21 November 1859 – 27 November 1859

Ground white with snow a few hours. C. says that he saw to-day a procession of minnows (one to two inches long) some three or four feet wide, about forty abreast, passing slowly along northerly, close to the shore, at Wharf Rock, Flint’s Pond. They were fifteen minutes passing! .

The river has risen considerably, at last, owing to the rain of the 22d. Had been very low before. See, on the railroad-slope by the pond, and also some days ago, a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. At Spanish Brook Path. the witch- hazel (one flower) lingers. I observe that ferns grow especially where there is an abrupt or broken bank, as where, in the woods, sand has been anciently dug out of a hillside to make a dam with and the semicircular scar has been covered with a sod and shrubs again. The shelter and steepness are favorable when there is shade and moisture. How pretty amid the downy and cottony fruits of November the heads of the white anemone, raised a couple of feet from the ground on slender stalks, two or three together, — small heads of yellowish-white down, compact and regular as a thimble beneath, but, at this time, diffusive and bursting forth above, somewhat like a little torch with its flame, — a very neat object!

P. M. — Paddle to Baker Farm. The weeds of water-plants have decayed and fallen long since, and left the water along the sides of the river comparatively clear. In this clear, cold water I see no fishes now, and it is as empty as the air. But for some days, at least, or since colder weather, I have noticed the snow-fleas skipping on the surface next the shore. These are rather a cool-weather phenom- enon. I see them to-day skipping by thousands in the wet clamshells left by the muskrats.' Landing at the ash tree above the railroad, I thought I heard the peculiar note of grackles toward the willow- row across the field, and made a memorandum of it, never doubting; but soon after I saw some farmers at work there, and found that it was the squeaking of the wheel that rolled before their plow. It perfectly re- sembled the grackle’s note, and I never should have suspected it if I had not seen the plowers. It is fit that the creaking of the farmer’s plow who is working by the riverside should resemble the note of the blackbirds which frequent those fields. There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat. Those bayonet rushes stil] standing are much curved. See but few ducks, — two of them, — and generally few in the fall compared with the spring. A large whitish-breasted bird is perched on an oak under Lee’s Cliff, for half an hour at least. I think it must be a fish hawk (?). We hear the clattering sound of two ducks — which rise and fly low at first — before we can see them though quite far off by the side of the pond. Our hands and feet are quite cold, and the water freezes on the paddles, but about sundown it grows sensibly warmer and a little misty. Is not this common at this season ?

P. M.— Walk over the Colburn Farm wood-lot south [of] the road. I find, sometimes, after I have been lotting off a large wood-lot for auction, that I have been cutting new paths to walk in. I cut lines an inch [sic] or two long in arbitrary directions, in and around some dense wood- lot which perhaps is not crossed once a month by any mortal, nor has been for thirty or fifty years, and thus I open to myself new works [sic], —— enough in a lot of forty acres to occupy me for an afternoon. A forty- acre wood-lot which otherwise would not detain a walker more than half an hour, being thus opened and carved out, will entertain him for half a day. In this case there was a cultivated field here some thirty years ago, but, the wood being suffered to spring up, from being open and revealed this part of the earth became a covert and concealed place. Excepting an occasional hunter who crossed it maybe once in several months, nobody has walked there, nobody has pene- trated its recesses. The walker habitually goes round it, or follows the single cart-path that winds through it. Woods, both the primitive and those which are suffered to spring up in cultivated fields, thus preserve the mystery of nature. How private and sacred a place a grove thus becomes! — merely because its denseness excludes man. It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest. When I ran out the boundary lines of this lot, I could commonly distinguish the line, not merely by the dif- ferent growth of wood, but often by a kind of ditch which I think may have been produced by the plow, which heaped up the soil along the side of the field when it was cultivated. I could also detect trees variously bent and twisted, which probably had made part of a hedge fence when young, and others which were scarred by the fen- cing-stuff that had been fastened to them. The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most un- failing. When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. This has no black cockade, like the nuthatch. In the midst of this wood there occur less valuable patches, of an eighth of an acre or more, where there is much grass, and cladonia, shrub oaks, and lichen-cov- ered birches, and a few pitch pines only, — places of a comparatively sterile character, as if the soil had been run out. The birches will have much of the birch fungus on them, and their fallen dead tops strew the ground.

P.M. — To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill. I traverse this wood-lot back and forth by the lines cut by those who have lotted it off. Thus I scare up the partridges in it. A dozen long lines four rods apart are cut through it. Walking through these, I am pretty sure to scare up what partridges there are in it, and there are few wood-lots of this size which have not some in them at present. Come upon a large ant-hill in the midst of the wood, but no ants on it. It has made an open and bare spot in the woods, ten or twelve feet in diameter. Its mound is partly grassed over, as usual, and trees have been pre- vented from springing up by the labors of the ants be- neath. As this wood is about thirty years old, it may prove that the ant-hill is of the same age! On the 22d the ground was white with snow for a few hours only. Yet, though you saw no more of it generally the latter part of that day, I still see some of it in cold, wet, shaded places, as amid andromeda and cranberry vines. This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium com- planatum and also much dendroideum and Chimaphila umbellata. ‘The former, methinks, abounds especially in shady and rather moist, and I think old, or rather diseased, and cold (?), woods. It covers the earth densely, even under the thickest white pine groves, and equally grows under birches. It surprises you as if the trees stood in green grass where you commonly see only withered leaves. The Greeks and Romans made much of honey be- cause they had no sugar; olive oil also was very impor- tant. Our poets (?) still sing of honey, though we have sugar, and oil, though we do not produce and scarcely use it. The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th. I have seen none.