Thoreau writes in his journal:
The snow being some three or four inches deep, I see rising above it, generally, at my old bean-field, only my little white pines set last spring in the midst of an immense field of Solidago nemoralis, with a little sweet-fern (i.e. a large patch of it on the north side). What a change there will be in a few years, this little forest of goldenrod giving place to a forest of pines! . . .