Journal of a Sabbatical

April 3, 2000

on farming and pink mold

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake, Thoreau's Country by David R. Foster

I'm still deep in the spring volume of Thoreau's journals. In the H.G.O. Blake universe, spring ends on April 11, so I'm getting to the end.

Today's mystery lichen is bæomyces, which turns out to be a pink mold that I've never seen in Massachusetts. The landscape of Massachusetts has changed a lot since Thoreau's time. There are way more trees now than when he was writing. But I never thought about changes in the lichens - what species, where, how many. I guess I never thought much about lichens.

I'm also reading Thoreau's Country by David R. Foster, who is director of the Harvard Forest. He "went to the woods" (as Thoreau puts it) in 1977 to build a cabin and read Thoreau's journals. His whole book is really about how much the landscape has changed. But even he focuses on trees - well I guess if you're a dendrologist you have to focus on trees. There's only one mention of lichens that I could find so far. I am impressed that somebody could get a book published about reading Thoreau's journals. Maybe I should do a similar project with the emphasis on lichens :-)

Or focus on how much fun I'm having looking up all the (to me) obscure references:

In a paragraph describing a visit to a neighboring farmer, Thoreau mentions having just come from reading Columella, who describes the same "spring look" he sees. Being clueless as to who or what Columella might be I had to look it up. I narrowed it down to a Roman farmer or a story by Richard Graves since one can read an author or a story. Odds are against his reading a Columella salad or a species of gastropod found in British Columbia or the part of your nose that separates the two nostrils. Well maybe he could read noses like people read lips, but I doubt it. In context it has to be that Roman farmer who wrote 12 books about country life. Apparently Roman literature is big on farming. Who knew?