtures; some stout and square-endish for hay boats; one canal-boat or mud-scow in the weeds, not worth getting down the stream, like some vast pike that could swallow all the rest, proper craft for our river.
In some places in the meadows opposite Bound Rock, the river seemed to have come to an end, it was so narrow suddenly.
After getting in sight of Sherman's Bridge, counted nineteen birches on the right-hand shore in one whirl.
Now commenced the remarkable meandering of the river, so that we seemed for some time to be now running up, then running down parallel with a long, low hill, tacking over the meadow in spite of ourselves.
Landed at Sherman's Bridge.
An apple tree, made scrubby by being browsed by cows. Through what early hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! No wonder it is prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend itself from such foes.?
The pup nibbles clams, or plays with a bone no matter how dry.
Thus the dog can be taken on a river voyage, but the cat cannot. She is too set in her ways.
Now again for the Great Meadows.
What meandering! The Serpentine, our river should be called. What makes the river love to delay here? Here come to study the law of meandering.
We see the vast meadow studded with haycocks. We suspect that we have got to visit them all. It proves even so. Now we run down one haycock, now another.
The distance made is frequently not more than a third the distance gone. Between Sherman's Bridge and Causeway Bridge is about a mile and three quarters in a straight line, but we judged that we went more than three miles.
Here the pipes (at first) line the shore, and muskrat-houses still.
A duck (a loon ?) sails within gunshot, unwilling to fly; also a stake-driver (Ardea minor) rises with prominent breast or throat bone, as if badly loaded, his ship.
Now no button-bushes line the stream, the changeable (?) stream; no rocks exist; the shores are lined with, first, in the water, still green polygonum, then wide fields of dead pontederia, then great bulrushes, then various reeds, sedges, or tall grasses, also dead thalictrum (?), — or is it cicuta?
Just this side the causeway bridges a field, like a tall corn-field, of tall rustling reeds (?), ten feet high with broadish leaves and large, now seedy tufts, standing amid the button-bushes and great bulrushes.
I remember to have seen none elsewhere in this vicinity, unless at Fresh Pond, and there are they not straighter? Also, just beyond the bridges, very tall flags from six to eight feet high, leaves like the cat-tail but no tail. What are they ??
We pass under two bridges above the Causeway Bridge. After passing under the first one of these two, at the mouth of Larnum Brook, which is fed from Blandford's Pond, comes from Marlborough through Mill Village, and has a branch, Hop Brook, from south of Nobscot, — we see Nobscot, very handsome in a purplish atmosphere in the west, over a very deep meadow, which makes far up.
A good way to skate to Nobscot, or within a mile or two.
To see a distant hill from the surface of water over a low and very broad meadow, much better than to see it from another hill. This perhaps the most novel and so memorable prospect we got.
Walked across half a mile to Pelham's Pond, whose waves were dashing quite grandly. A house near, with two grand elms in front.
I have seen other elms in Wayland.
This pond a good point to skate to in winter, when it is easily accessible. Now we should have to draw our boat.
On the return, as in going, we expended nearly as much time and labor in counteracting the boat's tendency to whirl round, it is so miserably built. Now and then, — aye, aye, almost an everlasting now, — it will take the bits in its mouth and go round in spite of us, though we row on one side only, for the wind fills the after part of the boat, which is nearly out of water, and we therefore get along best and fastest when the wind is strong and dead ahead.
That's the kind of wind we advertise to race in.
To row a boat thus all the day, with an hour's intermission, making fishes of ourselves as it were, putting on these long fins, realizing the finny life! Surely oars and paddles are but the fins which a man may use.
The very pads stand perpendicular (on their edges) before this wind, — which appears to have worked more to the north, — showing their red undersides.
The muskrats have exposed the clamshells to us in heaps all along the shore; else most would not know that a clam existed. If it were not for muskrats, how little would the fisherman see or know of fresh-water clamshells or clams!
In the Great Meadows again the loon (?) rises, and again alights, and a heron (?) too flies sluggishly away, with vast wings, and small ducks which seem to have no tails, but their wings set quite aft.
The crows ashore are making an ado, perchance about some carrion.
We taste some swamp white oak acorns at the south end of Bound Rock Meadow.
The sun sets when we are off Israel Rice's. A few golden coppery clouds, intensely glowing, like fishes in some molten metal of the sky, and then the small scattered clouds grow blue-black above, or one half, and reddish or pink the other half, and after a short twilight the night sets in.
We think it is pleasantest to be on the water at this hour.
We row across Fair Haven in the thickening twilight and far below it, steadily and with out speaking. As the night draws on her veil, the shores retreat; we only keep in the middle of this low stream of light; we know not whether we float in the air or in the lower regions.
We seem to recede from the trees on shore or the island very slowly, and yet a few reaches make all our voyage. Nature has divided it agreeably into reaches.
The reflections of the stars in the water are dim and elongated like the zodiacal light straight down into the depths, but no mist rises to-night.
It is pleasant not to get home till after dark, — to steer by the lights of the villagers. The lamps in the houses twinkle now like stars; they shine doubly bright.
Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1851
Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond . . .Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half. See
September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least.");
January 31, 1855 ("Skated up the river to explore further than I had been. I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles,. . .and walked three quarters of a mile further. It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth. "); July 31, 1859 ("This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet."); December 28, 1859 ("It is remarkable that the river should so suddenly contract at Pelham Pond. It begins to be Musketaquid there.")
Walked across half a mile to Pelham's Pond. See July 31, 1859 ("We could not now detect any passage into Pelham Pond, which at the nearest, near the head of this reach, came within thirty rods of the river")
What meandering!
Study what makes the river
