A very warm and pleasant day -- a new season has arrived.

March 30.

A very warm and pleasant day (at 2 P.M., 63° and rising).

The afternoon so warm -- wind southwest -- you take off coat. The streets are quite dusty for the first time.

The earth is more dry and genial, and you seem to be crossing the threshold between winter and summer.  As I walk the street I realize that a new season has arrived.

It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1860

It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel light-footed. See . March 31, 1855 ("I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home");  April 17, 1855 ("It is worth the while to walk so free and light, having got off both boots and greatcoat.”). Compare November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots."); December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 6, 1859 ("hat is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.")