11 May 1857 – 17 May 1857

Warbling vireo and chewink. A very cold northwest wind. I hear they had a snow-storm yester- day in Vermont.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all, world-ridden. I take my neigh- bor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and in- vite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out of his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can’t do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets. He thinks that govern- ments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting. The Salix cordata var. Torreyana is distinguished by its naked ovaries more or less red-brown, with flesh- colored stigmas, with a distinct slender woolly rachis and conspicuous stalks, giving the ament a loose and open appearance. When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of. While dropping beans in the garden at Texas just after sundown (May 13th), I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I’m gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird’s strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. The spirit of its earth- song, of its serene and true philosophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally. Some of its aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic felicity, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently true. As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured. It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture. I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds, correct my human views by listening to their volucral (?). He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, perchance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly see him against the plowed ground. You advance step by step as the twilight deepens, and lo! he is gone, and in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter. One with the rocks and with us. Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminis- cences, only when well employed, at any rate only when I have no reason to be ashamed of my employ- ment. I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind for doing something from a sense of duty, even unconsciously. Our past experience is a never- failing capital which ‘can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am doing some task which I have set myself. I take in- credibly narrow views, live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in. But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.’ The second amelanchier out, in garden. Some fir balsams, as Cheney’s. Is not ours in the grove, with the chip-bird’s nest in it, the Abies Frasert? Its cones are short. I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird’s (song sparrow’s) nest with five eggs. P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. I hear a yorrick, apparently anxious, near me, utter from time to time a sharp grating char-r-r, like a fine watchman’s rattle. As usual, I have not heard them sing yet. A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler. Veronica serpyllifolia is abundantly out at Corner Spring. As I go along the hillside toward Miles Swamp, I mistake the very light gray cliff-sides east of the river at Bittern Cliff for amelanchier in bloom. The brother of Edward Garfield (after dandelions!) tells me that two years ago, when he was cutting wood at Bittern Cliff in the winter, he saw something dark squatting on the ice, which he took to be a mink, and taking a stake he went to inspect it. It turned out to be a bird, a new kind of duck, with a long, slender, pointed bill (he thought red). It moved off backwards, hissing at him, and he threw his stake about a rod and ey broke its neck, then killed it. It was very lean and the river was nowhere open. He sent it to Waltham and sold it for twenty-five cents. Black ash, maybe a day. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum. I see a whitish cocoon on a small carpinus. It is artfully made where there is a short crook in the main stem, so as to just fill the hollow and make an even surface, the stick forming one side.

Work in garden. I see a toad only an inch and a quarter long; so they must be several years growing. P. M. — To Leaning Hemlocks. A large bunch of oat spawn in meadow water. Scare up a black duck and apparently two summer ducks. Canoe birch, how long? Sternotherus.

P. M.—To Assabet Bath and stone bridge. I hear two thrashers plainly singing in emulation of each other. At the temporary brush fence pond, now going down, amid the sprout-land and birches, I see, within a dozen rods along its shore, one to three rods from edge, thir- teen wood tortoises on the grass, at 4 p. m. this cloudy afternoon. This is apparently a favorite resort for them, —a shallow open pool of half an acre, which dries up entirely a few weeks later, in dryish, mossy ground in an open birch wood, ete., etc. They take refuge in the water and crawl] out over the mossy ground. They lie about in various positions, very conspicuous there, at every rod or two. They are of various forms and colors: some almost regularly oval or elliptical,’even pointed behind, others very broad behind, more or less flaring and turned up on the edge; some a dull lead-color and almost smooth, others brown with dull-yellowish marks. I see one with a large dent three eighths of an inch deep and nearly two inches long in the middle of its back, where it was once partially crushed. Hardly one has a perfect shell. The males (?), with concave sternums; the females, even or convex. They have their reddish- orange legs stretched out often, listlessly, when you approach, draw in their heads with a hiss when you take them up, commonly taking a bit of stubble with them. See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter- colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer’s sprout- land and screaming, apparently looking for frogs or the like. Or have they not a nest near? They hover very near me. ‘The female, now so near, sails very grandly, with the outer wing turned or tilted up when it circles, and the bars on its tail when it turns, etc., reminding me of a great brown moth. Sometimes alone; and when it approaches its mate it utters a low, grating note like cur-r-r. Suddenly the female holds straight toward me, descending gradually. Steadily she comes on, without swerving, until only two rods off, then wheels. I find an old bog-hoe left amid the birches in the low ground, the handle nearly rotted off. In the low birch land north of the pear tree the old corn-hills are very plain still, and now each hill is a dry moss-bed, of various species of cladonia. What a complete change from a dusty corn-hill! Abel Hosmer tells me that he has collected and sown white pine seed, and that he has found them in the crop of pigeons. (?) Salix lucida at bridge; maybe staminate earlier. Herb-of-St.-Barbara, how long?

Black currant at R. W. E.’s. Abel Hosmer thought that the Salix alba roots might reach half a dozen rods into his field as big as your finger. Thought that they made the grass grow as much as the locust; only they made it rough plowing by throwing the plow out.

P. M.— To Hill for pines. The meadows are now mostly bare, the grass showing itself above the water that is left, and an unusual num- ber of swallows are flying low over it. A yellow lily out, and, on the hill, a red cedar, maybe a day.

P. M. — Round Walden. Gold-thread is abundantly out at Trillium Woods. The yellow birch catkins, now fully out or a little past prime, are very handsome now, numerous clusters of rich golden catkins hanging straight down at a height from the ground on the end of the pendulous branches, amid the just expanding leaf-buds. It is like some great chandelier hung high over the underwood. So, too, with the canoe birch. Such black as I see is not quite so forward yet. The canoe, yellow, and black birches are among the handsomest trees when in bloom. The bunches of numerous rich golden catkins, hang- ing straight down on all sides and trembling in the breeze, contrast agreeably with the graceful attitude of the tree, commonly more or less inclined, the leaves not being enough expanded to conceal them in the least. They should be seen against evergreens on a hillside, — something so light and airy, so graceful. What nymphs are they? What was that peculiar spawn on a submerged alder stem seen the 13th? It looked like a fresh light-col- ored fungus, flattish and circular, a third of an inch over, and waving in the water, but, taken out, hung down longer. In the midst of this jelly were minute eggs. I just notice the fertile sweet-fern bloom on fall plants,’ where the sterile catkins are falling off above it. Most plants have none. Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf- stalk.