3 November 1851 – 9 November 1851

To Saw Mill Brook by Turnpike; return by Walden. | I see why the checkerberry was so called, — Mitch- ella repens (we call it falsely partridge-berry), — for its leaves, variegated, checker the ground, now mingled with red berries and partially covered with the fallen leaves of the forest. Saw Mill Brook is peculiar among our brooks as a mountain brook. For a short distance it reminds me of runs I have seen in New Hampshire. A brawling little stream tumbling through a rocky wood, ever down and down. Where the wood has been cleared, it is almost covered with the rubbish which the woodchoppers have left, the fine tree-tops, which no one cared to make into fagots. It was quite a discovery when I first came upon this brawling mountain stream in Concord woods. Rising out of an obscure meadow in the woods, for some fifty or sixty rods of its course it is a brawling mountain stream in our quiet Concord woods, as much obstructed by rocks — rocks out of all proportion to its tiny stream —as a brook can well be. And the rocks are bared throughout the wood on either side, as if a torrent had anciently swept through here; so unlike the after char- acter of the stream. Who would have thought that, on tracing it up from where it empties into the larger Mill Brook in the open peat meadows, it would conduct him to such a headlong and impetuous youth. Perchance it should be called a “force.” * It suggests what various moods may attach to the same character. Ah, if I but knew that some minds which flow so muddily in the low- land portion of their course, when they cross the high- ways, tumbled thus impetuously and musically, mixed themselves with the air in foam, but a little way back in the woods! that these dark and muddy pools, where only the pout and the leech are to be found, issued from pure trout streams higher up! that the man’s thoughts ever flowed as sparkling mountain water, that trout there loved to glance through his dimples, where the witch-hazel hangs over his stream! This stream is here sometimes quite lost amid the rocks, which appear as if they had been arched over it, but which, in fact, it has undermined and found its way beneath, and they have merely fallen together archwise, as they were undermined. =~ Tee new as: ae Hy ae es be a v It is truly a raw and gusty day, and I hear a tree creak sharply like a bird, a phoebe. The hypericums stand red or lake over the brook. The jays with their scream are at home in the scenery. I see where trees have spread themselves over the rocks in a scanty covering of soil, been undermined by the brook, then blown over and, as they fell, lifted and carried over with them all the soil, together with considerable rocks. So from time to time, by these natural levers, rocks are removed from the middle of the stream to the shore. The slender chestnuts, maples, elms, and white ash trees, which last are uncom- monly numerous here, are now all bare of leaves, and a few small hemlocks, with their now thin but unmixed and fresh green foliage, stand over and cheer the stream and remind me of winter, the snows which are to come and drape them and contrast with their green, and the chickadees that are to flit and lisp amid them. Ah, the beautiful tree, the hemlock, with its green canopy, under which little grows, not exciting the cupid- ity of the carpenter, whose use most men have not dis- covered! I know of some memorable ones worth walking many miles to see. These little cheerful hemlocks, — the lisp of chickadees seems to come from them now, — each standing with its foot on the very edge of the stream, reaching sometimes part way over its channel, and here and there one has lightly stepped across. ‘These ever- greens are plainly as much for shelter for the birds as for anything else. The fallen leaves are so thick they almost fill the bed of the stream and choke it. I hear the run- nel gurgling underground. As if this puny rill had ever tossed these rocks about! these storied rocks with their fine lichens and sometimes red stains as of Indian blood on them! There are a few bright-green ferns lying flat by the sides of the brook, but it is cold, cold, withering to all else. A whitish lichen on the witch-hazel rings it here. I glimpse the frizzled tail of a red squirrel with a chestnut in its mouth on a white pine. The ants appear to be gone into winter quarters. Here are two bushels of fine gravel, piled up in a cone, overpowering the grass, which tells of a corresponding cavity.

I had on my “bad-weather clothes” Quebec like Olaf Trygvesson, the N eRe when a went to ‘Thing in England.’

8 a. M.— To Long Pond with W. E. C. [Four fifths of a page missing. ] From there we looked over the lower land and west- ward to the Jenkins house and Wachusett; the latter to-day a very faint blue, almost lost in the atmosphere. Entering Wayland, the sluggish country town, C. re- marked that we might take the town if we had a couple of oyster-knives. We marvelled as usual at the queer- looking building which C. thought must be an engine- house, but which a boy told us was occupied as a shoe- maker’s shop but was built for a library. C. was much amused here by a bigger schoolboy whom we saw on the common, one of those who stretch themselves on the back seats and can chew up a whole newspaper into a spitball to plaster the wall with when the master’s back is turned; made considerable fun of him, and thought this the event of Wayland. Soon got into a country new to us, in Wayland, opposite to Pelham or Heard’s Pond, going across lots. Cedar hills and valleys near the river. A well-placed farmhouse with great old chestnuts near it, the greatest collection of large chestnuts which I remember to have seen. It is a tree full and well out- lined at top, being bushy with short twigs at top,—a firm outline. Some long, moraine-like hills covered with cedars, with the hill country of Wayland on our left. The white oaks still thick with leaves turned pinkish? From a pretty high hill on the left of the road, after pass- ing a very large field which was being plowed, a glorious view of the meadows and Nobscot, now red or purplish with its shrub oaks in this air; and Wachusett here seen in perfection, and Dudley Pond first seen on the south. Dudley Pond is revealed due south now at noon (twelve), by its sparkling water, on both sides its pro- montory. ‘The sparkles are even like fireflies in a meadow. This is not far above the opening to Pelham Pond, which also we fairly see. The white pines now look uncommonly soft. Their foliage, indeed, is not so thick as it was, but, the old leaves being fallen, and none left which are a year old, it is perchance more bright and fair. Dudley Pond, beyond the promontory, appears to be revealed by such a mirage as the coin in a basin. The sun-sparkles seen through the leafless woods on both sides this promontory, over its neck, are very large and innumerable; when one goes out, up flashes another, like a meadow full of fireflies, — dancing sparkles. When we reach the pond we find much beech wood just cut down, last winter, and still standing on its shores. Where young beeches have been cut off four feet from the ground, to cord the wood against, I see that they have put out sprouts this summer in a dense bunch at its top; and also all those stumps which are clothed with short sprouts still covered with curled and crisped leaves are beeches. These large sparkles are magic lanterns by daylight. It is the game of “Go away Jack, come again Gill,” played by the Genius of the lake, with the sun on his nail instead of a piece of paper, to amuse Nature’s children with. Should it not be called Sparkle Pond? Buttonwood trees are frequent about its shores, its hand- some hilly shores. This side, cedars also, on its pleasant hilly shores; and opposite, dark, dense hemlocks. ‘Thus, in the form of its shores and, above all, in the trees which prevail about it, it is peculiar or at least wilder than the Concord ponds, and is exceedingly handsome. It has, perhaps, greater variety than any pond I know. Let it be called Peninsula Pond, nevertheless. ‘The willow herb is there abundant, with its arching stem and its calices, or dried flowers, still attached. No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech. The lower leaves, which are an orange (?) red, hang on (dry) while the rest of the tree is bare. Chased by an ox, whom we escaped over a fence while he gored the trees instead of us, —the first time I was ever chased by his kind. It is a clear water without weeds. There is a handsomely sloping grassy shore on the west. Close by we found Long Pond, in Wayland, Framing- ham, and Natick, a great body of water with singularly sandy, shelving, caving, undermined banks; and there we ate our luncheon. The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom. We went down it a mile or two on the east side through the woods on its high bank, and then dined, looking far down to what seemed the Boston outlet (opposite to its natural outlet), where a solitary building stood on the shore. It is a wild and stretching loch, where yachts might sail, — Cochituate. It was not only larger but wilder and more novel than I had expected. In some respects unlike New England. I could hardly have told in what part of the world I was, if I had been carried there blindfolded. Yet some fea- tures, at least the composition of thesoil, were familiar. The glorious sandy banks far and near, cav- ing and sliding, —far sandy slopes, the forts of the land, — where you see ~ the naked flesh of New England, her garment being blown aside like that of the priests (of the Levites?) when they ascend to the altar. Seen through this November sky, these sands are dear to me, worth all the gold of California, suggesting Pactolus, while the Saxonville factory-bell sounds o’er the woods. ‘That sound perchance it is that whets my vision. ‘The shore suggests the seashore, and two objects at a distance near the shore look like seals on a sand-bar. Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. Of thee, O earth, are my bone and sinew made; to thee, O sun, am I brother. It must be the largest lake in Middlesex. 'To this dust my body will gladly return as to its origin. Here have I my habi- tat. I am of thee. Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond, which looked fairer than ever, though smaller, — now so still, the afternoon somewhat advanced, Nobscot in the west in a purplish light, and the scalloped peninsula before us. When we held our heads down, this was thrown far off. ‘This shore was crowded with hemlocks, which elsewhere I do not remember to have seen so numerous. Outside the wood there are little rounded clumps of smaller ones about. This pond must have been dear to the Indians. At Nonesuch Pond, in Natick, we saw a boulder some thirty-two feet square by sixteen high, with a large rock leaning against it, — under which we walked, —forming a triangular frame, through which we beheld the pic- ture of the pond. How many white men and Indians have passed FZ under it! Boulder Pond! Thence across ~~~ lots by the Weston elm, to the bounds of Lincoln at the railroad. Sawa delicate fringed purple flower, Gentiana crinita, between those Weston hills, in a meadow, and after on higher land. C. kept up an incessant strain of wit, banter, about my legs, which were so springy and unweariable, declared I had got my double legs on, that they were not cork but steel, that I should let myself to Van Amburgh, should have sent them to the World’s Fair, etc., etc.; wanted to know if I could not carry my father Anchises. The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston. It soon grows finger cold. At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off.

The dark spruce tree at Sherman’s; its vicin- ity the site for a house. Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond in this Novem- ber air! what a heaven to live in! Intensely brilliant, as no artificial light I have seen, like a dance of dia- monds. Coarse mazes of a diamond dance seen through the trees. All objects shine to-day, even the sportsmen seen at a distance, as if a cavern were unroofed, and its crystals gave entertainment to the sun. This great see- saw of brilhants, the avjpiOpov yéAacpa. You look several inches into the sod. The cedarn hills. The squirrels that run across the road sport their tails like banners. The gray squirrels in their cylinders are set out in the sun. When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my rela- tion to the soil. These are my sands not yet run out. Not yet will the fates turn the glass. This air have I title to taint with my decay. In this clean sand my bones will gladly lie. Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. Here ever spring- ing, never dying, with perennial root I stand; for the winter of the land is warm to me. While the flowers bloom again as in the spring, shall I pine? When I see her sands’ exposed, thrown up from beneath the sur- face, it touches me inwardly, it reminds me of my origin; for I am such a plant, so native to New England, me- thinks, as springs from the sand cast up from below. 4p.m.—TI find ice under the north side of woods nearly an inch thick, where the acorns are frozen in, which have dropped from the overhanging oaks and been saved from the squirrels, perchance by the water. W. E. C. says he found a ripe strawberry last week in Berkshire. Saw a frog at the Swamp Bridge on back road.

The boat which we paddled that elysian day, Oct. 7th, was made of three distinct boxes shaped like bread-troughs, excepting the bow piece, which was rounded, (~f | ) fastened together by screws and nuts, with stout round leather handles by which to carry the separate parts. It was made of the thinnest and lightest material, without seats or thole-pins, for porta- bility. So that three passengers could sit in three differ- ent boats which, by turning the hand-nuts( ?), they might separate and steer different ways. The river has fallen more than a foot since I last ob- served it. I see minute yellow cocoons on the grass, as I go across the field behind Dennis’s, reminding me of some late flower, as the cinquefoil. What is the insect? I hear a cricket singing the requiem of the year under the Clamshell Bank. Soon all will be frozen up, and I shall hear no cricket chirp in the land. The very rabbit- forms and squirrel-holes will be snowed up, and walking in the winter days, in the sunny forenoons after a light snow has fallen in the night, covering up the old snow, already deep, and [when] the gentle wind from time to time shakes down a golden dust from above, I shall see still the gray squirrel or the red, still cheery and life- some, making tiny tracks over the snow-covered rails and riders, when the sun shines aslant between the stems of the pines. In our walks C. takes out his note-book sometimes and tries to write as I do, but all in vain. He soon puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, “J am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.’” He is the moodiest person, perhaps, that I ever saw. As naturally whimsical as a cow is brindled, both in his tenderness and his roughness he belies himself. He can be incredibly selfish and unexpectedly generous. He is conceited, and yet there is in him far more than usual to ground conceit upon.? I, too, would fain set down something beside facts. Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing; not facts to assist men to make money, farmers to farm profitably, in any common sense; facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought: as now the bell rings for evening meeting, and its volumes of sound, like smoke which rises from where a cannon is fired, make the tent in which I dwell. My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought, — with these I deal. I, too, cher- ish vague and misty forms, vaguest when the cloud at which I gaze is dissipated quite and naught but the skyey depths are seen. James P. Brown’s retired pond, now shallow and more than half dried up, seems far away and rarely visited, known to few, though not far off. It is encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills, on two opposite sides covered with high pine woods, the other sides with young white oaks and white pines respectively. I am affected by beholding there reflected this gray day, so unpre- tendingly, the gray stems of the pine wood on the hill- side and the sky, — that mirror, as it were a permanent picture to be seen there, a permanent piece of idealism. What were these reflections to the cows alone! Were these things made for cows’ eyes mainly? You shall go over behind the hills, where you would suppose that otherwise there was no eye to behold, and find this piece of magic a constant phenomenon there. It is not merely a few favored lakes or pools that reflect the trees and skies, but the obscurest pond-hole in the most unfre- quented dell does the same. These reflections suggest that the sky underlies the hills as well as overlies them, and in another sense than in appearance. I am a little surprised on beholding this reflection, which I did not perceive for some minutes after looking into the pond, as if I had not regarded this as a constant phenomenon. What has become of Nature’s common sense and love of facts, when in the very mud-puddles she reflects the skies and trees ? Does that procedure recommend itself entirely to the com- mon sense of men? Is that the way the New England Farmer would have arranged it? I think it is not true, what De Quincey says of himself, that he read Greek as easily and copiously as other men do French; for as murder will out, so will a man’s read- ing, and in this author’s writings the amount of refer- ence to Greek literature does not at all correspond to such a statement. I knew that this pond was early to freeze; I had for- gotten that it reflected the hills around it. So retired! which I must think even the sordid owner does not know that he owns. It is full of little pollywogs now. Pray, when were they born? To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new moun- tains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood. The new monument in Acton, rising by the side of its mountain houses, like a tall and slender chimney, looking black against the sky! I cannot associate that tall and slender column, or any column in fact, with the death of Davis and Hosmer, and Concord Fight, and the American Revolution. It should have been a large, flat stone rather, covered with lichens like an old farmer’s door-step, which it took all the oxen in the town to draw. Such a column this.as might fitly stand per- chance in Abyssinia or Nubia, but not here in Middle- sex County, where the genius of the people does not soar after that fashion. It is the Acton flue, to carry off the vapors of patriotism into the upper air, which, confined, would be deleterious to animal and vegetable health. The Davis and Hosmer Monument might have been a door- step to the Town House, and so the Concord Monument. Pitch pine cones very beautiful, not only the fresh leather-colored ones but especially the dead gray ones covered with lichens, the scales so regular and close, like an impenetrable coat of mail. ‘These are very hand- some to my eye; also those which have long since opened regularly and shed their seeds. An abundance of the rattlesnake plantain in the woods by Brown’s Pond, now full of a fine chaffy seed (?). Now the leaves are gone the birds’ nests are revealed, the brood being fledged and flown. There is a perfect adaptation in the material used in constructing a nest. There is one which I took from a maple on the cause- way at Hubbard’s Bridge. It is fastened to the twigs by white woolen strings (out of a shawl?), which it has picked up in the road, though it is more than half a mile from a house; and the sharp eyes of the bird have discovered plenty of horsehairs out of the tail or mane, with which to give it form by their spring; with fine meadow hay for body, and the reddish woolly material which invests the ferns in the spring (apparently) for lining.