April 1, 1852. 2 P. M. ....
Sat awhile before sunset on the rocks in Saw Mill Brook. A brook need not be large to afford us pleasure by its sands and meanderings and falls and their various accompaniments. It is not so much size that we want as picturesque beauty and harmony. If the sound of its fall fills my ear it is enough. I require that the rocks over which it falls be agreeably disposed, and prefer that they be covered with lichens. The height and volume of the fall is of very little importance compared with the appearance and disposition of the rocks over which it falls, the agreeable diversity of still water, rapids, and falls, and of the surrounding scenery. I require that the banks and neighboring hillsides be not cut off, but excite a sense of at least graceful wildness. One or two small evergreens, especially hemlocks, standing gracefully on the brink of the rill, contrasting by their green with the surrounding deciduous trees when they have lost their leaves, and thus enlivening the scene and betraying their attachment to the water. It would be no more pleasing to me if the stream were a mile wide and the hemlocks five feet in diameter. I believe that there is a harmony between the hemlock and the water which it overhangs not explainable. In the first place, its green is especially grateful to the eye the greater part of the year in any locality, and in the winter, by its verdure overhanging and shading the water, it concentrates in itself the beauty of all fluviatile trees. It loves to stand with its foot close to the water, its roots running over the rocks of the shore, and two or more on opposite sides of a brook make the most beautiful frame to a waterscape, especially ….
But to return to Saw Mill Run. I love that the green fronds of the fern, pressed by the snow, lie on its rocks. It is a great advantage to take in so many parts at one view. We love to see the water stand, or seem to stand, at many different levels within a short distance, while we sit in its midst, some above, some below us, and many successive falls in different directions, meandering in the course of the fall, rather than one “chute," — rather spreading and shoaling than contracting and deepening at the fall. In a small brook like this, there are many adjuncts to increase the variety which are wanting in a river, or, if present, cannot be attended to; even dead leaves and twigs vary the ripplings and increase the foam. And the very lichens on the rocks of the run are an important ornament, which in the great waterfall are wont to be overlooked. I enjoy this little fall on Saw Mill Run more than many a large one on a river that I have seen. The hornbeams and witch-hazel and canoe [white] birches all come in for their share of attention. We get such a complete idea of the small rill with its overhanging shrubs as only a bird's-eye view from some eminence could give us of the larger stream. Perhaps it does not fall more than five feet within a rod and a half. I should not hear Niagara a short distance off. The never ending refreshing sound! It suggests more thoughts than Montmorenci. A stream and fall which the woods imbosom. They are not in this proportion to a larger fall. They lie in a more glaring and less picturesque light. Even the bubbles are a study. It can be completely examined in its details. The consciousness of there being water about you at different levels is agreeable. The sun can break through and fall on it and vary the whole scene infinitely.
-H.D.T.
April 1, 2021.
At 11:15 a.m., the morning’s rain has subsided to a slight drizzle. It’s 41 degrees and raw, feeling more like its in the mid-30s. I enter the woods off of Deerhaven Road in Lincoln, following the meandering Saw Mill Brook as it cascades over rocks into shallow pools down hill. The valley sides here are steep and it is plain to see how this trough in the land serves to funnel water downgradient. Hemlocks are thriving here, and in one spot, I find a small tree with roots growing over bare rock directly against the effervescent brook’s edge.
I find a nice rock lichen- and moss-adorned platform above a sand-bottomed pool just below a gentle fall in the water - a perfect spot where Thoreau may have sat to scribble his notes this day. Nearby, the surfactant foam bubbles from the oil of the trees and decaying leaves, having been churned up by the turbulence of the falling waters, collects against a branch serving as a boom in the brook.
I find the largest of the falls, down a steeper drop through larger blue lichen-covered rocks dropping into a larger shallow pool. I climb into the notch of a tree to film the cascading, frothy water trickling down, no doubt a vain attempt to capture the live- and holistic-spirit of this place within the constraints of the camera. I like Thoreau’s description of the unique smallness of this tranquil place, special for its subtlety, where the more you look the more you see, providing a form of transcendent enormity if you are willing to open your mind to it. And this juxtaposed to the obvious, imposing power of a great waterfall like Niagara, which of course delivers greatness, but only within its own non-subtle limitations of grandiose size. The scenery and freshness here, with calming sound, by contrast gently rejuvenates.
Downstream I find the pressed fronds of marginal wood fern and Christmas fern along the riverbanks against the rocks and amid the decaying leaves. The buds of honeysuckle and spicebush shrubs next to this rill are showing. Eventually the brook flattens out in a swampy zone, filled with rising spathes and unfurling leaves of skunk cabbage. On my climb back through the hemlock forest, I see at my trail's end canoe/paper birch trees adorning the brook. It's all so much as Thoreau described.
As I drive home, I see three birds fighting off a small black-and-gray tailed hawk out of the lower part of a tree. Probably a Cooper’s hawk. And, at home from my garage in the afternoon, I see our neighborhood fox standing in our driveway some twenty feet away. We look at each other for a moment, after which it nonchalantly trots down the road along the edges of the neighboring houses, pausing once to look back at me watching her.
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