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April 10. Flying rolling-pins, a living statue & emerging keys - Downriver from Carlisle Bridge

Updated: Jan 14

April 10, 1852. 8 A. M. Down river to half a mile below Carlisle Bridge....

Having got into the Great Meadows, ... we begin to see ducks which we have scared, flying low over the water, always with a striking parallelism in the direction of their flight. They fly like regulars. They are like rolling-pins with wings. .... most commonly seen flying by twos or threes. ....

Why are some maples now in blossom so much redder than others? I have seen, then, the maples and the alders in blossom, but not yet the maple keys.

From Carlisle Bridge we saw many ducks a quarter of a mile or more northward, black objects on the water, and heard them laugh something like a loon. ....

As we ate our luncheon on the peninsula off Carlisle shore, saw a large ring round the sun. The aspect of the sky varies every hour. About noon I observed it in the south, composed of short clouds horizontal and parallel to one another, each straight and dark below with a slight cumulus resting on it, a little marsh-wise; again, in the north, I see a light but rather watery-looking flock of clouds; at mid-afternoon, slight wisps and thin veils of whitish clouds also.

This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine Hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide. We sailed this whole distance with two or three pitch pine boughs for a sail, though we made leeway the whole width of the meadow. If the bridge and its causeway were gone, there would not be so long a reach to my knowledge on this river. ....

[]The young trees and bushes, now making apparent islands on the meadows, are there nearly in this proportion, I should think; i. e. in deep water, young maples, willows....

-H.D.T.


Red maple tree samara seeds in early growth stage over the Concord River in Carlisle, Massachusetts.

April 10, 2021. 55 degrees.

I launch my kayak at 9:20 a.m. onto the still, reflective water of the Concord River just below the Carlisle Bridge. Variable-shaped clouds drift overhead, thicker, darker and more voluminous toward the north and thinner and wispier, with more exposed blue sky upriver to the south. The loud honking of Canada geese filters in from the south in the direction of Ball’s Hill, about 1.75 miles south. As Thoreau observes, this causeway and bridge sits in the middle of the huge stretch of meadows - now Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge - about two miles worth to the south and a similar but lesser amount to the north.

I glide under the bridge, examining the rough wooden tree trunk piers, which resemble the construction of bridges from Thoreau’s day based on historical paintings and photos, like N.C. Wyeth's Hubbard's Bridge. I paddle downstream toward the eastern shore, where the calls and flurried activity of red-winged blackbirds draws me in. A pair of screeching ducks flies northward over the bridge downriver past me. Thoreau’s description of the low flight, parallel to the water, of such ducks, like rolling-pins with wings, is very much fitting with my sight today. I’m taken aback by how rapid the wing beats of these ducks are.

On the water, a single white feather floats gently with the current. I take a cue from its relaxed state and consciously choose to drift, myself, for a while to appreciate this precious moment of peace and solitude.

Ahead through my binoculars, I see two Canada geese, tails up in the water, bobbing for food. Two mallards also float nearby; perhaps the birds that just stormed in from upriver? Further down, as the river turns a corner from northeast to north I see a great blue heron with ruffled feathers in a glassy shallow section of the water. It stands perfectly still, as if a living statue, except for occasional, efficient bursts as it plunges its head into the water.

I paddle toward the western shore past a beaver lodge to a thicket of common reeds, that stand upwards of 20 feet tall above my boat. The giant reeds, emblematic of the giant meadows in which they stand, extend very far back in a homogeneous swath into the wetland behind the peninsula at the river’s curve.

I paddle back upriver, noting the different toned reds of the red maple flowers. (I read that in addition to natural variability in the red, male flowers with yellow parts appear more orange, while female flowers appear more ruby red). Looking closer though, I find that the flowers hanging over the water are more complicated than I remember. Fuzzy, emerging bi-winged seeds (Thoreau's "maple keys") are showing, the first I have seen. Only three days ago in the darker understory along the Assabet the maple flowers showed no such signs of seeds. The seeds are clearly still developing, so it appears I have caught this process between the flower and seed stages. And, the appearance of these seeds is earlier in the year than observed by Thoreau - more anecdotal evidence of climate change.

As I exit the water, I am greeted by the yellowish green, puffy catkins of a pussy willow.


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