At Brister's Spring

January 28.

These warmer days the woodchopper finds that the wood cuts easier than when it had the frost in its sap-wood, though it does not split so readily. Thus every change in the weather has its influence on him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar way.

About Brister's Spring the ferns, which have been covered with snow, and the grass are still quite green. 

The skunk-cabbage in the water is already pushed up, and I find the pinkish head of flowers within its spathe bigger than a pea.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1852

The skunk-cabbage in the water is already pushed up. See Walden ("I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

January 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 28

About Brister's Spring

the ferns and the grass

are still quite green.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Brister's Spring

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026