21 September 1857 – 27 September 1857

Monday. P. M.— To Corallorhiza Rock and Tobacco-pipe Wood, northeast of Spruce Swamp. Peaches are now in their prime. Came through that thick white pine wood on the east of the spruce swamp. This is a very dense white pine grove, consisting of tall and slender trees which have been thinned, yet they are on an average only from three to six feet asunder. Perhaps half have been cut. It is a charac- teristic white pine grove, and I have seen many such. The trees are some ten inches in diameter, larger or smaller, and about fifty feet high. They are bare for thirty-five or forty feet up, — which is equal to at least twenty-five years of their growth, or with only a few dead twigs high up. Their green crowded tops are mere oval spear-heads in shape and almost in propor- tionate size, four to eight feet wide, — not enough, you would think, to keep the tree alive, still less to draw it upward. In a dark day the wood is not only thick but dark with the boles of the trees. Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow Good- yera pubescens and repens, Corallorhiza multiflora (go- ing to seed), white cohosh berries, Pyrola secunda, and, on the low west side and also the east side, an abun- dance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black at the tip of the petals and leaves. The Solidago cesia is very common and fresh in copses, perhaps the prevailing solidago now in woods. Rudbeckia laciniata done, probably some time. The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days. Measured the large white willow north the road near Hildreth’s. At a foot and a half from the ground it is fourteen feet in circumference; at five feet, the smallest place, it is twelve feet in circumference. It was once still larger, for it has lost large branches.’

Wednesday. P. M. — To chestnut oaks. Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint’s Pond road in the woods. I observe in these places only the N. alba and Frasert; but these are not well distinguished; they seem to be often alike in the color of the pappus. Some are very tall and slender, and the largest I saw was an N. Frasert/ One N. alba had a panicle three feet long! The Ripley beeches have been cut. I can’t find them. There is one large one, apparently on Baker’s land, about two feet in diameter near the ground, but fruit hollow. I see yellow pine-sap, in the woods just east of where the beeches used to stand, just done, but the red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there.”

Thursday. A. M. — Up the Assabet. The river is considerably raised and also muddied by the recent rains. I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with — his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and re- treated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated. Digging there, I found two pignuts joined together, with their green shells on, buried about an inch and a half in the soil, under the red hemlock leaves. This, then, is the way forests are planted. This nut must have been brought twenty rods at least and was buried at just the right depth. If the squirrel is killed, or neglects its deposit, a hickory springs up.’ P. M. — I walked to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp. It is about fifteen rods square, the trees large, ten to twenty inches in diameter. It is separated by a wall from another pine wood with a few oaks in it on the south- east, and about thirty rods north and west are other pine and oak woods. Standing on the edge of the wood and looking through it,—for it is quite level and free from underwood, mostly bare, red-carpeted ground, — you would have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old, though I afterward found on one edge a middling-sized sassafras, a birch, a small tupelo, and two little scarlet oaks, but, what was more interesting, I found, on looking closely over its floor, that, alternating with thin ferns and small blueberry bushes, there was, as often as every five feet, a little oak, three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a tree. I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. These oaks, apparently, find such a locality unfavorable to their growth as long as the pines stand. I saw that some had been browsed by the cows which resort to the wood for shade. As an evidence that hardwood trees would not flourish un- der those circumstances, I found a red maple twenty- five feet high recently prostrated, as if by the wind, but still covered with green leaves, the only maple in the wood, and also two birches decaying in the same posi- tion.1 The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality. Minott tells of their finding near a bushel of chest- nuts in a rock, when blasting for the mill brook, at that ditch near Flint’s Pond. He said it was a gray squirrel’s depot. I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round.

Friday. P. M. — To tupelo on Daniel B. Clark’s land. Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear sin- gular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels. One sits high on a hemlock bough with a nut in its paws. A squirrel seems always to have a nut at hand ready to twirl in its paws. Suddenly he dodges behind the trunk of the tree, and I hear some birds in the maples across the river utter a peculiar note of alarm of the same character with the hen’s (I think they were robins), and see them seeking a covert. Looking round, I see a marsh hawk beating the bushes on that side. You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank. Pushing by Carter’s pasture, I see, deep under water covered by the rise of the river, the cooper’s poles a-soak, held down by planks and stones. Fasten to the white maple and go inland. Wher- ever you may land, it would be strange if there were not some alder clump at hand to hide your oars in till your return. The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun. These first trees that change are most interesting, since they are seen against others still freshly green, — such brilliant red on green. I go half a mile out of my way to exam- ine such a red banner. A single tree becomes the crown- ing beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the at- tention of the traveller from afar. At the eleventh hour of the year, some tree which has stood mute and inglorious in some distant vale thus proclaims its char- acter as effectually as [if] it stood by the highway-side, and it leads our thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it inhabits. The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a sin- gular preéminence. I am thrilled at the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for its regiment of green-clad foresters around. The forest is the more spirited.! I remember that brakes had begun to decay as much as six weeks ago. Dogwood (Rhus venenata) is yet but pale-scarlet or yellowish. The R. glabra is more gener- ally turned. Stopped at Barrett’s mill. He had a buttonwood log to saw. In an old grist-mill the festoons of cobwebs revealed by the white dust on them are an ornament. Looking over the shoulder of the miller, I drew his at- tention to a mouse running up a brace. “Oh, yes,” said he, “we have plenty of them. Many are brought to the mill in barrels of corn, and when the barrel is placed on the platform of the hopper they scamper away.” As I came round the island, I took notice of that little ash tree on the opposite shore. It has been cut or broken off about two feet from the ground, and seven — small branches have shot up from its circumference, all together forming a perfectly regular oval head about twenty-five feet high and very beautiful. With what harmony they work and carry out the idea of the tree, one twig not straying farther on this side than its fel- low on that! That the tree thus has its idea to be lived up to, and, as it were, fills an invisible mould in the air, is the more evident, because if you should cut away one or all but one, the remaining branch or branches would still in time form a head in the main similar to this. Brought home my first boat-load of wood.

Saturday. A. M.— Apparently Hyperi- cum prolificum in Monroe’s garden, stil] out. The season is waning. A wasp just looked in upon me. A very warm day for the season. P. M. — Up river to Clamshell. These are warm, serene, bright autumn afternoons. I see far off the various-colored gowns of cranberry- pickers against the green of the meadow. The river stands a little way over the grass again, and the sum- mer is over. The pickerel-weed is brown, and I see musquash-houses. Solidago rigida, just done, within a rod southwest of the oak. I see a large black cricket on the river, a rod from shore, and a fish is leaping at it. As long as the fish leaps, it is motionless as if dead; but as soon as it feels my paddle under it, it is lively enough. I sit on Clamshell bank and look over the meadows. Hundreds of crickets have fallen into a sandy gully and now are incessantly striving to creep or leap up again over the sliding sand. This their business this September afternoon. I watch a marsh hawk circling low along the edge of the meadow, look- ing for a frog, and now at last it alights to rest on a tussock. Coming home, the sun is intolerably warm on my left cheek. I perceive it is because the heat of the re- flected sun, which is as bright as the real one, is added to that of the real one, for when I cover the reflection with my hand the heat is less intense. That cricket seemed to know that if he lay quietly spread out on the surface, either the fishes would not suspect him to be an insect, or if they tried to swallow him would not be able to. What blundering fellows these crickets are, both large and small! They were not only tumbling into the river all along shore, but into this sandy gully, to escape from which is a Sisyphus labor. I have not sat there many minutes watching two foraging crickets which have decided to climb up two tall and slender weeds almost bare of branches, as a man shins up a liberty-pole sometimes, when I find that one has climbed to the summit of my knee. They are incessantly run- ning about on the sunny bank. Their still larger cousins, the mole crickets, are creaking loudly and incessantly all along the shore. Others have eaten themselves cavernous apartments, sitting-room and pantry at once, in windfall apples. Speaking to Rice of that cricket’s escape, he said that a snake [szc] in like manner would puff itself up when a snake was about to swallow him, making right up to him. He once, with several others, saw a small striped snake swim across a piece of water about half a rod wide to a half-grown bullfrog which sat on the opposite shore, and attempt to seize him, but he found that he had caught a Tartar, for the bullfrog, seeing him coming, was not afraid of him, but at once seized his head in his mouth and closed his jaws upon it, and he thus held the snake a considerable while before the latter was able by struggling to get away. , When that cricket felt my oar, he leaped without the least hesitation or perhaps consideration, trusting to fall in a pleasanter place. He was evidently trust- ing to drift against some weed which would afford him a point d’apputr.

I am surprised to find that, yesterday having been a sudden very warm day, the peaches have mellowed suddenly and wilted, and I find many more fallen than even after previous rains. Better if ripened more graduaily. How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one, —in Hindoo literature, for instance, — is the historical fact about it, — the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what pre- cisely it might signify to a sect of worshippers! Any- thing that is called history of India — or of the world — is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless. P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff by land. Small red maples in low ground have fairly begun to burn for a week. It varies from scarlet to crimson. It looks like training-day in the meadows and swamps. They have run up their colors. A small red maple has grown, perchance, far away on some moist hill- side, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faith- fully discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its economies, added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth all summer, and is nearer heaven than in the spring, never having gone gadding abroad; and now, in this month of September, when men are turned travellers, hastening to the seaside, or the moun- tains, or the lakes, —in this month of travelling, — this modest maple, having ripened its seeds, still with- out budging an inch, travels on its reputation, runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, to show that it has finished its summer work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. Thus that modest worth which no scrutiny could have detected when it was most industrious, is, by the very tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the most careless and distant observer. It rejoices in its existence; its reflections are unalloyed. It is the day of thanksgiving with it. At last, its labors for the year being consum- mated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, — Acer rubrum. In its hue is no regret nor pining. Its leaves have been asking their parent from time to time in a whisper, “When shall we redden?” It has faith- fully husbanded its sap, and builded without babbling nearer and nearer to heaven. Long since it committed its seeds to the winds and has the satisfaction of know- ing perhaps that a thousand little well-behaved and pro- mising maples of its stock are already established in business somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. It has afforded a shelter to the wandering bird.’ Its autumnal tint shows how it has spent its summer; it is the hue of its virtue. These burning bushes stand thus along the edge of the meadows, and I distinguish them afar upon all the hillsides, here and there. Her wrtues are as scar- let.? The large common ferns (either cinnamon or in- terrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. White birches have fairly begun to yellow, and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood on the grass. Bass, too, fairly begun to yellow. Solzdago nemoralis nearly done. I sit on the hillside at Miles Swamp. A woodbine investing the leading stem of an elm in the swamp quite to its top is seen as an erect slender red column through the thin and yellowing foliage of the elm, — a very pretty effect. I see some small woodbine leaves in the shade of a delicate cherry-color, border- Ing on pink. As I sit there I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. Perhaps it is both because the young are grown and their food, the small birds, are flying in flocks and are abundant. I need only sit still a few minutes on any spot which overlooks the river meadows, before I see some black circling mote beating along, circling along the meadow’s edge, now lost for a moment as it turns edgewise in a peculiar light, now reappearing further or nearer. Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. Huckleberries are still abundant and quite plump on Conantum, though they have a somewhat dried taste. It is most natural, 7. e. most in accordance with the natural phenomena, to suppose that North America was discovered from the northern part of the Eastern Continent, for a study of the range of plants, birds, and quadrupeds points to a connection on that side. Many birds are common to the northern parts of both continents. Even the passenger pigeon has flown across there. And some European plants have been detected on the extreme northeastern coast and islands, which do not extend inland. Men in their migrations obey in the main the same law.