Jan. 2, 1854.
The trees are white with a hoar frost this morning, small leafets, a tenth of an inch long, on every side of the twigs. They look like ghosts of trees. Took a walk on snow-shoes at 9 A.M. to Hubbard's Grove. A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.
-H.D.T.
Jan. 2, 1859 P. M. To Cliffs and Walden.
Going up the hill through Stow's young oak wood land, I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. This is the voice of the wood now. It would be comparatively still and more dreary here in other respects, if it were not for these leaves that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is enlivening and inspiriting like that, suggesting how all the land is seacoast to the aerial ocean. It is the sound of the surf, the rut of an unseen ocean, billows of air breaking on the forest like water on itself or on sand and rocks.
-H.D.T.
Jan. 2, 2021.
I walk across Hubbard’s Meadow this afternoon to the woods at the back end, an approximate to Thoreau’s Hubbard’s Grove, near the Sudbury River. Snow throughout the night turned to rain this morning leaving a soggy, albeit beautiful green and white dappled field, which shines brilliantly in the sun. Two red-tailed hawks soar and roost on the trees along the back perimeter of the field. Protected from the sun in the wood, patchy snow still covers the ground along an old cart path to a very swollen river. I can’t recall ever seeing snow buntings in Concord. Our family did recently see some along the coast near the New Hampshire border, and it was a rarer sighting.
I walk up and over Bear Garden Hill and along the Sudbury River. The well-walked path reveals the oak leaves below the otherwise patchy snowcover of the forest floor. For my first time, I fully ascend up to the Fairhaven Hill Cliffs via the Devil’s Staircase, a perfectly named rocky crevice of steep steps in the cliff. I take in the grand view from the Cliffs’ edge over the trees and unevenly snow covered flatland below. Even without a view of Fairhaven Bay or the river, which Thoreau had in his time, the high location with big sky and clouds above is very calming. Just as in 1859, the wind is blowing today, creating a nice ocean-like, ambient accompaniment to the view. I trace my way back, with attention to the soothing sound of the trees, which at trail's end blends into the distant rushing noise of cars on Route 2 invading from afar.
Comments