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The Seasons in Estabrook Country
SPRING
March 6, 1859: A note in Ellery Channing's pocket diary about a walk with Thoreau is like a rough draft of Boswell's:
"Our round of walks as regular as the seasons; now to low spots to look for early Spring plants also for early birds. Nature is an eternal provision and repetition....worst climate, the best for a walker; H. [Thoreau] said if we got low enough down for duty, we shall then be in chains...H. calls black scrub oak his oak.Snow, ice melting everywhere in roads and fields....H. [says] there is nothing but the seasons." [027]
March, 1978. Lawrence "Monk" Terry was the long-time headmaster of Middlesex School and a Harvard Overseer. He was a leader in the 1960s-1980s campaigns to save Estabrook Woods. He wrote this letter to a supporter of Harvard's permanently protecting its Woods:
"This morning at breakfast I read the 'cover' article in the March Smithsonian. I urge you to read what Prof. Robert Cook has been doing in our beloved Estabrook Woods. He says under impeccable auspices something highly persuasive on our behalf." [See, next entry.]
March-- , 1970s. Dr. Robert E. Cook, now Director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, did post-doctoral research on violets in Estabrook Woods, which in a February, 1999 lecture he recollected as "that magnificent place." In 1978, he published the Smithsonian magazine article to which Monk Terry referred in the previous item:
"It is easy to think of Thoreau when walking the paths of Estabrook....This is where I spend most of my spring and summer days, listening to much the same music he heard and watching violets grow and die....
"When the first spearheads of skunk cabbage push through Estabrook's snow, I begin my search for violets. I am by inclination an ecologist, a poser of questions about nature, who at present contemplates the population biology of plants, their abundance and distribution. I try to understand why one species can grow and reproduce very well in one habitat and not another, and why there are two or three plants in a patch rather than twenty. So I've chosen populations of violets for close scrutiny, much as one might track a pride of lions in the East African savanna to know and understand their lives....
"To Thoreau, the quiet contemplation of wildness became a passage for self-exploration....Even to the eye of the professional naturalist, the woods bring a special nourishment to the spirit....[T]hey give soul to a science made stark with the words of learning and they bring to each season a feeling of returning discovery. It is easier to endure the ice and snow knowing I will soon visit Estabrook to see some old friends again." [028]
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March 21, 1853. On the spring equinox, Thoreau wrote of his personal revival and resuming his symbolic pilgrimage:
"To the Kibbe Place....It is a genial and reassuring day; the mere warmth of the west wind amounts almost to balminess. The softness of the air mollifies our own dry and congealed substance. I sit down by a wall to see if I can muse again. We become, as it were, pliant and ductile again to strange but memorable influences; we are led a little way by our genius. We are affected like the earth, and yield to the elemental tenderness; winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels. A strain of music comes to solace the traveller over earth's downs and dignify his chagrins, the petty men whom he meets are the shadows of grander to come. Roads lead elsewhither than to Carlisle and Sudbury. The earth is uninhabited but fair to inhabit, like the old Carlisle road. Is then the road so rough that it should be neglected? Not only narrow but rough is the way that leadeth to life everlasting. [029] Our experience does not wear upon us. It is seen to be fabulous or symbolical, and the future is worth expecting. Encouraged I set out once more to climb the mountains of the earth, for my steps are symbolical steps [030], and in all my walking I have not reached the top of the earth yet....
"Ah! Then, as I was rising this crowning road, just beyond the old lime-kiln, there leaked into my open ear the faint peep of a hyla [a spring peeper] from some far pool. One little hyla somewhere in the fens, aroused by the genial season, crawls up a bank or a bush, squats on a dry leaf, and essays a note or two, which scarcely rends the air, does no violence to the zephyr, but yet breaks through all obstacles, thick-planted maples, and far over the downs to the ear of the listening naturalist, who will never see that piper in this world,--nor even the next, it may be,--as it were the first faint cry of the new-born year, notwithstanding the note of birds. Where so long I have heard only the brattling and moaning of the wind, what means this tenser, far-piercing sound? All nature rejoices with one joy. If the hyla has revived again, may not I?...Came home through the Hunt pasture."
March 28, 1859. Letter to Thoreau from James Walker, President of Harvard College:
Sir:-I transmit to you herein the subjoined copy of a Report made to the Board of Overseers, and accepted by that body. You will perceive your name in the name of the Committees, and you will be pleased to consider this communication as a notice of your appointment as a member of [the College's Committee on Examination in Natural History].
I am, Sir, with great respect, your obedient servant,
James Walker, President."March, 1968. Peter Arnold, one of the favorite teachers at Middlesex School, published in the magazine Massachusetts Audubon, an article "In Thoreau's Woods" about spring amphibians in Estabrook Country, more than 100 acres of which are owned by the School:
"The land itself and its neighboring acres make the Concord [Ecological Field] Station one of the finest tracts in the nation for wildlife and wildlands study and assure its continuing quality. The research station became a reality in 1966....One of the happiest sounds heard in New England each spring is the clear, high-pitched song of the spring peeper [hyla], our smallest frog. At first the sound is a hesitating chorus but with each passing day the song grows louder and more insistent. This tiny creature is truly the harbinger of spring.
"At Estabrook Woods in Concord, this nightly chorus marks the renewal of the life cycle among amphibians and reptiles that help make the woods, ponds, and nearby meadows exciting places. Most visitors to this extraordinarily rich faunal area are soon well aware of the various birds and mammals but overlook the equally interesting populations of amphibians and reptiles....These woods will now be used as a living outdoor laboratory by the ecologists of Harvard and other universities, so that man may have a better understanding of himself and the problems with which he is faced in his ever-shrinking world. The woods will remain a place of solitude and beauty for those who feel that natural beauty needs no apologies for being except to bring an enjoyment which cannot be duplicated. It is indeed comforting to realize that these unspoiled woods will continue to provide a haven for the plants and animals which make the world such an interesting place in which to live."
Ca. March, 1994. John Hanson Mitchell described the Estabrook diaspora: [031]
"The Estabrooks, the Kibbes...and the other "outlivers"...who inhabited the poor farms in the tract that would come to be known as Estabrook Woods, were not immune to [the great western exodus], and one by one, for varying reasons, the families pulled up stakes and went west. Commonly in those times one did not put a house on the market....Families simply closed the door for the last time, climbed into the waiting wagon and slowly drew off....Raccoons broke into the attic, foxes dug into the cellar hole, winter snow sagged and finally broke the back of the roofs, the walls gave way, and slowly, in the damp March winds, the wooden frame, the clapboards and siding, returned to the earth....By Thoreau's time Estabrook was a haunted land, the farms deserted, the families departed, and only a wind blowing....And so we who were left behind, or who came later, weave through a forgotten, uncultivated land as we slouch toward Concord. We wade swamps, cross woodlands that were cultivated fields, stumble over rock walls with deep histories, and old foundations, beds of periwinkles and daffodils, and the remnants of holes where eccentric uncles once escaped this hellish day-to-day existence by digging through to China." [fn.15]
April 1, 1854. Thoreau, to Jacob Farmer's. [fn.16] "April has begun like itself.You see [juncos] come drifting over a rising ground just like snowflakes before a northeast wind."
April 4, 1888. Fred Hosmer, grocer-botanist-Thoreauvian-photographer [032] would walk regularly in Estabrook "with botany box and umbrella":
"Up Lowell road ... then through the woods to Bateman's Pond, found one young bud of Mountain Laurel but no blossom buds on it. Then across to lime kiln, and so to the laurel in Mason's pasture, which had very few blossom buds on it, from there up through the woods easterly. and then back by old charcoal kiln [fn.17] and Punkatasset hill home....Evening to botany lesson."[Page 19]
April 19, 1775. The Concord fight and Estabrook Country. [033] Colonist Thaddeus Blood remembered the outnumbered militia's initial withdrawal to Punkatasset to await reinforcements:
"We then marched over the Burying ground to the road, and then over the [North] bridge to Flint's Hill, or punckataisett, so called at that time." [034]
o One Estabrook Minute Man had taken his family deeper into the Estabrook Country:
"One of the Clarks took his wife and baby off into the woods beyond what is Hugh Cargill Road and hid them. He warned them to stay there until he returned, but said if he had not returned by dark, they must come out of hiding, for he would be dead." [035]
o On April 19, 1994. Parkman Howe wrote about a Patriot's Day then and now, as Minutemen came down the old Estabrook Road:
"On the morning of April 19th, 1994, a small crowd assembled by the [Carlisle] First Parish Church shortly after 7, just as the 22 Minute Men of Carlisle (roughly 22; reports vary, as they will) assembled, brought together by tolling bells and signal shots. We marched up School Street, startling a few early morning motorists with our colonial flag, fifers, and Minute Men. We turned up Bellows Hill Road, then took the Estabrook trail to the North Bridge-seven miles from Carlisle Center to the Bridge. Of all the lines of march followed by the Minute Men who assembled in Concord, Carlisle's is surely the most scenic and the best preserved. In 1775 Estabrook's "woods" were open land--fieldstone walls topped with wooden fences, pockets of dense woods and brush. Coming into Concord and the farms at the end of Estabrook Road, one comes suddenly upon green fields--the same the Minute Men must have witnessed shortly after 9 a. m. on that crisp, cool day, with a fair sky and a rising westerly wind. History is not bunk. It is our collective act of memory.Great events have happened on our door steps. Men have bled and died in our fields and streets. We pass daily over hallowed ground." [036]
o The British officer posted at Concord's North Bridge, Capt. Walter. S. Lurie, wrote of the subsequent movements of the colonial minutemen and militia in the moments just prior to the Concord fight,
"The Country people retired at a great distance to the Woods" then they returned "with Shouldered Arms to the Number of about Fifteen hundred... and then moved down on me in a Seeming regular manner.I determined to repass the [North] Bridge."
o Thus began the Revolutionary War, as the American Army-to-be made its first advance in ranks--out of Estabrook Country.
April 21, 1852. Thoreau: "2 PM another walk in the [fourth day of] rain.... The robins sing through the ceaseless rain and the song sparrows & I hear a lark's plaintive strain--
"I am glad that men are so dispersed over the earth. The need of fuel causes woods to be left-- and the use of cattle and horses requires pastures-- and hence men live far apart & the walkers in every town have this wide range over forest & field. Sitting behind the wall on the height of the road beyond N[athan] Barretts [now the Hutchins Farm]I love in this weather to look abroad & let my eye fall on some sandy hill clothed with pitch pines on its sides, & covered on its top with the whitish cladonia lichen-- usually so dry-- but now saturated with water-- It reminds me of northern Regions They are agreeable colors to my eye-- the green pine & on the summit the patches of whitish moss like mildew seen through the mist & rain.-- for I think perhaps how much moisture that soil can bear, how grateful it is to it.
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"Proceed toward Hubbards Black birch Hill-- the grass is greenest in the hollows where some snow & ice are still left-- melting showing by its greenness how much space they recently covered. On the E[ast] side of Ponkawtassett I hear a robin singing cheerily from some perch in the wood-- in the midst of the rain. -- where the scenery is now wild & dreary-- His song a singular antagonism & offset to the storm-- As if nature said 'have faith, these two things I can do.' It sings with power-- like a bird of great faith-- that sees the bright future through the dark present-- to reassure the race of men-- like one to whom many talents were given & who will improve its talents. They are sounds to make a dying man live. They sing not their despair. It is a pure, immortal melody.
The side of the hill is covered first with tall birches rising from a reddish ground-- just above a small swamp-- then comes a white pine wood whose needles covered with the fine rain drops have a light sheen on them.-- I see one pine that has been snapped off half way up in the storm & seen against the misty background it is a distinct yellow mark. The sky is not one homogeneous color-- but some what mottled with darker clouds & white intervals-- & anon it rains harder than before. (I saw the other day the rootlets which spring from the alder above the ground-- so tenacious of the earth is it)
"Was that a large shad bush where Father's [pencil] mill used to be? There is quite a waterfall beyond. where the old dam was - Where the rapids commence, at the outlet of the pond, the water is singularly creased as it rushes to the fall-- like braided hair as the poet has it. [fn.18] I did not see any inequalities in the rock it rushed over which could make it so plaited. Here is enough of that suds which in warm weather disperses such a sense of coolness through the air--
"Sat under the dark hemlocks-- gloomy hemlocks on the hill-side beyond. In a stormy day like this there is the gloom of night beneath them. The ground beneath them almost bare with wet rocks & fine twigs-- without leaves (but hemlock leaves) or grass. The birds are singing in the rain about the small pond in front-- The inquisitive chickadee that has flown at once to the alders to reconnoitre as the black birds-- the song sparrow telling of expanding buds. But above all the robins sings here too-- I know not at what distance in the wood. Did he sing thus in Indian days?, I ask myself-- for I have always associated this sound with the village & the clearing, but now I do detect the aboriginal wildness in his strain-- & can imagine him a woodland bird-- and that he sang thus when there was no civilized ear to hear him-- a pure forest melody even like the wood thrush. Every genuine thing retains this wild tone-- which no true culture displaces-- I heard him even as he might have sounded to the Indian singing at evening upon the elm above his wigwam-- with which was associated in the red-man's mind the events of an Indian's life.-- his childhood. Formerly I had heard in it only those strains which tell of the white man's village life-- now I heard those strains which remembered the red-man's life-- such as fell on the ears of Indian children.-- as he sang when these arrow-heads which the rain has made shine so on the lean stubble field-- were fastened to their shaft. Thus the birds sing round this piece of water-- some on the alders which fringe-- some farther off & higher up the hills-- It is a centre to them....
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"I see where some farmer has been at pains to knock to pieces the manure which his cattle have dropped in the pasture so to spread it over the sward. The yellow birch is to me an interesting tree from its remarkable & peculiar color-- like a silvery gold-- In the pasture beyond the brook where grow the barberries-- huckleberries-- creeping juniper &c are half a dozen huge boulders, which look grandly now in the storm covered with greenish gray lichens alternating with the slateish colored rock. Slumbering-- silent like the exuviæ [037] of Giants-- some their cattle left. From a height I look down on some of them as on the backs of oxen. A certain personality or at least brute life, they seem to have. C[hanning] calls it boulder field. There is a good prospect Southward over the ponds-- between the two hills [Punkatasset and Hubbard's]-- even to the river meadows now." [fn.19]
April, 1973. Allie Bemis Bueti grew up at the edge of the Estabrook Woods on the Hutchins Farm and wrote a wonderful photo essay about this land, "Notes on the Land and People of the Estabrook Woods":
"This is my senior year at Concord Academy. In January of this year I began to make a study of the Estabrook Woods.... It is a unique area as the signs of its past history have not been totally buried by time and modern developments--there are several old foundations as well as miles and miles of stone walls. [fn.20] I've been interested in the woods for a long time having lived near them all my life. I did not know quite what I was getting myself into when I first began to seriously study the area....I realize now what an undertaking a study like this is--it's endless. This is only a beginning....
"One morning before school my faculty advisor and I went for a walk in the woods. He wanted to see the Pileated Woodpeckers that I had mentioned seeing there. It must have been a funny sight--a sleepy, scholarly-looking man wearing rubbers over his loafers bushwhacking...with me through a swamp in search of a bird that kept evading us....[O]ne source would lead me to another and another....I knew from the start that I wanted to share whatever I learned about the woods with other people....
"Most every morning I got up at about five-thirty to go wandering through the woods. There is something about the fleeting beauty of the morning--the light and the mist-that I love....Of course I wish that I could have talked to the families that used to live on the land and to Henry David himself. Many times while walking in the woods I tried to imagine meeting them but oddly enough I never did." [038]
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Spring, 1988. Jamie Christian, Estabrook neighbor: "In the spring of my junior year at Middlesex [School], I was attacked by a pair of Goshawks that were nesting in a White pine stand in the Esterbrook woods. Goshawks are extremely aggressive at the nest and both the make and the female took turns bombing me as I lay on the ground. The experience made a lasting impression."
April 21, 1981. Gladys Clark, then 88 years of age, Estabrook descendant and school-teacher, was interviewed on "Education in Concord." She described the curriculum at a one-room school in the northern part of Concord:
"The teacher was Miss S. A. Brown. Now the Browns lived where Middlesex School now is, in that farmhouse there. Mr. Brown owned that whole great area where the Middlesex School is or most of that area and it was called a stock farm, so I suppose Miss S. A. Brown was the daughter of the Browns who lived there. She had a recitation 'The Crystal Hunters' and the 'Explanation of the Cube Root.' Now if anyone who lived up in the north quarter ever had a use for cube root is a question in my mind. They were farmers to the nth degree and back country people. However, cube root might have been used for some of their wood piles or manure piles or something like that but I can't imagine, but anyway that is what she taught. That just floored me when I found cube root up there. Evidently her father was a very brilliant man and taught it to her so she was passing on the knowledge....I just wonder how many of the people who lived in that area made use of these instructions they received." [039]
April 21, 1858. Thoreau: "To Easterbrooks's and Bateman's Pond [040]....The rocks on the east side of Bateman's Pond are a very good place for ferns. I see some very large leather-apron umbilicaria there. They are flaccid and unrolled now, showing most of the olivaceous-fuscous upper side. This side feels cold and damp, while the other, the black, is dry and warm, notwithstanding the warm air. This side, evidently, is not expanded by moisture. It is a little exciting even to meet with a rock covered with these livid (?) green aprons, betraying so much life. Some of them are three quarters of a foot in diameter. What a growth for a bare rock!"
April 21, 1997. Boston Marathon Winner. The Carlisle Mosquito reported, "When Lameck Aguta of Kenya crossed the finish line to win the 101st Boston Marathon on April 21, Tom Ratcliffe of [Carlisle] was there to cheer him on....During the summer months, Ratcliffe brings a group of five or six Kenyan runners to the Concord area to train in the Estabrook Woods....'The Kenyan runners are accustomed to running on unpaved roads so this is an excellent running area for them,' said Ratcliffe." [041]
April 26, 1855. Thoreau: "Mizzling and still day....The prate of the [Passenger Pigeons (fn.21)] is much like the creaking of a tree. They lift their wings at the same moment as they sit. There are said to be many about now. See their warm-colored breasts."
Ca. May, 1920s. Edward Howe Forbush lived in one of the rustic cabins at William Brewster's October Farm while writing parts of the monumental Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States. Forbush wrote about the Mourning Dove's rescue from the fate that had befallen their sister species, the Passenger Pigeon:
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"From the meeting of the waters under Punkatasset height,...the Musketaquid [Concord River] slowly flows on its winding way....With the first blush of day on still May mornings, up from the river valley comes the saddened cooing of the Mourning Doves. All along the valley the sad-voiced birds roam, as they did when Thoreau found a nest in Sleepy Hollow. Formerly this gentle dove was abundant...but it had decreased so much in numbers in the early part of the twentieth century that Massachusetts led the way in 1908 by giving it perpetual protection under the law, to save it from extirpation. Soon its numbers began slowly to increase." [042]
May 5, 1859. Thoreau: "To Melvin's Preserve [043]....Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Botrychium Swamp....You see a great tree all hung with long yellow or golden tassels at the end of its slender, drooping spray, in clusters at intervals of a few inches or a foot. They are all dangling and incessantly waving in the wind,- -a great display of lively blossoms (lively both by their color and motion) without a particle of leaf. Yet they are dense enough to reveal the outline of the tree, seen against the bare twigs of itself and other trees....These dancing tassels have the effect of leaves of the tremble....Golden tassels all trembling in the gentlest breeze, the only signs of life on the trees. A careless observer might not notice them at all. The reawakened springy life of the swamp, the product of its golden veins....Great vegetable chandeliers they stand in the swamps. The unopened catkins, some more golden, others brown or coppery, are like living worms ready to assume a winged life. These trees, which cannot stir their stumps, thus annually assume this lively color and motion. I see and am bitten by little black flies,-- I should say the same with those of Maine,-- here on the Melvin Preserve....
"The wilderness, in the eyes of our forefathers, was a vast and howling place or space, where a man might roam naked of house and most other defense, exposed to wild beasts and wilder men. They who went to war with the Indians and the French were said to have been 'out,' and the wounded and missing who at length returned after a fight were said to have 'got in,' to Berwick or Saco, as the case may be."
May 7, 1847. Farmer Daniel Brooks Clark, Jr. wrote in his diary, "In the afternoon went after a load of rails on the widow Davises lot back of Paul Adams's."
Farmer Daniel Clark's diary succinctly chronicles four years of his life from 1847 to 1851 on his Estabrook Country farm, which was near the present Hutchins Pond, north of Punkatasset. In addition to this and other passages quoted herein, he wrote of the days that he laid stone wall, "chopt" wood, took dry cattle to summer pasture in New Hampshire, pulled out peach trees, hauled manure, borrowed a horse, split rails, skinned a cow, drove a team of oxen, went on the "iron road" to Boston once, swapped labor with neighbors and family, picked cranberries, won a hand of cards Christmas eve, and mowed hay over the old corn hills. He was no rustic simpleton. Though he may not have owned a horse, he went to "singing school" and attended lectures: "Went to the Lyceum. Mr. Emerson lectured upon the instinct and genius of the mind--he had many assertions that had the appearance of being unquestionable" (April 2, 1849). And, of course, he went to church: "Attended church. The subject is simplicity. As we advance towards simplicity in each and every department of life, just so far is it toward perfection, no matter where or when" (June 27, 1847).
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May 10, 1844. George William Curtis, a young, idealistic, former Brook-Farmer, arrived in Concord and went to board at the Nathan Barrett farm. [fn.22] Farmer Barrett promptly put him to work. Curtis wrote to a contemporary:
"Since our arrival here I have been busy enough. From breakfast at 6 to dinner at 12 1/2, hard at work, and all the afternoon roaming over the country far and near. When we came the spring was just waking, now it is opening like a rose-bud, with continually deepening beauty. The apple-trees in full bloom, making the landscape so white, seem to present a synopsis of the future summer glory of the flower-world.
"Our farm lies on one of the three hills of Concord. They call it Punkatassett. Before us, at the foot of the hill, is the river; and the slope between us holds a large part of the Captain's orchard. Among the hills at one side we see the town, about a mile away; and a wide horizon all around, which Elizabeth Hoar tells me she has learned is the charm of Concord scenery. The summit of the hill [Punkatasset] on which we are is crowned with woods, and from a clearing commands a grand prospect. Wachusett rises alone upon the distance, and takes the place of the ocean in the landscape. There is a limitation in the prospect if one cannot see the sea or the mountains....Otherwise the landscape is a garden which only pleases....We go into all work. The Captain [Barrett] turns us out with the oxen and plough, and we do our best....It is so still a life after the city, and after the[utopian] family at Brook Farm. I am glad to be thrown so directly and almost alone into nature, and am more ready than ever to pay my debt in a human way by learning the names of her beautiful flowers and the places where they blossom. We study Botany daily, and have thus far kept pace with the season.... And with our afternoons surrendered to the meadows and hills, and our mornings to the fields, we find no heavy hours; but every Sunday surprises us. I am to bed at 9, and rise at 4 1/2 or 5." [044]May 10, 1999. At an evening discussion at Concord Academy, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, then 94 years of age, Estabrook's protector, and the recipient of the world's top three honors in biology, discussed the changing mix of wild species in the regional environment within a human lifetime, and the opportunity for teaching in his Estabrook Woods:
"You have these turnovers. Sometimes you can explain them. Henry Thoreau studied this phenomenon very carefully and he found out where the white pine forests were, where oak forests were, what happened if the white pine forest was cut down, what would grow up there. Finally, he had a long manuscript which was lying in the archives...for more than 100 years. Finally, somebody... published it...with the title Faith in a Seed. It is a wonderful book, in which he shows all these things. He describes how, for instance, he was sitting at the edge of a white pine forest, and not far from there were some oaks producing an abundant crop of acorns. He saw how the Blue Jays would go to those oak trees, pick up an acorn, fly inside the pine forest, and bury it....Then 5 or 10 years later, the owner of the white pine forest sold the lumber of this pine forest to a mill, the pines were all cut down, and, lo and behold, another year or two later, everywhere little oak trees grew up. [fn.23]
"Now, that is the kind of turnover we get everywhere. Sometimes we don't know why.We have to think of the ecosystem not as something fixed for all times. (In fact, there are many ecologists who deny there is such a thing as an ecosystem.) But it is a dynamic balance between species. Some increase. Some decrease. If there is a change in climate, if we really have warming of the climate, as is now stated by virtually everybody who is a good student of these things, we are bound to have a considerable change in our vegetation. That's one of the reasons why I am so interested in Estabrook Woods. There is an ideal area. It is close to several schools of the middle level. It is within 35 minutes driving distance from Harvard University. In these Estabrook Woods, very definite plots should be staked out and marked with very careful censuses of what occurs. Now, work like this is being done in the tropics in several places....The Smithsonian Tropical Institute is doing that and making the most fascinating discoveries. We know comparatively little about the dynamics of our temperate forests in New England, and I think Estabrook Woods would be the ideal place. It wouldn't change the Woods at all; just record what's happening. Of course, on certain small plots, one could have experiments and remove one particular species of trees and see what effect it has on the fauna and flora of that plot. So I think these dynamic movements of ecosystems is one of the most fascinating things to study. It is relatively easy to study but somebody has to take the leadership and start-'Now we are going to get going on this sort of thing.'...
"I'm sure if somebody made a thorough study of the vegetation of Estabrook Woods, we would find unexpected discoveries. It needs a little imagination and needs leadership, that's all I want to say.
"To think all the problems have been solved is a great mistake. I do think our basic theories--the evolutionary theories that we now have--are by and large correct but when it comes to details--I was just utterly surprised that in a crater lake only a mile in diameter seven species of fish could develop without getting all mixed up with cross breeding. Just to show you how sometimes one has to abandon old fixed ideas. This will happen all the time....There's a lot in nature that is unexpected, and a lot that still needs to be done."
Ca. May 12, 1850. Limestone quarries and the stone circles. [045] Thoreau wrote, "I was as interested in the discovery of limes stone as if it had been gold-- & wondered that I had never thought of it before-- now all things seem to radiate round limes-stone -- And I saw how the farmers lived near to or far from a locality of lime stone. I detected it sometimes in walls & surmised from what parts it was probably carted-- or when I looked down into an old deserted well I detected it in the wall. I read a new page in the history of these parts in the old lime stone quarries & kilns where the settlers found the materials of their houses. And I considered that since it was found so profitable even at Thomaston to burn lime with coal dust that perchance these quarries might be worked again."
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May 12, 1853. Thoreau: "To Black Birch Woods and Yellow Birch Swamp....Some grass is seen to wave in the distance at the side of N. Barrett's warm hill [at Ponkatasset], showing the lighter under sides. That is a soft, soothing, June-like impression when the most forward grass is seen to wave and the sorrel looks reddish. The year has the down of youth on its cheeks. This too, is the era of the bobolink, now, when apple trees are ready to burst into bloom. Now it is too late to retreat from the summer adventure. You have passed the Rubicon, and will spend your summer here. Lately, for a few days, the note of the pine warbler rang through the woods, but now it is lost in the notes of other birds. Then each song was solo. Its vetter vetter vetter vetter rang through silent woods. Now I rarely hear it. A yellow butterfly.
"The river meadows from Barrett's wall are very green where the water has gone down. A wild pear in blossom on Ponkawtasset, detected by its uprightness and no large limbs; but the blossoms, being white, are not so handsome as the apple, but are earlier.
'The V. cucullatas [Marsh Blue Violets]] are large and conspicuous on Barrett's side hill. The ovata [now V. fimbriatula or Ovate-leaved Violets] blue the ground in the Boulder Field. These and the pedata [Birdfoot Violets] are all more or less lilac-colored, and it produces a pleasing bewilderment to pass from clump to clump, and one species to another, and say which is the most lilac. Putting one cluster beside another more lilac, the first no longer seems lilac at all. Has not violet then always some lilac in it?
"The birches (white) are now rapidly and conspicuously greening. They make the first conspicuous mass of green amid the evergreens; not grayish or hoary like the oaks; a closer-woven light-green vest. The black birch is now a beautiful sight, its long, slender, bushy branches waving in the wind (the leaf-buds but just beginning to unfold) with countless little tassel-like bunches of five or six golden catkins, spotted with brown and three inches long, one bunch at the end of each drooping twig, hanging straight down, or dangling like heads of rye, or blown off at various angles with the horizon. All these, seen against the sky on the otherwise bare trees, make an exceedingly graceful outline, the catkin is so large and conspicuous. (On the white birch the catkins are more slender, and are concealed by the more forward leaves.) The reddish long female flowers are detected in the axils lower down. I notice that the staminate ones are apparently torn by birds, pecking at insects. Not a bunch is perfect. The yellow birch is considerably the most forward,--its flowers, not, perhaps, its leaves, which last are only expanded on young trees, though here is one large one leaved out. The yellow birch first, then the black or the paper birch, then the white. The staminate flowers of the yellow birch are already imbrowned and dry, and the female flowers large and hop-like, one inch long....I do not know another place in town where there are black birches enough to give you the effect of a forest of these trees, but in a swamp here. They are so slender and brushy that they yield to the wind, and their tops, with gracefully drooping twigs bent down by dangling tassel-like catkins, are all inclined one way, sweeping the air, making a peculiarly light and graceful sight....
"The oaks are in the gray. Some in warm localities already have expanded small leaves, both black, red, and shrub oak. The large light-yellowish scales of the hickory buds, also, are turned back, revealing blossom-buds and little clusters of tender leaves ready to unfold, and the now [sic] web of verdure is spreading thick and palpable over the forest. Shade is being born; the summer is pitching its tent; concealment will soon be afforded to the birds in which to build their nests.
"The robin nowadays betrays its great bare nest and blue eggs by its anxious peeping at your approach....
"The farmers on all sides are mending their fences and turning out their cows to pasture. You see where the rails have been newly sharpened, and the leafing birches have been cut and laid over gaps in the walls, as if old fences were putting forth leaves."
May 19, 1991. Marilyn (and Ken) Harte, Estabrook neighbors and protectors. Marilyn wrote the newspaper about "THE DAY I LOST MY HUSBAND IN THE ESTABROOK WOODS":
"My family and I have lived on Estabrook Road just down the road from the Estabrook Woods for 25 years. During that time we have run, hiked, cross-country skied and marched to Concord on Patriots' Day along its trails. In the woods we have bird-watched, hunted for edible mushrooms, picked Concord grapes to make jelly and blueberries to make pies, and in July watched from the edge of Mink Pond as the Thunderbirds out of Hanscom Field performed spectacular feats in the sky.
"However this spring I had one experience which I hope I'll never have to repeat--I lost my husband one morning in the Estabrook Woods. It all started one Sunday evening, May 19 to be exact, as we were getting ready for bed....My husband...informed me that starting the next day, he was going to...try to run early in the morning two or three times a week [and] tomorrow morning at 5:30...he would start [gradually, because of a twisted knee] his new regimen!...In the morning I heard him slip out of bed....By 6:30 I was hysterical! If my husband was lying unconscious in the woods, how would anyone know who he was?...I rushedoff toward the woods....What trail to take?...A woman came toward me along the path. 'Have you seen a middle-aged man with a beard running in the woods,' I asked. If you see him tell him his wife is out looking for him,' I shouted as she ran past....By now it was 7:30 and I had been in the woods for an hour....Two men emerged. 'My husband is lost in the Estabrook Woods,' I told them as tears formed in the corner of my eyes. 'Could I use your telephone just in case he's found his way home?'...After several rings, a familiar voice answered. 'Where have you been?' I cried.... 'Where have you been?' asked my husband, equally concerned. 'I have been hunting for you in the Estabrook Woods since...you didn't get back from your run,' I answered. 'Run? I didn't go for a run this morning. I was [in the basement] trying to solve a problem on my computer and never made it out,' he replied. Trying to calm me down, he urged me to start walking home and said he'd meet me part way.
"When I met him a mile or so down the trail, he told me he had found something that would cheer me up. He turned and led me back to a place in the woods where he had sighted a Kentucky Warbler....It was bird migration time and if my husband had to go out in the woods to meet his crazy wife he'd certainly take a pair of binoculars along....So my story has a happy ending-I found my husband, unharmed, and he found a rare bird." [046]
May 29, 1860. Thoreau: "After hawks with [Jacob] Farmer to Easterbrooks Country....Hearing a warbling vireo song, he asked me what it was, and said that a man who lived with him thought it said, 'Now I have caught it, O how it is sweet!' I am sure only of the last words, or perhaps 'Quick as I catch him I eat him. O it is very sweet.'...
[Page 28]
"We proceeded [to] the Cooper's hawk nest in an oak and pine wood (Clark's) north of Ponkawtasset. I found a fragment [of] one of the eggs which he had thrown out....I climbed to the nest, some thirty to thirty-five feet high in a white pine, against the main stem. It was a mass of bark-fibre and sticks about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide and sixteen high. The lower and main portion was a solid mass of fine bark-fibre such as a red squirrel uses. This was surrounded and surmounted by a quantity of dead twigs of pine and oak, etc., generally the size of a pipe-stem or less. The concavity was very slight, not more than an inch and a half, and there was nothing soft for a lining, the bark-fibres being several inches beneath the twigs, but the bottom was floored for a diameter of six inches or more with flakes of white oak and pitch pine bark one or two inches long each, a good handful of them, and on this the eggs had lain. We saw nothing of the hawk. This was a dozen rods south of the oak meadow wall [047]....
"We next proceeded to the marsh hawk nest from which the eggs were taken a fortnight ago and the female shot.It was in a long and narrow cassandra swamp northwest of the lime-kiln and some thirty rods from the road, on the side of a small and more open area some two rods across, where were few if any bushes and more [?] sedge with the cassandra. The nest was on a low tussock, and about eighteen inches across, made of dead birch twigs around and a pitch pine plume or two, and sedge grass at bottom, with a small cavity in the middle.
"The female was shot and eggs taken on the 16th; yet here was the male, hovering anxiously over the spot and neighborhood and scolding at us. We thought it likely that he had already got another mate and a new nest near by. He would not quite withdraw though fired at, but would still return and circle near us. They are said to find a new mate very soon. [fn.24] ...The leaves now conceal the warblers."
May 31, 1853. The tale of Melvin's azalea. Though the quest for the site of Melvin's wild purple azalea does not end in Easterbrooks Country, it started at its edge and winds through it. Thoreau was in the company of two of Estabrook's denizens, George Melvin and Jacob Farmer. Thoreau started his tale innocuously by saying, "I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora." His sister Sophia had brought home from Mrs. Brooks's a single purple-azalea flower without twig or leaf, and Henry was on the hunt. In the village, Thoreau went from vase to vase and got the same report--Melvin had come to the village last Saturday evening with his arms full of blooming purple azalea flowers and had given each lady a rare sprig! (What a rascal! How contrary to the impression of Melvin as a rough ne'er-do-well!) None knew where he had gotten them. It was rumored there was only one bush in the town's wilds. When asked, Melvin would only say to people that "he got it in a swamp, or from a bush, etc." Thoreau went to find Melvin and get the secret from him. Thoreau continues with this Chaucer-like tale:
"I went on to Melvin's house [at the edge of Estabrook Country on Lowell Road], though I did not expect to find him at home at this hour, so early in the afternoon.... At length I saw his dog by the door, and knew he was at home.
"He was sitting in the shade, bareheaded, at his back door. He had a large pailful of azaleas recently plucked and in the shade behind his house, which he said he was going to carry into town at evening. He had also a sprig set out. He had been out all forenoon and said he had got seven pickerel,--perhaps ten. Apparently he had been drinking and was just getting over it. At first he was a little shy about telling me where the azalea grew, but I saw that I should get it out of him. He dilly-dallied a little; called to his neighbor Farmer, whom he called 'Razor,' to know if he could tell me where that flower grew. He called it, by the way, the 'red honeysuckle.' This was to prolong the time and make the most of his secret.... Well, I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know. But he thought I couldn't possibly find it by his directions. I told him he'd better tell me and have the glory of it, for I should surely find it if he didn't; I'd got a clue to it, and shouldn't give it up. I could smell it a good way, you know. He thought I could smell it half a mile, and he wondered why I hadn't stumbled on it, or Channing. Channing, he said, came close by it once, when it was in flower. He thought he'd surely find it, then; but he didn't, and he said nothing to him.
"He told me he found it about ten years ago, and he went to it every year. It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.'...
o Jacob Farmer, who had been hoeing, came up to the wall, and the three men fell into talk about Dodge's Brook, which runs through his farm. They went to its source in a meadow [probably near Farmer's Cliff], where he had dug out a pool. Then Melvin led Thoreau down the brook, across the Assabet River, and finally to the azalea, which Thoreau believed to be an undescribed variety. He concluded with Melvin's laconic acknowledgment:
"I offered to pay him for his trouble, but he wouldn't take anything. He had just as lief I'd know as not."
"On a Search for Peace and Quiet."
from National Public Radio's Living on Earth series, spring, 1998.(Theme music intro)
HOST STEVE CURWOOD: "From National Public Radio [WBUR], this is Living on Earth on a search for peace and quiet.
(Music up and under)
CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. In the vast developed areas that sprawl between our cities, quiet places are even harder to find than open spaces. Even Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau's symbol of tranquility, has so many visitors and nearby roads that real solitude is nearly impossible to find there. But Thoreauvian solitude is what Peter Acker seeks. Mr. Acker has crisscrossed New England, collecting natural sounds from places Thoreau visited and wrote about: the Maine woods, Cape Cod, andWalden.We sent producer Kim Motylewski to find out what Peter and the rest of us are up against in the search for the true sounds of nature.
(Bird songs)
KIM MOTYLEWSKI: At 5 in the morning lots of birds are up but not many people. That's the way sound recordist Peter Acker likes it. He's about to sample the soundscape in Esterbrook Woods [sic], one of Henry David Thoreau's haunts across town from Walden Pond.
ACKER: If I can walk out of here with a minute of (laughs) -- of uninterrupted sound from Route 2 and 95, I'll be happy.
MOTYLEWSKI: Acker's breath is visible in the dawn light.
(Sounds of velcro; other bumps and grinds)
MOTYLEWSKI: He plugs in a battery pack and snaps cable together. Then he pulls out a lifelike black plastic head and screws it onto a pole.
ACKER: I call him Max. I mean, the technical name is the KU-100, but Max just sounds a lot friendlier.
MOTYLEWSKI: Max has microphones embedded in each ear. He hears a lot like a person.
ACKER: Now I'm pulling out his rock star wig. It actually helps with the stereo imaging; don't ask me why. It just does.
(Bird song amidst shuffling sounds)
MOTYLEWSKI: Black and curly.
ACKER: I wish I had hair like that.
MOTYLEWSKI: Acker jokes, but he works quickly. His morning mission is to record a few peaceful moments uninterrupted by machine noise. He's tried Walden Pond but found it too noisy, so he's moved on to Esterbrook Woods. Acker's goal seems as ambitious as the spiritual quest Thoreau launched in 1845.
MAN: (Reading from Walden) I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. To front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
MOTYLEWSKI: Thoreau often wrote of Esterbrook Country in his journal. Many farmers had pastures, woodlots, and sawmills here, including Thoreau's father.
(Footfalls)
ACKER: Right now we're going to go down to the -there's a little marsh down here where the geese hang out. (Breathing heavily) So we're going to go check that out.
(More footfalls)
MOTYLEWSKI: Peter Acker figures he's got maybe an hour of quiet ahead. He balances Max on his shoulder and walks briskly.
(Footfalls; geese honking)
MOTYLEWSKI: It's 10 minutes to 6 when we reach the marsh. The sun hovers below the horizon, coloring the clouds violet. A veil of mist hangs over the water. We hear the geese approaching overhead, and Acker jogs over the embankment, stands Max on the ground and begins to record.
(Geese honking louder; joined by jet)
MOTYLEWSKI: But the honking is soon blanketed by the drone of a passing jet.
(Geese honking and jet)
MOTYLEWSKI: That must be very frustrating. I mean here we are, this great moment.
ACKER: Oh yeah. You know, especially the imagery with -- you had the perspective of the geese flying in from behind you and low overhead; it was wonderful. And then there's the jet. (Sighs amidst honking) Oh darn. (Laughs)
MOTYLEWSKI: Acker walks a fine line. He must stay true to this place. He never layers or processes sound on his recordings. But he has to produce something that people will pay to hear. That means no planes, no cars, no motors. Even though as Thoreau notes, engines have breached the quiet here for more than a century.MAN: (Reading from Walden) The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my wood summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town. Or adventurous country traders from the other side.
ACKER: People will clamor and raise a stink if, you know, there's a cellular tower that goes on a distant hill. And wouldn't it be nice if we had that same sort of uproar about noise pollution. It's not very often that you are away from that. And when you are it's something special. I think it kind of wakes up everything else.
MOTYLEWSKI: Acker figures he's through for the day. Flights from the nearby Air Force base have begun, but we pursue the geese one last time.
ACKER: It sounds like they flew off.
MOTYLEWSKI: Shall we try the field?
ACKER: Yeah, let's take a peek.
(Footfalls)
MOTYLEWSKI: Acker shoulders his binaural buddy again, and we bushwhack up a short rise. Then Max has a fashion crisis.
(Footfalls)
MOTYLEWSKI: You lost your wig. He lost his wig. Hey, Peter.
ACKER: Look at this hair sample, where do you think it's from? I don't know, a bear maybe. (Laughs) Good God. If my mother could see me now. Let's try this again.
(Footfalls)
MOTYLEWSKI: We wander around a bit without much luck. Around 6:15 we're back at the pond's edge, feeling discouraged. Then several geese float across the water and an orchestra of song birds rises around us.
(Honking geese with bird song)
MOTYLEWSKI: And this time, no airplanes, no cars. Peter Acker scrambles down the embankment once more for a front row seat.
(More honking and bird song, growing louder)
MAN: (Reading from Walden) A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
(Honking and bird song continue; geese fly with beating wings; honking fades)
MOTYLEWSKI: What do you think of that?
ACKER: That was pretty damn nice. Pretty damn nice. I like it. And now if you just pick a spot and sit, nature happens around you. Yeah, and it's really great.
MOTYLEWSKI: It was as if we'd slipped between 2 moments and found a still point, not a piece of Thoreau's world but a pause in the commerce of our own that allowed for something ancient to happen. We stood stock still; our hearts and ears kept time with the geese and the song birds. Nothing else mattered. Peter Acker calls these live performances of nature, and they're mind- cleansing.
ACKER: If this work has brought something to enrich my life, that's it. Listening. I mean, just -- just being there, being in that moment.
MOTYLEWSKI: Such moments are harder than ever to find, and a recording is no substitute for experience. But Peter Acker's CDs serve a timeless purpose. To honor the chorus of life, quiet the mind, and whet the listener's appetite for the real thing.
MAN: (Reading from Walden) Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness. To wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow hen lurk, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. We can never have enough of nature.
(Geese honk; birds sing)
MOTYLEWSKI: For Living on Earth, I'm Kim Motylewski. (Geese and birds continue; fade to music up and under.) This is NPR."
NPR ANNOUNCER: This is NPR, National Public Radio.[Reprinted with permission in my "The Seasons in Estabrook Country" (1999).]
Footnotes and endnotes
Footnotes
Footnote 15. The crazy uncle who tried to dig to China appears again in the entries for June 27-28, and in Walden. [Back to text.]
Footnote 16. Thoreau often dropped by the house (now 761 Lowell Road) of Jacob Farmer to swap anecdotes and natural history lore. He was a farmer who owned land in Estabrook Country east of Bateman's Pond and at the headwaters of Dodge's (Dakin's) Brook. [Back to text.]
Footnote 17. Information on this and other Estabrook mysteries (e.g., the soap factory, the Walden hut, the corbelled stone chamber, the stone circles, the hole to China, the Asa Gray spring, the decaying shelters in the woods, the peach orchards, tales of the Twenty Score, etc.) would be appreciated. [Back to text.]
Footnote 18. This is the "mill race" that botanists once loved to visit. Thoreau inserted here in his journal a simple sketch of the creased water. [Back to text.]
Footnote 19. Parts of the woods must have been so open that Thoreau could see the Great Meadows from near the Estabrook Road. [Back to text.]
Footnote 20. She later learned from geologist Eugene Walker that there were twenty-three miles of fences in the Estabrook Woods. [Back to text.]
Footnote 21. Passenger Pigeons are now extinct because of relentless slaughter during breeding season and the loss of habitat. They blackened the sky with their countless millions then they were gone. [Back to text.]
Footnote 22. The Nathan Barrett Farm included what is now the Hutchins organic farm stand on Monument Street. From this farm stand, one can see much the same sweeping view as Thoreau did across the handsome farm fields (now protected by agricultural preservation restrictions), the Concord River flood plain, and the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. [Back to text.]
Footnote 23. See, herein, Oct. 29, 1860, for Thoreau's discussion of this phenomenon in Estabrook Country. [Back to text.]
Footnote 24. Thoreau's entry on the 4th of June reads, "I hear that the nest of that marsh hawk which we saw on the 29th (q.v.) has since been found with five eggs in it. So that bird (male), whose mate was killed on the 16th of May, has since got a mate and five eggs laid." [Back to text.]
Endnotes
27. Channing, Pocket Diaries, p. 194. [Back to text.]
28. Robert E. Cook, "Fragile Blossoms of Spring Aren't Shrinking Violets" Smithsonian (March 1978): 66. [Back to text.]
29. See, Mathew 7.14 and note 77 herein on Heaven's Gate. [Back to text.]
30. My steps are symbolical steps. Thoreau searched for the divine that infused and lay behind all nature. In his poem in the Oct. 29, 1857 journal entry, he wrote "It is a spiral path within the pilgrim's soul / Leads to this mountain's brow. / Commencing at his hearth he reaches to this goal / He knows not when or how." [Back to text.]
31. John Hanson Mitchell, Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995. p. 217 & 226. [Back to text.]
32. Alfred Hosmer. Thomas Blanding writes that "Fred" Hosmer (b. 1851) was a bachelor employed six days a week in a dry goods store in Concord. On Sundays he explored the Concord countryside, studying birds and plants, and seeking out the sites described by Thoreau (Blanding, A Commentary [on] Alfred Hosmer's Grangerized "Life and Writings of H.D. Thoreau" by Henry S. Salt, (CFPL: 1996) p. 4). [Back to text.]
33. Estabrook's part in the start of American Revolution. It was to Punkatasset, then much more open than now, that on April 19, 1775, Concord's outnumbered minutemen initially withdrew, with the evacuated women and children of the area, to keep watch on the British troops as they crossed the North Bridge en route to the Barrett Farm. Despite modern tree growth, Punkatasset is still visible from the North Bridge causeway. Men were stationed on the several roads leading to Concord, to direct reinforcements to the Punkatasset rendezvous.
Concord's men on Punkatasset were soon joined by twelve minutemen from now-Carlisle, who came down the old Carlisle road. Hurrying men from other towns took other lanes through Estabrook. (Frederic Hudson, "Concord Fight," Harper's, v. 50, No. 300 (May 1875), quoted in Josephine Latham Swayne, ed., The Story of Concord Told by Concord Writers (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co., 1923), 56.) Reinforced, the Americans marched from Punkatasset towards the North Bridge and into history (Wheeler, Concord, 117-118 and Wheeler, "North Bridge Neighbors," 154). John Hanson Mitchell in his book Walking towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place gives a lively view of the battle from Estabrook's perspective (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley (1995) pp. 214-69. [Back to text.]
34. Vincent J-R. Kehoe, We were there!: April 19, 1775. (1975). Vol: "American Rebels," p. 204. See also, Ellen Chase, The Beginnings of the American Revolution, v. 3, p. 13. [Back to text.]
35. Mary R. Fenn, Tales of Old Concord (Concord: The Women's Parish Assn., 1965), 23-24; Gladys Clark, Oral History Interview, transcript CFPL, Renee Garrelick, interviewer (July 19, 1977), 14; Mary Rogers Clark (Gladys R. Clark), "Afield in Concord," undated typescript, CFPL. [Back to text.]
36. Parkman Howe, "The Estabrook Line of March," Carlisle Mosquito, April 29, 1994. [Back to text.]
37. The exuviæ of Giants. The commonest meaning of exuviæ is that they are the natural coverings of animals either after sloughing off (e. g., the skins of snakes or the casings of insects) or after being removed for preservation (e. g., for human use or study). However, the term can also refer to any part of an animal shed or cast off, whether recent or fossil, and I believe Thoreau principally uses the word here in this latter sense. For example, the O.E.D. cites a passage from Lyell's Prin. Geol. (1830), a book with which Thoreau was familiar: "Living animals...had formerly lived...where their exuviæ are now found." This is consistent with Thoreau's image here of mythological Giants and their cattle having once inhabited the Boulder Field. Thoreau also used the term elsewhere to refer to a carcass returning to the earth: "I also saw the exuviæ of [a fox] fast sinking into the sand, and added the skull to my collection" (in Chapter VII "Across the Cape," Cape Cod [1853, 1865] p.116). [Back to text.]
38. Allie Bemis, Notes on the Lands and People of the Estabrook Woods (1973-74) copy of MS at CFPL. [Back to text.]
39. Gladys Clark, "Education in Concord," Oral History Interview, ed. by Renee Garrelick, April 21, 1981, p. 6 (MS at CFPL). [Back to text.]
40. Bateman's Pond and nature in Estabrook. Bateman's Pond is officially a "great pond" of the commonwealth, to which the public is guaranteed limited access by the Colonial Ordinance of 1641-1647. Like much of Estabrook, the Bateman's Pond area has been studied and documented for more than a century and a half. Walter Brain describes the Bateman's Pond vicinity as the botanical center of the woods. Ray Angelo describes both it specifically and Estabrook Country generally as among the "Localities and Habitats of Exceptional Botanical Interest" (Angelo, R. "Thoreau as Botanist: An Appreciation and Critique." Arnoldia 45 [1985]: 13-23). Its nearby upland and wetlands are the habitat (though much diminished by Middlesex's dredging) of a state-listed, globally-endangered species, a dragonfly, that was first discovered there about 1905 by an original faculty member of Middlesex School, Dr. Reginald Heber Howe, Jr. (see, for information on Dr. Howe and the Thoreau Museum of Natural History at Middlesex School, note 115). Middlesex School thus had a tradition of care for the Woods' natural history. As we have seen, Middlesex teacher Peter Arnold continued the tradition by publishing a description of amphibians near Bateman's Pond ("In Thoreau's Woods" Massachusetts Audubon Bulletin [Spring 1968], 2-9).
In addition to the endangered dragonfly, at least three other state-listed rare species breed near Bateman's Pond. It is impractical to give here a complete list of additional wildlife species. Those interested in Estabrook's wildlife should refer to the bibliography. [Back to text.]
41. M. Harte, "Carlislean has a Winner at the Boston Marathon," Carlisle Mosquito, May 2, 1997, p. 3. [Back to text.]
42. E.H. Forbush. Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States. Mass. Dept, of Agriculture, 1927. Vol. 2, p. 84. [Back to text.]
43. Trapper George Melvin George Melvin, "our Concord trapper," lived on the edges of Easterbrooks Country and roamed there--leading Thoreau to occasionally call it with wry humor "Melvin's Preserve," though neither Melvin nor Thoreau owned a bit of it. The two men would often fall into anecdotal conversation about the natural world. George Melvin (b. 1813) supported himself by fishing, trapping, and hunting, drank heavily, and, according to Horace Hosmer, drowned in the Concord River (Remembrances, Hedrick, ed. P. 112). Thought of by the town as a ne'er-do-well, he appears frequently in the journals, and Thoreau thought highly of his forthrightness. See, Dec. 3, 1856: "How I love the simple reserved countryman...who never waylaid me nor shot at me....I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous." Cf., Dec. 2, 1856: "I thank my stars for Melvin....Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him." [Back to text.]
44. Curtis, G. W. (1898). Early Letters of George William Curtis to John S. Dwight. New York: Harper & Bros. pp. 183-186. [Back to text.]
45. Lime quarries and stone circles. [Back to text.] Concord geologist Eugene Walker is said to have described the quarries as "eight pits, as wide and deep as ten feet, and up to seventy feet long, following beds of marble that stand vertically and pinch out on both ends into thin seams." The quarries resemble gashes or long slit trenches cut out of solid rock. The lime was used for plaster and was a valuable and rare commodity in early settlement. For kiln, see note 24. (The 1906 editors cross-referenced this passage to the June 10, 1853 entry describing Easterbrooks Country. For the initial reference to limestone, see entry "After Sept. 11, 1849.")
Stone circles. Another puzzle to the north of the quarries and just to the south of the Estabrook cellar hole is the origin of the thirty-three circles of pointed stones? Mary Fenn describes them as follows:
"Then, crossing the stone-wall-enclosed field toward the Estabrook cellar, we came upon a dozen or more stone circles [others have counted thirty-three]--much in the nature of [generous] camp fires. The stones were lichen covered, indicating they had been there for many a year. As usual, no one in Concord except one man who owned property in that area had ever seen them, and he had no idea what they were for.
"It wasn't until we met a mining engineer the following summer that we learned that such stone circles were used in a very ancient method of burning the acids out of the lime and rendering it useable for plastering. The ore was piled within the circle with wood burned on top, a process which predated the use of a kiln" (Mary Fenn, "Report of the Walking Society: The Lime Quarries," TSB [Winter 1971], and in LWV, 100)
There were unanswered questions, however. (Why so many circles and why are the stones upright? Why so close to the cellar hole? Why were some circles incorporated into walls? Why weren't the stones scavenged for walls or the house? Why did no one mention them? What are the connections between the quarries, the Estabrook road, the circles, and the nearby habitation, particularly if they all had their origins in the late seventeenth century?) An alternative explanation is suggested by a clue found by Martha Holland in a 1793 will, which describes a boundary (not one apparently in Estabrook) as running "to a apple tree with stones around it" (Holland, "The Estabrook Farm," 14). This suggests that some of the stone circles might have been intended to protect fruit trees near the Estabrook farmhouse from free-roaming hogs or cattle, though they do not now seem tall enough to be effective. Interestingly, Channing's poem "The Deserted Road," quoted earlier, does not explicitly mention the stone circles though it does mention both scraggy orchards and "A little wall half falling bounds a square / Where choicer fruit-trees showed the Garden's pride."
Perhaps the reason neither Channing nor Thoreau remarked upon the stone circles was because they were unremarkable--an obsolete but still known up-country way of protecting fruit trees. If so, where are the others? [Back to text.]
46. Carlisle Mosquito, Sept. 27, 1971, pp. 1-8. [Back to text.]
47. Mink or Stump Pond, and Donald Griffin's beavers. These oaks, according to Mary Fenn, grew in the oak meadow now flowed by Mink (or Stump) Pond. The lot is still known in town records as the Oak Meadow Lot. It was one of the six parcels deep in Estabrook which were deeded into individual ownership in the First Division of the town's land--1635-1652.
Professor Donald R. Griffin (formerly a professor at Cornell, Rockefeller, and Harvard) is researching beaver life and animal intelligence here, watching and listening to a local beaver family inside its lodge. He has said that "It is the relatively undisturbed character of the Woods that allows me and my colleagues to set up such precise experiments" (S. Gaines, "Getting to Know the Estabrook Woods," Carlisle Mosquito, Sept. 9, 1994. See, S. Stott, Concord Journal, July 9, 1998). Professor Griffin's work is a fine example of how the Estabrook Woods can and should be used for research. Among Professor Griffin's books are Animal Minds (Chicago UP, 1992); The Question of Animal Awareness (Rockefeller UP, 1976-81); and Bird Migration (Anchor, 1964)
This shallow pond was created in the 1940s for goose-hunting. After the pond flowed, local children had dubbed the pond Stump Pond, and this name also appears in early Harvard Field Station documents. The 1970s CFS map, however, renamed (apparently frivolously) many Estabrook features, and this pond thus acquired the name Mink Pond, which had formerly been used by Raymond Emerson's "Sketch Map" (1947-1950) apparently to refer to the small vernal pool on the east of the Estabrook Road. William Brewster may have called a smaller waterbody at the site of the present Mink Pond "Rhodora Pond" (see, map in his Concord River). [Back to text.]