24 November 1851 – 30 November 1851

Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial). Saw seven black ducks fly out of the peat-hole. Saw there also a tortoise still stirring, the painted tortoise, I believe. Found on the south side of the swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen, called (with others) snake- tongue, as I find in Loudon. The Irishman who helped me says, when I ask why his countrymen do not learn trades, — do something but the plainest and hardest work, — they are too old to learn trades when they come here.

This morning the ground is again covered with snow, deeper than before. In the afternoon walked to the east part of Lincoln. Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance. Saw also quite a flock of the pine grosbeak, a plump and handsome bird as big as a robin. When returning between Bear Hill and the rail- road, the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gather- ing, which, as we had faced the west, we were not pre- pared for; yet the air was clear. That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine. When surveying in the swamp on the-20th last, at sundown, I heard the owls. Hosmer said: “If you ever minded it, it is about the surest sign of rain that there is. Don’t you know that last Friday night you heard them and spoke of them, and the next day it rained?” This time there were other signs of rain in abundance. ‘“ But night before last,”’ said I, ‘‘when you were not here, they hooted louder than ever, and we have had no rain yet.” At any rate, it rained hard the 21st, and by that rain the river was raised much higher than it has been this fall.

Sunday. A rather cold and windy after- noon, with some snow not yet melted on the ground. Under the south side of the hill between Brown’s and Tarbell’s, in a warm nook, disturbed three large gray squirrels and some partridges, who had all sought out this bare and warm place. While the squirrels hid them- selves in the tree-tops, I sat on an oak stump by an old cellar-hole and mused. This squirrel is always an un- expectedly large animal to see frisking about. My eye wanders across the valley to the pine woods which fringe the opposite side, and in their aspect my eye finds some- thing which addresses itself to my nature. Methinks that in my mood I was asking Nature to give me asign. I do not know exactly what it was that attracted may eye. I experienced a transient gladness, at any rate, at some- thing which I saw. I am sure that my eye rested with pleasure on the white pines, now reflecting a silvery light, the infinite stories of their boughs, tier above tier, a sort of basaltic structure, a crumbling precipice of pine horizontally stratified. Each pine is like a great green feather stuck in the ground. A myriad white pine boughs extend themselves horizontally, one above and behind another, each bearing its burden of silvery sun- light, with darker seams between them, as if it were a great crumbling piny precipice thus stratified. On this my eyes pastured, while the squirrels were up the trees behind me. ‘That, at any rate, it was that I got by my afternoon walk, a certain recognition from the pine, some congratulation. Where is my home? It is indistinct as an old cellar-hole, now a faint indentation merely in a farmer’s field, which he has plowed into and rounded off its edges years ago, and I sit by the old site on the stump of an oak which once grew there. Such is the nature where we have lived. Thick birch groves stand here and there, dark brown (?) now with white lines more or less distinct. The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods, etc., etc.