May 3, 1857. Sunday. A remarkably warm and pleasant morning. A.M. To Battle-Ground by river.
I heard the ring of toads at 6 A.M. The flood on the meadows, still high, is quite smooth, and many are out this still and suddenly very warm morning, pushing about in boats. Now, thinks many a one, is the time to paddle or push gently far up or down the river, along the still, warm meadow's edge, and perhaps we may see some large turtles, or muskrats, or otter, or rare fish or fowl. It will be a grand forenoon for a cruise, to explore these meadow shores and inundated maple swamps which we have never explored. …. Along the meadow's edge, lined with willow and alders and maples, under the catkins of the early willow, ... the sloping pasture and the plowed ground, submerged, are fast drinking up the flood. ....
I meet ... a boy paddling along under a sunny bank, with bare feet and his pants rolled up above his knees, ready to leap into the water at a moment’s warning. ….
I hear the soft, purring, stertorous croak of frogs on the meadow. The pine warbler is perhaps the commonest bird heard now from the wood-sides. It seems left [to] it almost alone to fill their empty aisles.
The above boy had caught a snapping turtle, the third he had got this year. The first he said he got the fore part of April. He also had caught a bullfrog sitting on the shore just now.
Thermometer from 1 to 2 P. M., at 78. Neighbors come forth to view the expanding buds in their gardens.
I see where some fish, probably a pickerel, darted away from high on the meadows, toward the river, and swims so high that it makes a long ripple for twenty rods.
-H.D.T.
May 3, 2021.
It’s a beautiful, warm day at 68 degrees with blue skies and light hazy clouds overhead when I depart by kayak from the Lowell Road bridge put-in. About 12 pigeons fly out from under the bridge as I paddle down the glassy river. Given the very high water, I am able to paddle past the large beaver dam at the end of Mill Brook into the shallowly flooded wetland. I was in this location on foot on April 5, and am amazed to see its transformation into such a different place with the flooding water. A happy grackle with blue iridescence on its upper feathers bathes in the water. Many red-winged black birds shoot back and forth among the low branches with their metallic konk-la-reeeeee-ing. A male mallard splashes about nearby a female that appears to sit on a nest. On the higher ground I see very tall spindles of emerging ferns - perhaps eagle fern, like I saw recently along Second Division Brook? The sweeter calls of the day are those of the song sparrows.
I paddle past another kayaker, under Old North Bridge and look to my left, I see that the high waters have submerged much of the lower meadows of the Battleground. I don’t think I could ask for much more in experiencing this place as Thoreau did in 1857 on this same exact calendar day. A painted turtle suns itself on a small log, eventually splashing into the water. As I paddle past a fish, it splashes water up into the cockpit of my boat. I paddle as far upshore as possible, sometimes having to push off the bottom as if in a gondola. Two geese graze at the water’s edge on the grass.
As I look back upriver, I can see a unique view, offered only a few times a year by boat (or wet shoes), of the inundated river meadow stretching before the Minuteman statue and obelisk with Old North Bridge behind it. It is hot, bright and summery. I relax for a few moments and take in the scene of busy tourists and passersby running and bicycling down the trail and over the bridge. After a few minutes, even the toads cooperate for this Thoreau experience to add a purrrrrring rhythm to the background. Their noise comes and goes from time to time, pulsating in longer-term patterns as different participants chime in and out of the group’s chorus.
Have I paddled back in time, or been cast into a Thoreau re-enactment movie? The feeling is bit eerie. All that’s missing is a barefoot boy in a boat hunting for snappers. Ha!
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