Sept. 23, 1852. P.M. Round by Clematis Brook. ....
I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard's), more full and bright than any flower. The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening. .... The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes. ....
The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream. Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared. A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink. .... A woodchuck out. .... Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes. ....
The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.
-H.D.T.
September 23, 2021.
When I arrive around noon at the trailhead today along Route 117 just west of Mt. Misery after a strong rain, the sky is still very cloudy and air very moist with humidity. As I near the first ridge along the trail, the traffic noise fades, slowly being replaced by the sound of crickets and nuthatches. I pause on-route, noticing the yellowing leaves of black birches above me, and red-berried checkerberries and full orangish-red topped brittlegill mushrooms at my feet.
Clematis Brook Hollow is full of water. As I walk along its edge, I hear the squeak of many large frogs before they leap, sometimes three or four feet, off the high banks into the water for safety. As I approach a mossy hummock covering old tree roots, I hear a larger splash of a bigger animal, followed soon after by another - the now familiar slapping sound of beaver tails on the water. Two beavers are living here, apparently residing in a hollow in the hummock. They continually swim about this woods pond-hole during my circumnavigation of its shoreline. The beavers are my stand-ins today for Thoreau's woodchuck, a cousin rodent species, also with continually growing teeth, allowing/requiring them to continually gnaw.
Rather than red barberries, as Thoreau saw here, I find many red-berried winter holly plants, with he-huckleberry and blue ridge blueberry shrubs nearby. As Thoreau notes in his entry, I find yellow-pond lilies in the center of this pond-hole today. I climb out along the trunk of of a fallen tree over the water for a closer look at the lilies and circling beavers nearby.
As I finish my circle around the pond, the skies open up with a new downpour and a wet dog on a walk with its owner visits for a moment. I trace my way along the non-flowing, dry streambed of Clematis Brook to the edge of the wetland margins on the Sudbury River. Red maples of different hues glow, even under today's dull light. The fresh leaves of a skunk cabbage shoot up from the ground; are these new growths for next year's flowers? I follow the trail south and west along these wetland margins in search of color, finding one location of layered, different-quality reds in three tiers of depth. Along route to the trailhead, I find a blue-stemmed goldenrod, the stem being more red than blue in color, and right off Thoreau's to-find list.
At 6 p.m., I return for a further look nearer to Lee's Bridge and find a beautiful view of the river willows, browning a little, but aglow in the fading light of the day, with a beautify backdrop of Conantum behind. Along the chainlink fence here are is a thick growth of burgundy-colored woodbine - the thicket creeper - a relative of the Virginia creeper. Across the road, the leaves of the thicket creeper - more crimson in color - climb a white oak, set beautifully against the huge farm field and river behind.
As I drive home, I see, as Thoreau did, the dark, reddened leaves of the dogwood, along the causeway near Hubbard's Meadow. (Having failed to take a photograph at the time, I marked my calendar and returned again on the two-year anniversary of this date, to verify and document the spotted, crimson red and burgundy leaves of gray dogwoods along the river's edge near Hubbard's bridge.)
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