| To the TOC for "The Seasons in Estabrook Country" |
[Page 30]
The Seasons in Estabrook Woods
SUMMER
June 2, 1856. Emerson and Thoreau went down the old Two Rod Road, which had reverted to a bridle trail. Emerson notes in his journal: "The finest day, high noon of the year."
June 3, 1860. Thoreau records nature: "To bayberry. [fn.25] Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight . . . . These are the clear breezy days of early June, when the leaves are young and few and the sorrel not yet in its prime. Perceive the meadow fragrance. -- Am surprised to [see] some twenty or more crows in a flock still, cawing about us. -- The roads now strewn with red maple seed. The pines' shoots have grown generally from three to six inches, and begin to make a distinct impression, even at some distance, or white and brown above their dark green. The foliage of deciduous trees is still rather yellow-green than green. -- There are in the Boulder Field several of the creeping juniper which grow quite flat on the ground, somewhat like the empetrum, most elevated in the middle. Not only brakes, many of them tall, and branching two feet at least from the ground have their branches nibbled off, but the carrion-flower has very commonly lost its leaves, either by rabbits or woodchucks. -- Tree-toads heard. See a common toad three quarters of an inch long. -- There are various sweet scents in the air now."
June 4, 1847. Farmer D. B. Clark, recovering from the mumps, wrote in his diary: "Feel some brighter, read some. The more I read, think and study, the more sensible I am of the small quantity of knowledge I have. There is considerable truth in the saying that when a man knows enough to be sensible that he is a fool, he is considerable wise."
June 5, 1853. Thoreau: "To Mason's pasture. The world now full of verdure and fragrance and the air comparatively clear., through which the distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet-green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green. May is the bursting into leaf and early flowering, with much coolness and wet and a few decidedly warm days ushering in summer; June, verdure and growth with not intolerable, but agreeable, heat.
"The river meadows from N Barretts have for some time lost their early yellow look. Night shade out, maybe some days. The young pitch pines in Mason's pasture are a glorious sight, now most of the shoots grown six inches, so soft and blue-green, nearly as wide as high. It is nature's front yard. The mountain laurel shows its red flower-buds, but many shoots have been killed by frost. A Polygonatum pubescens [Hairy Solomon's Seal] there two and one-half feet long. The large thorn by Yellow Birch Swamp must be a Cratgus coccinea [Hawthorne sp.]. Though full of fruit last year, it has not blossomed this year. There is a tract of pasture, woodland, orchard, and swamp in the north part of town, through which the old Carlisle road runs, which is nearly two miles square, without a single house and scarcely any cultivated land in it,-four square miles. I perceive some black birch leaves with a beautiful crimson kind of sugaring along the furrows of the nerves, giving them wholly a bright crimson color,-either a fungus or the deposit of an insect. Seen through a microscope it sparkles like a ruby.
[Page 31]
"Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla."
June 5, 1998. Edward O. Wilson, Harvard professor, naturalist, and twice a Pulitzer Prize author, spoke in Concord at the dedication of the Thoreau Institute:
"Henry David Thoreau is a rare figure of recent history. A real person whose photographic image survives, whose footprints are still almost out there-yet whose mythic presence is as deep as though he lived centuries ago as a now-mysterious figure. That influence is growing. It is growing because, as his contemporary Walt Whitman said, and I paraphrase loosely, 'When all else is said and done, what remains for the spirit on this earth is nature.'
"With each passing year, we are coming to appreciate that truth more. I am proud that my university, Harvard, has added to Thoreau's heritage with its own contribution to Estabrook Woods. Easterbrooks Country, as it was known in Thoreau's time, was part of the wildness of his writings. Today, it is a priceless human heritage, and I hope that every square inch of it (and of similar undisturbed lands in this area that might be acquired) will be kept as undisturbed as possible for the benefit of human generations, because, and this is what we learned from Thoreau, it is a place not just of soil and rock and trees but also of the mind. [Applause.] Thank you . . . ." [048]
June 10, 1853. Thoreau: "To Mason's pasture in Carlisle [with Channing]. Cool but agreeable easterly wind. Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. By the way, I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window through a spy glass at the tops of the woods in the horizon. It was pleasant to bring them so near and individualize the trees, to examine in detail the tree tops which before you had beheld only in the mass as the woods in the horizon. It was an exceedingly rich border, seen thus against [sic], and the imperfections in a particular tree-top more than two miles off were quite apparent. I could easily have seen a hawk sailing over the top of the wood, and possibly his nest in some higher tree. Thus to contemplate from my attic in the village the hawks circling about their nests above some dense forest or swamp miles away, almost as if they were flies on my own premises! I actually distinguished a taller white pine with which I am well acquainted, with a double top rising high above the surrounding woods, between two and three miles distant, which with the naked eye I had confounded with the nearer woods . . . . The mountain laurel will begin to bloom tomorrow. The frost some weeks since killed most of the buds and shoots, except where they were protected by trees or by themselves, and now new shoots have put forth and grow four or five inches from the sides of what were the leading ones. It is a plant which plainly requires the protection of the wood. It is stunted in the open pasture. We continued on, round the head of 'Cedar Swamp,' [049] and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle. Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green's [fn.26], and then across the road through the woods to the Paul Adams house [050] by Bateman's Pond. Saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs and a shelter for them at night, a half-mile east of the last house,-something rare in these days hereabouts.
[Page 32]
"What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures. It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark's. Ponkawtasset bounds it to the south. There are a few frog ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman's Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? The old Carlisle road, which runs through the middle of it, is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many if not most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are for the most part concealed by birches and pines. These orchards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples. It is a paradise for walkers in the fall. There are also boundless huckleberry pastures [051] as well as many blueberry swamps. Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? It would make a princely estate in Europe, yet it is owned by farmers, who live by the labor of their hands and do not esteem it much. Plenty of huckleberries and barberries here . . . .
"A second great uninhabited tract is that on the Marlborough Road . . . more than a mile in width. A third, the Walden Woods. A fourth, the Great Fields. These four are all in Concord.
"C[hanning] proposes to call the first-named wild the Melvin Preserve, for it is a favorite hunting ground with George Melvin. It is sort of a Robin Hood Ground. Shall we call it the Apple Pastures?"Now methinks the birds begin to sing less tumultuously, with, as the weather grows more constantly warm, morning and noon and evening songs, and suitable recesses in the concert.
"High blackberries conspicuously in bloom, whitening the side of lanes.
"There is some propriety in calling [a hog-pasture] a walk, methinks, from the habit which hogs have of walking about with an independent air and pausing from time to time to look about from under their flapping ears and snuff the air. The hogs I saw this afternoon, all busily rooting without holding up their heads to look at us,-the whole field looked as if it had been most miserably plowed or scarified with a harrow,-with their shed to retreat to in rainy weather, affected me as more human than other quadrupeds. They are comparatively clean about their lodgings, and their shed, with its litter bed, was on the whole cleaner than an Irishman's shanty. I am not certain what there was so very human about them."
June 11, 1893. Fred. Hosmer: "To Dakins -- Davis -- Dutton Swamp Lime quarry -- mill race [fn.27] and home by Pratt Swamp. 9 [arrow] points. 2 drills, Knife. Hammerstone."
[Page 33]
Ca. June 17, 1993. Addressing a seminar in the woods, author John Hanson Mitchell pointed out to educators from all over the world that "European settlers in this region had a very different attitude towards streams than the native Americans did." (The newcomers saw them instantly as a source of water power and proceeded to build mills.) "Estabrook Woods," Mitchell told the group, is "an incredibly worked piece of land." Standing on a stone wall that Mitchell said was probably built by Thomas Estabrook himself, Mitchell stressed that this would be a great place to bring a physics class. Quite apart from lessons about levers and balance and position, he said, there is the matter of Estabrook's kinetic energy. What enabled Estabrook to move the rocks from the field to the wall has become stored, potential energy. "There in those walls is something of Estabrook still waiting to speak to those who will listen." [052]
June 23, 1852. Thoreau: "To the [Mountain] Laurel in Mason's pasture in Carlisle via the old Carlisle Road. I hear the trilled dream of many toads from a road-side pool-- though not quite so loud perchance as in the spring-- and from time to time when very near a sound somewhat like a hoarse chicken. It is what I call a washing day-- such as we sometimes have when buttercups first appear in the spring-- an agreeably cool & clear & breezy day-- when all things appear as if washed bright & shine-- and at this season especially the sound of the wind rustling the leaves is like the rippling of a stream-- and you see the lightcolored underside of the still fresh foliage-- & a sheeny light is reflected from the bent grass in the meadows. Haze & sultriness are far off-- The air is cleared & cooled by yesterday's thunderstorms. The river too has a fine cool silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far in to the horizon. & you hear the sound of crickets with such feelings as in the cool morning . . . .Also the barberry bushes hang now with small reddish-green fruit, and green huckleberries grow in this grassy road. Cheered by these promises, the traveller holds on his way. But I travel chiefly in the fields or pastures parallel to the road.
"These are very agreeable pastures to me-- no house in sight-- no cultivation. I sit under a large white oak [fn.28] upon its swelling instep which makes an admirable seat-- and look forth over these pleasant rocky & bushy pastures-- where for the most part there are not even cattle to graze them. but patches of huckleberry bushes-- & birches-- & pitch pines-- & barberry bushes-- & creeping juniper in great circles its edges curving upward-- & wild roses spotting the green with red-- & numerous tufts of indigo weed & above all great grey boulders lying about far and near with some barberry bush perchance growing half way up them-- and between all the short sod of the pasture here & there appears--
"The beauty & fragrance of the wild rose are wholly agreeable & wholesome & wear well-- and I do not wonder much that men have given their preference to this family of flowers notwithstanding their thorns. It is hardy & more complete in its parts than most flowers-- its color-- buds-- fragrance-- leaves-- the whole bush-- frequently its stem in particular & finally its red or scarlet hips. Here is the sweet-briar in blossom-- which to a fragrant flower adds more fragrant leaves. I take the wild rose buds to my chamber & put them in a pitcher of water & they will open there the next day-- & a single flower will perfume a room . . . .I am inclined to think that my hat whose lining is gathered in mid way so as to make a shelf is about as good a botany box as I could have & far more convenient-- and there is something in the darkness & the vapors that arise from the head-- at least if you take a bath which preserves flowers through a long walk. Flowers will frequently come fresh out of this botany box at the end of the day though they have had no sprinkling. [fn.29]
[Page 34]
"As I walk through these old deserted wild orchards, half pasture half huckleberry field-- the air is filled with a fragrance from I know not what source-- How much purer & sweeter it must be than the atmosphere of the streets rendered impure by the filth about our houses-- It is quite offensive often when the air is heavy at night. The roses in the front yard do not atone for the sink & pigsty & cow-yard & jakes [privies] in the rear. [fn.30]
"I sit on one of these boulders & look south to Ponkawtasset-- Looking west-- whence the wind comes you do not see the under sides of the leaves, but looking East every bough shows its under side-- those of the maples are particularly white. All leaves tremble like aspen leaves-- . . . 2 or 3 large boulders 15 or 20 feet square make a good fore ground in this landscape-- for the grey color of the rock contrasts well with the green of the surrounding & more distant hills & woods & fields-- they serve instead of collages for a wild landscape as perches or points d'appui for the eye. The red color of cattle also is agreeable in a landscape-- or let them be what color they may-- red-- black-- white-- or mouse color-- or spotted-- all which I have seen this afternoon. The cows which, confined to the barn or barn yard all winter, were covered with filth-- after roaming in flowery pastures possess now clean & shining coats & the cowy odor is without alloy . . . .It seems natural that rocks which have lain under the heavens so long should be gray, as it were an intermediate color between the heavens and the earth. The air is the thin paint in which they have been dipped and brushed with the wind-- Water which is more fluid and like the sky in its nature-- is still more like it in color. Time will make the most discordant materials harmonize.-- I see the silk-green abdomen'd fly on cow dung in the road. There are some very handsome White pines & pine groves on the left of the road just before you enter the woods. They are of second growth of course broad and perfect with limbs almost to the ground & almost as broad as they are high-- their fine leaves trembling with silvery light. Very different from the tall masts of the primitive wood naked of limbs beneath-- & crowded together. So soft & with such a mass of foliage through which the wind soughs-- . . .
"This grassy road now dives into the woods, as if it were entering a cellar, . . . the shadow is so deep. June is the first month for shadows; how is it in July? And now I scent the pines. I plucked a blue geranium in a meadow near the Kibby place which appeared to me remarkably fragrant like lilies and strawberries combined. The path I cut through the swamp late last fall is much more grown up than I expected. The sweet fragrance of swamp pinks fills all the swamps & when I look down I see commonly the leaf of the goldthread. The Mt laurels in Mason's pasture have not a blossom-- they appear to have been partly killed by the winter or else late frosts-- the leaves many of them are turned red & dead-- & yet they sometimes blossom for I see the remains of former flowers. They grow in the open pasture.
[Page 35]
"Here is another pasture-- with fields of sweet fern bushes-- & the humble but beautiful red lambkill everywhere alone or mingled with other shrubs -- Ever the walker will be attracted by some deeper red blossom than usual. You cannot bring it home in good condition, else perchance it would be better known-- with white pine & birches beginning to prevail over the grass. These are interesting groves of young soft white pines 18 feet high-- whose vigorous yellowish green shoots of this season from 3 to 18 inches long at the extremities of all the branches contrast remarkably with the dark green of the old leaves . . . .On the side of this pasture I hear the red-eye [vireo] in the swamp-- & the cool peep of a robin who has young amid the pines. How quick are cattle and horses to hear the step of a walker-- I pass much nearer to men at work in a field without being observed than to cattle or horses feeding. The latter hear me or perchance scent me if they do not look up. I observed a bullock this afternoon when all his companions on a side hill were already looking at me-- suddenly whirl round to stare as if he had detected from their attitudes that some object engaged them. Then how curiously a whole herd will leave off grazing & stare till you have past.-- & if you have a dog-- will think of their calves and make demonstration of tossing him.
"I returned to the bridle road & thence over Hubbard's oak grove hill-- We have few handsome open oak groves left but how handsome & cool & bosky they look in this breezy weather!
"From N. Barrett's road I look over the Great Meadows. The meadows are the freshest-- the greenest green in the landscape-- & I do not (at this hour at any rate) see my bent grass light-- The river is a singularly deep living blue-- the bluest blue-- such as I rarely observe-- & its shore is silverd-- with white maples which show the under sides of their leaves-- stage upon stage in leafy towers-- Methinks the leaves continue to show their under sides sometime after the wind has done blowing. The southern edge of the meadow is also silvered with (I suppose) the red maple. Then there is the darker green of the forest & the reddish-- brownish-- & bluish green of grass lands & pastures & grain fields-- and the light blue sky. There are not clouds enough in the sky to attract you today.
"The sweet briar bud which I brought home opened in the night. Is that the habit of roses?"
June 27-- 28, 1860. The crazy uncle. [053] Thoreau: "Up Assabet to [Jacob] Farmer's . . . . Farmer says that he found on the 24th a black snake laying her eggs on the side of the hill between his peach orchard and the ledge in the woods. He showed me the place today . . . .Was close by where his uncle (?) tried to dig through to the other side of the world. Dug more or less for three years. Used to dig nights, as long as one candle lasted. Left a stone just between him and the other side, not to be removed til he was ready to marry Washington's sister. The foxes now occupy his hole . . . .
"Farmer said that he thought foxes did not live so much in the depths of the woods as on open hillsides, where they lay out and overlooked the operations of men,-studied their ways,-which made them so cunning."
June 28, 1847. Farmer D. B. Clark wrote in his diary, "Hoed beans, planted cow corn, got 100 lbs. of gypsum from Capt. Barrett's, sowed the plaster and 2 bushels of ashes in the pasture."
[Page 36]
July 4, 1998. Interdependence Day-The first Biodiversity Day [054] was held on the anniversary of the day Thoreau went to Walden Pond. The goal was to identify more than 1000 species in Concord and Lincoln and spark a love of local nature. (The total achieved was 1906 species.) Naturalists explored Estabrook Country, including Professors E. O. Wilson and Donald Griffin, and Biodiversity Day founder Peter Alden. Birder Marjorie W. Rines wrote about her experience with the largest wild mammal of the day:
"On to the Estabrook Woods, where we tallied a variety of woodland bird species. As we ambled along, we also examined dragonflies, plants, and mushrooms. Ted [Raymond] had a little knowledge of each of those things, and we tentatively identified as many as we could. We collected a number of the mushrooms, including a fine specimen carrying a slug as cargo.
"We also got lost. We were wandering south on a lightly wooded path trying to find our way back to the car, when a large, hairy black mammal lumbered off the path into the adjacent bushes. 'Ted, it's a bear!' I yelled before I realized what a preposterous statement that was. Everyone knows there are no bears in Concord. We searched the area, but it had disappeared into the bushes by the side of the path. Ted had missed it, and tried to talk me into any variety of alternate species, from coyote to mirage. Later, we found out that bears had, indeed, been seen in Concord, and we added it later to our otherwise paltry mammal list." [055]
June 14-- August 27, 1976. Sarah Chapin wrote about her research near a small pool called Turtle Pond,
"During the eleven weeks from June 14 to August 27, 1976, I conducted a study of the area known as Turtle Pond, in the Punkatasset Woods . . . .[My] inquiry was divided into two main parts: the identification of all bryophyta and vascular flora (for Harvard); and an examination of two sections of pathways used extensively for recreational purposes, to determine the impact of heavily used paths on the area's ecology. I collected data relevant to the growth of existing flora; the temperature, rainfall, pond water temperature, and chemical tests of both water and soil . . . .
"Many people accepted invitations to have a walk, to share their enthusiasm for the woods, and to teach me what they knew . . . .Come with me for a walk in the woods, past the riding ring, past the blackberry patch, through the little woody place where the towhee sang in June, out along the bottom of Punkatasset Hill where the turtles lay their eggs in the sand." [056]Summer, 1970s. John Hanson Mitchell wrote, "On the east side of the woods, just below Punkatasset Hill, where on that April morning in 1775 the minutemen collected before marching on the bridge, there is a wooded pond. Always a favorite local picnic site, for a few years in the late 1970s this was a popular gathering spot for local nudists, some of whom came there on their lunch breaks from computer companies as far away as Route 128 to the east. Shortly after their appearance at the pond, Concord residents began to notice that local contractors, electricians, and telephony company workers were developing a keen interest in nature. On lunch breaks during the summer, their trucks would line the entrance to the trail that led to the pond, and the journeymen themselves would descend the trail to observe, so it was rumored, the beauties of nature . . . . Nowadays the crowd has thinned, although from time to time one may still see a lone, naked sadhu meditating on a sunny rock by the pond's edge." [057]
June 30-- July 7, 1860. Thoreau investigated many natural phenomena, curious about what they might suggest about the higher laws he believed lay behind the physical world. Here he investigated the temperature of ground water by searching out springs, but he did not forget the role the springs played in the lives of those that used them:
"[On] June 30th, July 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th, I carried round a thermometer in the afternoon and ascertained the temperature of the springs, brooks, etc. The springs, in the order of coldness, stand thus:- [included here are Estabrook Country's springs only]
3 & 4 Henry Shattuck's two 48° July 6 . . .
5 Violet Sorrel (N. Barrett's) 48° July 6
7 J. Farmer's 48° July 6 . . .
11 Minot Pratt's 49° July 6 . . ."[The] average temperature of seventeen [springs] is 49 1/2°. Omitting also the 1st, 2nd, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, i.e. the extremes, the average of the remaining eleven is 48.7°, and they do not differ more than 2° from one another. On the whole, then, where I had expected to find great diversity I find remarkable uniformity. The temperature of good or cool springs in this town at this season varies very little indeed from 49°, and I should be surprised to meet with one considered cold which varied more than 3° from this . . . .49° would seem to be the temperature at present very generally of water at a certain depth in the ground. This is very near the mean annual temperature of the air here . . . .The average temperature of the air at 2 p.m. for the five days of my observations was 80°, and the greatest variation during the observation was some 10· in the course of an afternoon. But I presume that this made no odds with the temperature of the springs . . . . I should say, then, that a spring colder than 48° was remarkably cold . . . .
"Of the above springs, [Nos. 3, 5 & perhaps 11] are distinctly just at the base of a hill or bank and on the edge of a meadow or river. Apparently the water which percolates through the hill or upland, having reached a stratum saturated with water and impervious to it, bursts out in a spring . . . .[Nos. 4 & 7 are] a little within meadows.
"Of course, an infinite number or such springs may be found and cleared out along the bases of the hills, as wells dug anywhere are pretty sure to come to water of a similar character. The above are such as have been discovered and used,-been kept open,-or which have kept themselves clear. Frequently, in ditching his meadow, the farmer strikes on a powerful spring, and if it is cold enough and convenient to his house or work, he stones it up or sinks a tub or barrel there.
"Of the above, [No. 3 is or has] been barrelled or tubbed; [No. 5 is] stoned about . . . .The remaining ten are in a natural state, only kept open more or less by use . . . .Perhaps the most natural well of them all is No. 11, Minot Pratt's, [058] filling an oblong angular cavity between upright rocks.
"Where the bottom is gravelly, and they are made deep by being barrelled or stoned up, they are a particularly clear and crystalline-looking water, Walden-Pond-like, quite unlike the rivers and brooks,-a peculiar clearness with whitish sands at the bottom,-perhaps because too cold for vegetation to defile them.
[Page 38]
"Each farmer values his spring and takes pride in it. He is inclined to think it is the coldest in the neighborhood. Each one is the source of a streamlet which finds its way into the river, though possibly one or two may dry up some seasons . . . .You commonly see the water coming in more or less copiously through the gravel on the upper side, sometimes from under a rock in a considerable stream and with a tinkling sound. The coldest, as I notice, have the clearest and most crystalline or Walden-Pond-like look. Henry Shattuck's two were of the same temperature, though one was in the open meadow at the head of a ditch, and the other in the bank and covered or boxed over. This shows that they come at once from a considerable depth in the earth and have no time to be warmed before they flow off . . . .
"Some are far away and only used by hunters and walkers and berry-pickers. Some are used in haying time only. Some are so cold and clear, and so near withal, as to be used daily by some family, who 'turn up their noses' at the well . . . .Some will have a broken tumbler hid in the grass near, or a rusty dipper hung on a twig near by. Others, again, drink through some hollow weed's stem . . . .Some are known only to myself and friends, and I clear them out annually."
Summer, 1840s-- 50s. In 1888, Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, wrote touchingly about walks in the Estabrook country as his father recited his newest poems aloud, trying them out on his family:"On Sunday afternoons at four o'clock, when the children came from their Bible-reading in their mother's room he [RWE] took them all to walk, more often towards Walden . . . or Northward to . . . the old clearings, cellar-holes and wild-apple orchards of the Estabrook country . . . .He showed us his favorite plants, usually rather humble flowers such as the Lespideza . . . or the little blue Self-heal . . . Often as he walked he would recite fragments of ballads, old or modern and occasionally would try upon us lines of poems that he was composing, . . . 'crooning' them to bring out their best melody." [059]
July 7, 1851. Thoreau made at least two trips to see the new astronomical telescope of Perez Blood. Blood was a farmer-astronomer who lived at the lonely northern edge of Estabrook country. Thoreau wrote,
"I have been tonight . . . to look through Perez Blood's Telescope a 2nd time. A dozen of . . . Bloods neighbors were swept along in the stream of our curiosity . . . .[Blood] had not gone to bed, but was sitting in the woodshed, in the dark, alone, in his astronomical chair, which is all legs and rounds, with a seat which can be inserted at any height. We saw Saturn's rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters . . . .I was amused to see what sort of respect this man with a telescope had obtained from his neighbors-- something akin to that which savages award to civilized men-- though in this case the interval between the parties was very slight. Mr. Blood with his skull cap on his short figure-- his north European figure made me think of Tycho Brahe . . . . I am still contented to see stars with my naked eye." [060]
July 19, 1852. Ellery Channing wrote in his pocket diary about his troubled domestic life and memories of his troubled life on Punkatasset:
"Lay & listened for the winds of nature. Only the flies faintly buzzing and the whispering leaves of the birch. Well I remember the rambles I took when I lived on the hill [Punkatasset] . . . , how I ranged far & near, & formed theories of Art, & read faithfully in Goethe. Days of cold heart, days of mental and social poverty. I have left them behind. May I not also hope then, or predict that I shall leave behind my present embarrassment & troubles that seem so interminable & carnal into a better sphere hereafter."
[Page 39]
July 20, 1892. Naturalist William Brewster of October Farm shared Thoreau's interest in observing organisms in their natural setting, but for Brewster the point was to record what he had seen and not, as Thoreau did, to attempt to go beyond and discern a symbolic or spiritual connection as well. This day Brewster wrote wryly of Wood Thrushes on the Estabrook Road:
"I did not go out today until after tea, when I started for a walk up the Estabrook Road. In Clark's woods, which I did not reach until 7.15, when the light was getting dim under the arches of the grand old trees, the concert of Wood Thrushes was simply the finest that I ever listened to. There were three of them close about me at one time and they fairly made the woods ring. With this species as with the Hermit [Thrush] there is much individual variation in quality of voice and variety and ease of execution and, as it happened, all three of the birds in Clark's woods this evening were particularly good performers while one was preeminently fine.
"On the other hand, a bird singing in the hemlocks on the opposite (eastern) side of the adjoining swamp had a voice so effectually "veiled" that I was actually unaware of his presence until I came nearly under the tree in which he was sitting. Indeed, the odd medley of lows, wheezy gasps, catarrhal squeaks and clucks, and thin, feeble whistles, not one note of which was either musical or pleasing, was wholly inaudible at a distance of fifty yards. It was not sotto voce singing. On the contrary, the poor bird was quite evidently exerting himself to the utmost as if striving to outdo his rivals in the woods across the swamp. Was he conscious of the lamentable failure or, like certain human singers equally devoid of musical ability, did he delude himself into the belief that he was really producing melodious sounds? It occurred to me that possibly he might be deaf . . . .
"Occasionally a Bat darted past within a few feet or even inches of my head and was almost instantly lost to sight in the gloom. Fireflies in small numbers flashed their tiny lights along the edges of hazel copses or in and out among the foliage of the oaks. The only sounds now were those of the Mice in the leaves, the fine shrill squeaking of the Bats, the feeble chirping of summer crickets and now and then the notes of a distant Whippoorwill. Some Green Frogs were tunging in Rhodora Pool [beside the old Estabrook Road] but the calling season of the Tree Toads is over."
July 28, 1937. Herbert W. Gleason for forty years followed in Thoreau's footsteps through the Concord landscape with his camera. He illustrated the 1906 edition of Thoreau's works and prepared the much-admired map of the town showing the places referred to by Thoreau. In this letter, late in his career, he wrote to Herbert Hosmer, Jr., about a place in Estabrook Country that Gleason had never been able to locate:
"Dear Mr. Hosmer . . . . Then there is another locality I would like very much to visit and if possible photograph, as Thoreau refers to it in his Journal. It is a group of large red oaks on Hubbard's Hill.
"I quote the following from E. M. Bacon's Walks and Rides about Boston [061]: 'From [John Thoreau's] old pencil mill-site we direct our steps to Hubbard's Hill. After passing through a 'grown-up' pasture we strike a cart road or lane along the west base of Hubbard's Hill. This hill has a good growth of white pines, pitch pine, cedar and black birch. But the glory of these woods is a remarkable group of three or four red oaks, probably from 200 to 250 years old, with a beautiful bed of ferns covering the ground under them. These trees are at the left of the lane just beyond the turn, with sycamores, barberries, and privets near by.'
[Page 40]
"This description was written forty years ago, so there may not be a single one of the red oaks still alive . . . .I would be much pleased to go with you in your 'Model T' to any of these places, and will try to accommodate my affairs to suit your convenience. Only please do not select a blisteringly hot day! With sincere appreciation of your kind offer, Cordially yours, /s/ Herbert W. Gleason."
(A photo of Hosmer taken by Gleason that day on Hubbard's Hill is reproduced in my Saunterer article on Estabrook.)
Aug. 6, 1853. Thoreau: "To J. Farmer's Cliff. I see the sunflower's broad disk now in gardens, . . . a true sun among flowers, monarch of August. Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? ?-sunflowers and asters and the single flowers of the goldenrod. I once saw one as big as a milk-pan, in which a mouse had a nest . . . .Nature is now a Bacchanal, drunk with the wines of a thousand plants and berries . . . .Cranberries show red cheeks, and some are wholly red, like varnished cherry wood. Yesterday I ate early summer apples. The huckleberries were many of them burst open in consequence of the copious rains. And now it begins to rain again and compels us to return."
Aug. 6, 1858. Thoreau: "Walk to Boulder Field . . . .I then looked for the little groves of barberries which some two months ago I saw in the cow-dung thereabouts, but to my surprise I found some only in one spot after a long search. They appear to have generally died, perhaps dried up. These few were some two inches high; the roots yet longer, having penetrated to the soil beneath. Thus, no doubt, some of those barberry clumps are formed; but I noticed many more small barberry plants standing single, most commonly protected by a rock . . . .
"Nowadays we hear the squealing notes of young hawks. The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent. This is pure summer; no signs of fall in this . . . .
"I hear of pickers ordered out of the huckleberry-fields, and I see stakes set up with written notices forbidding any to pick there. Some let their fields, or allow so much for the picking. Sic transit gloria ruris. We are not grateful enough that we have lived part of our lives before these evil days came. What becomes of the true value of country life? What if you must go to market for it? Shall things come to such a pass that the butcher commonly brings round huckleberries in his cart? It is as if the hangman were to perform the marriage ceremony, or were to preside at the communion table. Such is the inevitable tendency of our civilization,-- to reduce huckleberries to a level with beef-steak. The butcher's item on the door is now 'calf's head and huckleberries.' I suspect that the inhabitants of England and of the Continent of Europe have thus lost their natural rights with the increase of population and of monopolies. The wild fruits of the earth disappear before civilization, or are only to be found in large markets. The whole country becomes, as it were, a town or beaten common, and the fruits left are a few hips and haws."[062]
[Page 41]
Late summer, 1854. Emerson wrote of a summer walk with Ellery Channing: "Delicious summer stroll through the endless pastures of Barrett, Buttrick, Estabrook farms, yesterday, with Ellery, the glory of summer. What magnificence, yet none to see it. What magnificence, yet one night of frost will kill it all. E[llery] was witty." [063]
Aug. 29, 1857. Thoreau: "To Owl-Nest Swamp with C[hanning] . . . . The Indian Rock, [064] further west, is upright, or overhanging two feet, and a dozen feet high. Against this the Indians camped. It has many very large specimens of the Umbilicaria dillenii [lichen], some six or eight inches in diameter, dripping with moisture today, like leather aprons hanging to the side of the rock, olive-- green (this moist day), curled under on the edges and showing the upper side; but when dry they curl upward and show the crocky under sides."
Footnotes and endnotes
Footnotes
Footnote 25. Thoreau would occasionally identify his destination by referring only to a particular specimen. This was probably the plant Thoreau wrote of on Sept. 3, 1854: "Close to the left hand side of bridle road-about 100 rods S of the oak a bay-berry bush without fruit--prob. a male one. It made me realize--that this was only a more distant & elevated sea beach--and that we were within reach of marine influences." [Back to text.]
Footnote 26. Isaiah Green's (1772-1855) farm was located north of the town line, off the Estabrook Road. [Back to text.]
Footnote 27. This is the mill race at the John Thoreau mill site. [Back to text.]
Footnote 28. This is possibly the white oak Thoreau notes on his draft survey of the Hunt land. [Back to text.]
Footnote 29. More than 750 of Thoreau's botanical specimens, in six elephant folios, reside today, in excellent condition, at Harvards University's [Asa Gray] Herbarium. Most came home under this hat, suggests the Harvard Alumni Magazine, April 4, 1959, pp. 496-98. [Back to text.]
Footnote 30. "[Thoreau's] nose is like the prow of a ship," said Emerson one day. (Moncure Conway, A Century Ago with Thoreau, Berkeley Heights NJ: Oriole Press [1962] p. 9). [Back to text.]
Endnotes
48. Address at the dedication of the Thoreau Institute, given at the Trinitarian Congregational Church, Concord, Mass., June 5, 1998 (with permission). [Back to text.]
49. Cedar Swamp. This swamp is the big one at the Carlisle line between Estabrook road and the Two Rod Road. Thoreau repeats the name "Cedar Swamp" later in this date's entry as he catalogues the geography of his Easterbrooks Country. It is shown erroneously on Gleason's 1906 map as Yellow Birch Swamp, and the 1973 MCZ map shows it as Carlisle Swamp. It was probably this swamp that frustrated the attempt in the mid-1700s to create a new town of Carlisle and put its meetinghouse in Estabrook Country (see note 10). [Back to text.]
50. The Rebecca Estabrook-Paul Adams cellar site. The Mass. Historic Commission determined that the Rebecca Estabrook-Paul Adams cellar site (now a dent in the earth); its picturesque old well its barn its unlocated, accessory shop/in-law-house; and its as-yet-undefined adjacent farmstead were eligible for listing in the National Historic Register. It is located east of the Middlesex School campus partly within the development area. An archaeology report, required by the Corps of Engineers as part of the federal wetlands permit process for the proposed Middlesex School development, reported a "staggering" amount of material. The age is ambiguously given in the last half of the eighteenth century. See bibliography. The study found some expensive pottery, which suggested to the authors that this site was fashionable. This was a surprise to me, for the house appears on no map and therefor I had always assumed that it was back-o'-the-moon poor, despite Rebecca being the widow of wealthy Hugh Cargill. (The proposed Middlesex project would destroy a portion of this site, despite the conservation restriction #2.) An interesting watercolor of the Paul Adams farmhouse exists at the Concord Museum, showing much homely detail. I suspect that there may have been a predecessor house to the Paul Adams place (but after the Thomas I cellar), as yet undiscovered. [Back to text.]
51. Huckleberries and blueberries. Both Huckleberries and blueberries can still be readily found in Concord's woods, but the former are not readily recognized. Botanist Ray Angelo confirms Brad Dean's advice that in our area the presence on huckleberry leaves of tiny resin globules (like tiny specks or spangles, which glisten in the sun) on the underside of the leaves is a reliable way to distinguish huckleberries from blueberries. The common black huckleberry actually has the resin dots on both sides of the leaf. If the plant is in fruit (even immature), the ten bony nutlets in the berry (huckleberry) versus the many tiny seeds (blueberry), is a more definitive way to distinguish the two genera. Both diagnostic features are cited in Gray's Manual as well as other standard botany manuals. Both berries are among Thoreau's "wild fruits." For Thoreau, the huckleberry represented the wild and fertile in nature. [Back to text.]
52. C. Putnam. "Estabrook Woods Teaches Educators a lesson." Concord Journal, June 17, 1993. [Back to text.]
53. Crazy uncle. During 1852, Thoreau added to the fourth draft of Walden in the "Economy" chapter an anecdote about a character who has come to be known as the "crazy uncle." He undertook to dig to China--"As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made." Walden (Princeton), p. 58. Eight years later, this more rustic version in the Journal tells us with the laconic rhythms of country speech that the crazy uncle was from Estabrook country. [Back to text.]
54. First Biodiversity Day. Estabrook Country was very much part of Biodiversity Day, as about 25 of the 125 local and national experts spent time there. Harvard's ant-man and thinker E. O. Wilson (to whom the Day was dedicated), Guy Tudor, Wayne Petersen, Paul Miliotis, Peter Alden and others trooped up the old Estabrook Road, spotting dragonflies, ants, aquatic beetles, fish, and other species. At Mink Pond, they met with Dr. Donald R. Griffin, who described his researches on a local beaver family inside its lodge at the pond (see, note 47). The final tally was 1,906 species, including 1,142 species of plants and fungi; 591 species of invertebrates; and 171 species of vertebrates (P. Alden, "World's First 1000+ species Biodiversity Day, Checklist and Intro, 53 pp., Nov. 14, 1998 rev.). This experience was so successful it is being replicated throughout the country and internationally. [Back to text.]
55. Rines, Marjorie W. (1998). Biodiversity Day. Bird Observer, 26:5, 224-228. [Back to text.]
56. Sarah Hall (Chapin). Eleven Weeks at Turtle Pond. MCZ Concord Field Station, 1976. P. i & 1. [Back to text.]
57. John Hanson Mitchell, Walking towards Walden, Reading MA: Addison-Wesley (1995), p. 200. [Back to text.]
58. Minot Pratt Spring. This spring had apparently been lost. In 1982, however, botanist and author Ray Angelo of Harvard found a distinctive spring matching Thoreau's description and protected it by calling it to the attention of the owner and of those who were starting to fill it with landscaping debris. The spring is set into a bold rock formation about five feet high. A narrow stone-edged channel leads the overflow away from the spring. Botanical information Angelo found also supports this rediscovery and identification. According to Angelo, several unusual non-native plants that Pratt introduced persist at this spring to this day. In May, 1999, Mr. Angelo took botanist Richard Eaton's son and daughter and the author to this lovely spring, where he pointed out some of the non-native plantings of Pratt's that still survive there. Mr. Angelo, from this evidence, infers this to be the same spring that tradition says Pratt renamed the "Asa Gray Spring," after a visit to his nursery (and the spring) by the renowned Harvard botanist. Sitting stones are set on both sides of the spring's channel, convenient for conversation (See, e.g., Bacon (1897-1900) and Fenn (1976).) Others believe that spring to be near Turtle Pond. [Back to text.]
59. Emphasis added. Emerson in Concord: A Memoir, [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1888], p. 171. [Back to text.]
60. Two entries are edited together to describe the scenes in Blood's woodshed: Journal, July 7, 1851, and Thoreau's October 24, 1847 letter to Sophia Thoreau (Harding, ed. Correspondence, 187). [Back to text.]
61. Page 205. Appalachian Mountain Club. The Bacon book was published 1897-1900 by Houghton-Mifflin for the Appalachian Mountain Club. It gives trail directions in Estabrook woods, calls the Estabrook road "one of the favorite summer drives," and describes the view from Punkatasset as one of Wachusett, Monadnock, and "a shadowy outline of Boston." Botanist-grocer Fred Hosmer's diary tells of walking with the AMC even earlier, on June 21, 1890: "With Appalachian Club to Annursnac, Punkatasset & home by mill race." The AMC maintains the tradition and currently has two organized walks in Estabrook a year. [Back to text.]
62. This paragraph also appears in "Huckleberries," NHE, p248-49, and Wild Apples, p57. [Back to text.]
63. Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Belknap:197-. Vol. 13, p: 347 (Sept. 4, 1857). (Hereafter JMN.) [Back to text.]
64. Indian Rock. Some believe the Indian Rock to be the glacial erratic boulder that just east of the lime quarries, but the text and a Gleason photograph suggest a different location. Gladys Clark told Shirley Blancke of perhaps the last recorded Native American occupant of Estabrook--"A Native American farmhand worked intermittently for Thomas [Tileston] Davis [b. 1823] and lived in a rock shelter in the woods south of Bateman's Pond, known locally as 'Indian Rock.' It is north of a path leading east from Lowell road. He is said to have left for good when angered by Davis's refusal to pierce his nose for him for a nose ring." (See also, note 22 on native people.) [Back to text.]