Stephen Ells' Thoreau etc. research page

  • Note: Steve Ells' personal home page contains personal interests, birding conservation, and whims. To open it, please click here to go to <http:home.earthlink.net/~steveells>.

    Click here for a list of Steve's publications.
     
  • Topics on the Thoreau etc. research page are the following:
     
  • All about  Easterbrooks Country - Estabrook Woods, my web site about one of Thoreau's great wild tracts in Concord.

  • News item: September 10, 2005: click here for pictures of the apallingly misguided actions of the prestigious Middlesex School as it cuts and develops its part of Thoreau's Estabrook Woods in Concord and Carlisle, Massachusetts. 
  • Regrettably, the Middlesex School trustees turned down an offer of $5 million to fund, with Harvard's active support, a joint environmental program that would have used the Woods as a classroom.
     
  • Thoreau's woodlands were once full of the American Chestnut, a principal tree of the northeastern forest. They were felled by an imported disease, though struggling sprouts can still be found in Walden Woods. Almost all die while still shrub-size, but once in a while one does resist the disease to flower and produces nuts. In the summer of 2003, a large (in modern times) specimen in Lincoln's part of Walden Woods magnificently flowered. Later, in October, it was harvest time so click here for photos of harvest. Its nuts were harvested to add their genes to the chestnut restoration project. (Nov. 2003)
     
  • While working on an entirely different project, I came across an item that caught my eye. You may find interesting this 1819-20 map clearly showing the extensive woodland around Walden Pond that Thoreau would have known in his boyhood. The map is John G. Hales' "A Map of Boston and Its Vicinity...." It may be the earliest documentation of these Walden Woods. Click here to view. (Clearer map image added April 2, 2004.)
     
  • A collection of materials on Frank Bolles (1856-1894), an almost-forgotten American author and naturalist. An interesting man of action and passions, he wrote of Chocorua and the Boston environs, researched birds, was an opinionated newspaperman, and served as Secretary of Harvard University. Houghton Mifflin once billed Bolles on a par with Thoreau and Burroughs, but Bolles died suddenly and young. Posted are my texts on Bolles, which are the first comprehensive treatments of the man, and also photos, bibliography, etc. (Updated Feb. 27, 2004.)
     
  • Two companion biodiversity bibliographies about the natural history or ecosystem of Thoreau Country are now published and posted here. The authors hope they will help future researchers. Mine contains 420 references and studies about the biodiversity and natural history of the Sudbury River-Concord River valley, including the Great Meadows Refuge, the Estabrook Woods, and Walden Woods. Ernst Mayr, famed evolutionary biologist, wrote, "Your bibliography, obviously a labor of love, is a great achievement and will be one of the foundations of all ecological research done in the area." (April 2002, updated April 2, 2004.)
  • The companion document is Edmund Schofield's fine and comprehensive bibliography of the ecosystem of Walden Woods, published here with Ed's cooperation. Ed and I would welcome comments on either document.

  • Posted here is a memo on the lost Concord-Lincoln town boundary in Walden Pond: The granite post that once marked the Concord-Lincoln town boundary in Walden Pond may have been rediscovered by the selectmen. When re-erected, a historic feature will have been restored and the custom of perambulation memorialized. It will also be a reminder that Walden was a pond within the boundaries of both towns in Henry Thoreau's day, as it had been since 1754.  Though only a small part of the pond was in Lincoln, this fact is of historic and legal interest, and is pertinent as to how Thoreau, a surveyor, naturalist, author, and mystic, viewed his world. Since the stone post has disappeared, the memory of the boundary has faded. The shoreline is now altered by erosion and construction. By conservative estimate, Lincoln's part of sixty-one-acre Walden Pond now appears to be about one-quarter of an acre, about three hundred feet in length and, at its widest point, up to thirty feet wide below the high water line. The selectmen have asked the cooperation of the Walden Pond State Reservation in erecting the stone in a proper location. (Status on September 8, 2005: nothing done.)  
  • The first comprehensive list of the birds of the Estabrook Woods has been published by 3 experienced birders, members of the Nuttall Ornithological Club. The Club was founded by Estabrook's neighbor William Brewster in 1873. 159 species have been seen in Estabrook Woods over the last 35 years. This is a large, varied, and interesting list for a forest. It contains birds of great visual beauty: for example, 32 species of warblers--the jewels of springtime. And great aural beauty: the Winter Wren and six species of thrush, including the Veery and Wood and Hermit Thrushes. And of predatory drama: four species of owl and nine of hawks, including breeding Great Horned Owls and Goshawks. 5 of these species are state-listed by the Natural Heritage Program, and 40 are listed as of conservation priority by Partners in Flight. Also attached is a 1904 list made by students and masters of Middlesex School's Natural History Society. (Feb. 2002.)
     
  • Here is an appreciation of the 1896 edition of Thoreau's Cape Cod with sketches by Amelia Watson, one of my favorite editions. (Feb. 2002.)
     
  • My short pages on various Thoreau country locations other than Estabrook:
  • Thoreau on Nantucket Island,
  • Mt. Wachusett (Princeton, Mass.)
  • Pine (or Bare) Hill (Lincoln),
  • Walden Pond from Pine Hill (Lincoln),
  • Walden Pond (photo by Paul Carr),
  • Fisherman at Walden Pond, awaiting winter
  • Thoreau's 1839 climb of Mount Washington (Agiocochuck),
  • An 1858 trip from Lake Winnepesaukee, past Mount Chocorua, to the Conway Intervale, New Hampshire.
  • Thoreau's 1858 climb of Mount Washington.
  • The Beech Spring.
  • Thoreau-Alcott "yellow house"
  • Flint's Pond, Lincoln.
  • Mt. Katahdin (Thoreau's Ktaadn) in Maine),
  • Concord (Sudbury) River, and Concord River (Downstream),
  • Fair Haven Ledges, (by Herbert Gleason),
  • Conantum from Fair Haven Cliffs, (by Herbert Gleason),
  • Hubbard's (Heath's) Bridge, (by Herbert Gleason),
  • Fair Haven Hill in moonlight from the river (by Herbert Gleason).
     
  • A collection of biographical and catalogue information on the American composer Ernest Carter (1866-1953). One of the reviewers notes that in one of Carter's operas, "The White Bird," he made the first use in American opera of wild nature as a setting. (Feb., 2004.)
     
  • Another piece of old Concord has been torn down-- the  1724-1740 Bensen-Tarbell-Ball house and barn. Henry Thoreau wrote of it fondly: "Tarbell's hip-roofed house looked the picture of retirement--of cottage size under its noble elm with its heap of apples before the door and the wood coming up within a few rods--it being far off the road. The smoke from his chimney so white and vaporlike, like a winter scene." And it  happened on our watch. Click here to learn why. Added: photo of Bensons and dog Muffin, and a letter to editor and essay by John Hanson Mitchell: click here for photo, letter, and essay. (Updated May 14, 2002.)
     
  • A request for information about an appealing old photograph of a poor hamlet in a glen, with a musing man in the rustic-romantic tradition. Where was it taken? By whom? And who is the mystery man? Updated with more photos and a letter from a John Burroughs biographer. (Nov., 2001.)
     
  • Willard Uphaus: Prisoner in Thoreau Country is my new web article about an elderly  Methodist educator and reformer who, as a Thoreau-inspired act of conscience, refused to divulge the names of those who had attended meetings at his fellowship center. After an unfavorable, 5 to 4, US Supreme Court decision, Uphaus spent a year in jail. (August, 2001.)
     
  • A scan of an old postcard of the cairn at the Thoreau house site at Walden Pond. It was in my mother's papers. Date is perhaps 1918?
     
  • A list of some environmental issues in Thoreau Country. (July, 2001.) Regrettably, the National Park Service decides not to undertake any formal role in the protection of Walden Pond and Woods. (Added August 2003.)

  • Thoreau scrawled in the corner of a penciled draft survey of wood and pastureland in Estabrook Woods, "Upernavik, the most northerly inhabited spot upon the globe." Why? And at last, the correct location of Thoreau's Yellow Birch Swamp, incorrectly shown on other maps. And there are stepping stones there, across Thoreau's "wine colored brook."
     
  • Information on the Thoreau Museum of Natural History, [demolished in 2003] (May 2001)
     
  • The unnecessarily bright bathhouse at Walden Pond. Tone it down, please!
     
  • 1999's defeated proposal to place a celltower site atop Pine Hill, which would have overlooked Walden Pond.