WHEN THE ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and
shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of
the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after
it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and
skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I
could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up
around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not
remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable
distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs,
passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like
fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or
pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the
evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut
and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony
of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice,
though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like
the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted
drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when the snow
was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were
confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and
except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid
and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak
woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the
forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a
sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable
plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar
to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I
seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing it; Hoo
hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first three
syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo, hoo
only. One night in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze
over, about nine o'clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a
goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings
like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They
passed over the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred from
settling by my light, their commodore honking all the while with a
regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat owl from very near me, with
the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant
of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if
determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from Hudson's Bay by
exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and
boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the
citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am
ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and
a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of
the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a
discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as
these plains never saw nor heard.
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great
bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its
bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had
dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost,
as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning
would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third
of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust, in
moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some
anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into
our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes
as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men,
still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation.
Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked
a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.
Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn,
coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if
sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter
I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got
ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, and was amused by watching
the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. In the
twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty
meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me
much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first
warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and
starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with
wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with
his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces
that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and
then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous
somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were eyed on him- for all
the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the
forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl- wasting
more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk
the whole distance- I never saw one walk- and then suddenly, before
you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch
pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators,
soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time- for no
reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I
suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable
ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the
topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in
the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear
from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the
half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and
played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the
ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from
his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over
at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting
that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again,
or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to
hear what was in the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste
many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and
plumper one, considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing
it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a
buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching
along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the
while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and
horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;- a
singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;- and so he would get off
with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine
tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs
strewn about the woods in various directions.
At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard
long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of
a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from
tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the
squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they
attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for
their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it,
and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with
their bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much
respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work
as if they were taking what was their own.
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up
the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and,
placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their
little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were
sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of
these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the
crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the
tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day
day, or more rarely, in springlike days, a wiry summery phebe from the
woodside. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an
armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks
without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a
moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was
more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any
epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be quite
familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the
nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of
winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my
wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to
feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge
bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves
and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like
golden dust, for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It
is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes
plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed
for a day or two." I used to start them in the open land also, where
they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple
trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular trees,
where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant
orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the
partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature's own bird which lives
on buds and diet-drink.
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I
sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding
cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note
of the hunting-horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear.
The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level
of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actaeon. And perhaps at
evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing
from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that
if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be
safe, or if be would run in a straight line away no foxhound could
overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to
rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round
to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he
will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and
he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told
me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden
when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across,
and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but
here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would
pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without
regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing
could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall
upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake
everything else for this. One day a man came to my hut from
Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and
had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the
wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his
questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?" He had
lost a dog, but found a man.
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in
Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times
looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one
afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked
the Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere
long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought
leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not
touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in
full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in
the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods
south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair
Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their hounding cry
which made all the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer, now from
Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still
and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly
the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing
pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves,
swift and still, keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind;
and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening,
with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the
latter's arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought
can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang!- the fox,
rolling over the rock, lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept
his place and listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now
the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their
demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to
the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly
to the rock; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her
hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and
round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their
mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came
forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They
waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush
a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a
Weston squire came to the Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for
his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own
account from Weston woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew
and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. He
did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they
had crossed the river and put up at a farmhouse for the night, whence,
having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning.
The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used
to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum
in Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose
there. Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne- he pronounced
it Bugine- which my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an
old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and
representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 18th, 1742-3, "John
Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0-2-3"; they are not now found here; and in
his ledger, Feb, 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by 1/2 a
Catt skin 0-1-4 1/2"; of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a
sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got credit for
hunting less noble game. Credit is given for deerskins also, and
they were daily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the last
deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the
particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters
were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one
gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the roadside and play a
strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than
any hunting-horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in
my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way,
as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.
Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were
scores of pitch pines around my house, from one to four inches in
diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter- a
Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they
were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their other
diet. These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at
midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely
girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead. It
is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole
pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but
perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont
to grow up densely.
The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had her form
under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and
she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to
stir- thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers
in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the
potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of
the round that they could hardly be distinguished when still.
Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of
one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the
evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand
they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces
from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor
wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant
tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained
the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes
appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo,
away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow-crust, straightening
its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest
between me and itself- the wild free venison, assenting its vigor
and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness.
Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think.)
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the
most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable
families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and
substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground- and
to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as
if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts
away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.
The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true
natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is
cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them
concealment, and they become more numerous than ever. That must be a
poor country indeed that does not support a hare. Our woods teem
with them both, and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or
rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which
some cow-boy tends.