Sept. 16, 1852. Thursday. 8 A.M. - To Fair Haven Pond.
Since the rains and the sun, great fungi, six inches in diameter, stand in the woods, warped upward on their edges, showing their gills, so as to hold half a gill of water.
The two-leaved convallaria [Convallaria majalis, lilly of the valley] berries are now decidedly red. .... The jay screams; the goldfinch twitters; the barberries are red. .... Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall. The corn is topped. ....
Before this, probably no leaves have been affected by frost. The puffballs(?), five to eight fingered, now. Tobacco-pipe still, and the water parsnip. Discovered an excellent lively wild red grape. Why not propagate from it and call it the Musketaquid? Gathered some sound blueberries still. Mitchella [Mitchella repens, partridgeberry] berries ripe. .... Maple-leaved viburnum berries, dark-bluish.
September 16, 2021.
The skies overhead are grayish white and cloudy when I arrive at the parking lot below Bear Garden Hill. It’s cool at 66 degrees at 5 p.m. The crickets are chirping incessantly, as always of late.
With Thoreau’s list of to-find items in mind, I cross the road and follow the wire fence, dividing Hubbard and Souter Fields. Past soapwort and wild carrot (cousin of the water parsnip) blooms, I quickly find tucked among the grasses multiple edible mushrooms: the fairy ring marasmius, a gilled mushroom, and a purple spored puffball, about three fingers wide. (While technically not fruit, mushrooms are the fruiting body, or reproductive structure, of the fungal organism, largely underground.) Jays scream over Souter Field as I walk and I see multiple crows fly out of the rows of growing corn. A frog or toad hops across my path and hides. When I take a break from my downward concentrated search for plants and fungi, I look up to see a beautiful break in the clouds across the field to the west. As I exit, I visit the rigidly straight rows of corn to photograph their decorative tops. (Surprisingly, botanically speaking, corn is neither a vegetable nor grain, but a fruit)
As I walk toward the head of Fairhaven Trail, I find black raspberries, still ripening among the brambles, delighting in the taste of a few (my equivalent today for Thoreau’s blueberry harvesting). Further still, I find small-sized, wild Concord grape bundles hanging low beneath a mass of vines and mutiflora rose brambles.
I walk up and over Bear Garden Hill and find poisonous bright red berries on bare stalks of now-withered/missing lily of the valley plants within a patch on the back, lower side of the hill. In early spring, this patch was dominated by the lily of the valley, but was soon taken over by Virginia creeper plants, which have dominated throughout the rest of the season and today. Further along the trail, a burst of very loud screaming and commotion of blue jays comes down from above on the hill, accompanied by nuthatches and squirrels. It is here that I find the ripe, edible red berries of the handsome partridgeberry ground cover, right off Thoreau's list. Just nearby, I find a large, five and a half inch tall yellow-tipped coral fungus. While I am examining a brittlegill and several amanita mushrooms, which rise out of the moist soil, a catbird visits, offering its now familiar cat-like mew.
I stop where the trail travels very close to the river providing access to the dogwood, buttonbush and willow shallows. My true excitement of the day comes from finding along this water’s edge a certain wild grape vine with a few hanging grapes; I pull down a grape and see that it is red in color, rather than the usual black – a version of Thoreau’s “Musketaquid” grape, which he delights in finding himself and whimsically contemplates marketing. How rare is it to find a red wild grape within theses Concord woods I cannot be sure, but this discovery feels especially magic because its same color and location of Thoreau's discovery 169 years ago!
On my way out, a low maple viburnum with bluish-black berries catches my eye. I understand these berries too are edible, with a taste akin to raisins. So much of what Thoreau found is right here, within these woods and fields, if you take the time to look!
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