The water on the meadows

March 29.

The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind. There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1852

The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind. See February 25, 1851 ("The waves on the meadows make a fine show.");   March 5, 1854 ("And for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows.");  March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit."); March 16, 1859 ("Look toward the sun, the water is yellow,. . .; look from the sun and it is a beautiful dark blue; but in each direction the crests of the waves are white, and you cannot sail or row over this watery wilderness without sharing the excitement of this element");   April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens."); April 9, 1859 ("For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high from the northwest, making high waves and much shadow"); February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring?"); February 25, 1860 ("The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are . . .  especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind"); February 27, 1860 ("The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature.”)

There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. See  February 10, 1860 (“Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. ”)

In the ditch beyond Hubbard's Grove

March 28. 

Sunday.

A pleasant afternoon; cool wind but warm sun. Snow almost all gone.

The yellow lily leaves are pushing up in the ditch beyond Hubbard's Grove this is not so warm a place as Heywood's meadow under the causeway), hard-rolled and triangular, with a sharp point with which to pierce the mud; green at the tips and yellow below. The leaf is rolled in from both sides to the midrib.

This is, perhaps, to be regarded as the most obvious sign of advancing spring, for the skunk-cabbage may be seen in warm weather in January. The latter is the first conspicuous growth on the surface. It now shows its agreeably variegated, not yet unfolded, leaves in the meadows.

Saw dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season; also a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hub bard's Bridge.

Fresh-looking caddis-worm cases in the ditch.

The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds.

I have not noticed any new movements among the farmers, unless a little more activity in carting out manure and spreading it on their grass grounds.

Observed a singular circle round the moon to-night between nine and ten, the moon being about half full, or in its first quarter, and the sky pretty clear, a very bright and distinct circle about the moon, and a second, larger circle, less distinct, extending to the east of this, cutting the former and having the moon on its circumference or at least where its circumference would be. The inner circle is very contracted and more distinct on its eastern side, included within the larger, and it appears to shed a luminous mist from all sides.

10.15 P. M. — The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. They will probably settle in the river. Who knows but they had expected to find the pond open?



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

In Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season. See March 28, 1858 ("Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there. ")

A very bright and distinct circle about the moon, and a second, larger circle, less distinct. See February 27, 1852 ("To-night a circle round the moon.”); October 30, 1857 ("There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky.")

The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. See   March 28, 1858 (" After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning."): March 28, 1859 ("A great flock passing over, quite on the other side of us and pretty high up. From time to time one of the company uttered a short note, that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. These were in a single undulating line. . .Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds. See March 25, 1853("The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside.")

 

The Yellow Lily

March 21.

Railroad causeway at Heywood's meadow. 

The ice no sooner melts than you see the now red and yellow pads of the yellow lily beginning to shoot up from the bottom of the pools and ditches – for there they yield to the first impulses of the heat and feel not the chilling blasts of March. 

This evening a little snow falls. The weather about these days is cold and wintry again.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1852

Yellow pads of the yellow lily beginning to shoot up from the bottom of the pools and ditches. See March 21, 1859 ("I see, on a yellow lily root washed up, leaf-buds grown five or six inches, or even seven or eight, with the stems")

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

This evening snow falls.

The weather these days is cold

and wintry again.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The yellow lily

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-520321

Little brook in the sun

The sparkling woodland brook
dances noisily rock to rock,
urgently announcing spring.


Zphx 20120320

Winter birds

March 20.

As to the winter birds, - those which came here in the winter, - I saw first that rusty sparrow-like bird flying in flocks with the smaller sparrows early in the winter and sliding down the grass stems to their seeds, which clucked like a hen, and F. Brown thought to be the young of the purple finch; then I saw, about Thanksgiving time and later in the winter, the pine grosbeaks, large and carmine, a noble bird; then, in midwinter, the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences. 

And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?), and I drive the flocks before me on the railroad causeway as I walk. It has two white feathers in its tail. 

It is cold as winter to-day, the ground still covered with snow, and the stars twinkle as in winter night.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1852

As to the birds which came here in the winter. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

Pine grosbeaks and the snow bunting. See December 24, 1851 (“It spits snow this afternoon. Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road.. . .The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored. Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds.”) See also Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?) See March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis,”); March 20, 1858 ("The note of the F. hyemalis, or chill-lill, is a jingle, with also a shorter and drier crackling or shuffling chip as it flits by."); March 19, 1858 (Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis,the first time have heard this note.") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

Bubbles

March 19.

Standing with Channing on the brink of the rill on Conantum where, falling a few inches, it produces bubbles that rapidly burst and succeed one another, I observe our images three quarters of an inch long and black as imps appearing to lean toward each other on account of the convexity of the bubbles. There is nothing to be seen but these two distinct black manikins and the branch of the elm over our heads.   


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1852

I observe our images three quarters of an inch long and black as imps appearing to lean toward each other on account of the convexity of the bubbles. See June 3, 1854 (“To Fair Haven with Blake and Brown. . . . On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head).”)

Hear two flights of geese

honking black specks against a

low overcast sky. 

20220219 zphx

Early spring wet snow.

March 18.

This morning the ground is again covered with snow, and the storm still continues. This afternoon the woods and walls and the whole face of the country wear once more a wintry aspect, though there is more moisture in the snow and the trunks of the trees are whitened now on a more southerly or southeast side. 

These slight falls of snow which come and go again so soon when the ground is partly open in the spring, perhaps helping to open and crumble and prepare it for the seed, are called "the poor man's manure."

There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow. The Evernia jubata might now be called even a very dark olive-green. I feel a certain sympathy with the pine or oak fringed with lichens in a wet day. They remind me of the dewy and ambrosial vigor of nature and of man's prime.

The pond is still very little melted around the shore.

As I go by a pile of red oak recently split in the woods and now wet with rain, I perceive its strong urine-like scent. I see within the trunks solid masses of worm or ant borings, turned to a black or very dark brown mould, purest of virgin mould, six inches in diameter and some feet long, within the tree, - the tree turned to mould again before its fall.

But this snow has not driven back the birds. I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring, and see flocks of chubby northern birds with the habit of snowbirds, passing north.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1852

These slight falls of snow which come and go again so soon when the ground is partly open in the spring are called "the poor man's manure." See March 12, 1857 ("Snowed again last night, as it has done once or twice before within ten days without my recording it, — robin snows, which last but a day or two.")

But this snow has not driven back the birds. See January11 & 12, 1853 ("A "robin snow," as it is called, i. e. a snow which does not drive off the robins")

Unconscious thought

March 17.

I catch myself philosophizing most abstractly when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep and the mind works like a machine without friction.


I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual, and made observations and carried on conversations which in my waking hours I can neither recall nor appreciate. As if in sleep our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening we found ourselves on the confines of the latter. On awakening we resume our enterprise, take up our bodies and become limited mind again. We meet and converse with those bodies which we have previously animated.


There is a moment in the dawn, when the darkness of the night is dissipated and before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1852

Infinite mind... See April 1, 1860 ("I occasionally awake in the night simply to let fall ripe a statement which I had never consciously considered before, and as surprising and novel and agreeable to me as anything can be. As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep. ) May 24, 1851 ("My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around.”);  February 19, 1854  ("The mind of the universe . . ., which we share . . .")

My life partakes of infinity.

March 15. 

This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day.  The air is full of bluebirds. The ground almost entirely bare. The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors. I go by Sleepy Hollow toward the Great Fields. I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1852

My life partakes of infinity. See September 7, 1851 ("We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little?")

March 15.

This afternoon I throw off my outside coat.

A mild spring day.

I must hie to the Great Meadows.

The air is full of bluebirds.

The ground almost entirely bare.

The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.

I go by Sleepy Hollow toward the Great Fields.

I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the blue birds ' warble.

My life partakes of infinity.

The air is as deep as our natures.

Is the drawing in of this vital air attended with no more glorious results than I witness?

The air is a velvet cushion against which I press my ear.

I go forth to make new demands on life.

I wish to begin this summer well;

•  to do something in it worthy of it and of me;
•  to transcend my daily routine and that of my townsmen; 
• to have my immortality now, that it be in the quality of my daily life;
•  to pay the greatest price, the greatest tax, of any man in Concord, and enjoy the most!! 

I  will give all I am for my nobility.

I will pay all my days for my success.

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

May I dare as I have never done! 

May I persevere as I have never done! 

May I purify myself anew as with fire and water, soul and body! 

May my melody not be wanting to the season! 

May I gird myself to be a hunter of the beautiful, that naught escape me! 

May I attain to a youth never attained! 

I am eager to report the glory of the universe; may I be worthy to do it; to have got through with regarding human values, so as not to be distracted from regarding divine values.

It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

Yesterday's rain, in which I was glad to be drenched, has advanced the spring, settled the ways, and the old footpath and the brook and the plank bridge behind the hill are suddenly uncovered, which have [ been ] buried so long; as if we had returned to our earth after an absence, and took pleasure in finding things so nearly in the state in which we left them.

We go out without our coats, saunter along the street, look at the aments of the willow beginning to appear and the swelling buds of the maple and the elm.

The Great Meadows are water instead of ice.

I see the ice on the bottom in white sheets.

And now one great cake rises amid the bushes (behind Peter's).

I see no ducks.

Most men find farming unprofitable; but there are some who can get their living anywhere.

If you set them down on a bare rock they will thrive there.

The true farmer is to those who come after him and take the benefit of his improvements, like the lichen which plants itself on the bare rock, and grows and thrives and cracks it and makes a vegetable mould, to the garden vegetable which grows in it.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1852

Early signs of spring

March 14.

Rain, rain, rain; but even this is fair weather after so much snow. The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun. I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. 

Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 14, 1852

Again I hear the chickadee's spring note. See note to March 10, 1852 ("Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time. , , , [T]hey too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring.")

To White Pond to sound it.

March 11.

That dull-gray-barked willow shows the silvery down of its forthcoming catkins. I believe that I saw blackbirds yesterday. The ice in the pond is soft on the surface, but it is still more than a foot thick. Is that slender green weed which I draw up on my sounding-stone where it is forty feet deep and upward Nitella gracillis (allied to Chara), described in Loudon?


The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing? My groves are invaded.


Water that has been so long detained on the hills and uplands by frost is now rapidly finding its level in the ocean. All lakes without outlet are oceans, larger or smaller.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1852

The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. See January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!")

Water is now rapidly finding its level in the ocean. See April 14, 1852 ("The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.")

Through Deep Cut to Cliffs.

March 10.

Rattlesnake Plantain in winter.

I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. The warble of this bird is innocent and celestial, like its color.

See a sparrow, perhaps a song sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the ground is covered with snow. I think that this is an indication that the ground is quite bare a little further south. 

Probably the spring birds never fly far over a snow-clad country.

A wood-chopper tells me he heard a robin this morning.

I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green.

What is the little chickweed-like plant already springing up on the top of the Cliffs? There are some other plants with bright-green leaves which have either started somewhat or have never suffered from the cold under the snow. 

Summer clenches hands with summer under the snow.

I am pretty sure that I hear the chuckle of a ground squirrel among the warm and bare rocks of the Cliffs. 

The earth is perhaps two thirds bare to-day. The mosses are now very handsome, like young grass pushing up.

Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time. I had at first heard their day-day-day ungratefully,-- ah! you but carry my thoughts back to winter, -- but anon I find that they too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1852

I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. See March 10, 1853 ("What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of the first bluebird from that scraggy apple orchard yonder. When this is heard, then has spring arrived");  March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.");  March 10, 1859 ("And already, when near the road, I hear the warble of my first Concord bluebird, borne to me from the hill through the still morning air, and, looking up, I see him plainly, though so far away, a dark speck in the top of a walnut.. . . The bluebird on the apple tree, warbling so innocently to inquire if any of its mates are within call, — the angel of the spring! Fair and innocent, yet the offspring of the earth. The color of the sky above and of the subsoil beneath. Suggesting what sweet and innocent melody (terrestrial melody) may have its birthplace between the sky and the ground") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   Signs of the Spring: the Song Sparrow Sings

I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake-plantain in the woods, quite fresh and green. See  August 27, 1856 ("Is it not the prettiest leaf that paves the forest floor?”) ; June 12, 1853 ("The rattlesnake-plantain now surprises the walker amid the dry leaves on cool hillsides in the woods; of very simple form, but richly veined with longitudinal and transverse white veins. It looks like art.”) Also 
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Rattlesnake-Plantain

Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time.  See January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him"); February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee.");  February 24, 1857 ("A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. ");  March 1, 1854 ("I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood.”); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day. “); March 11, 1854 ("Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.”); March 14, 1852 ("I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the spring note of the chickadee

Down the railroad. Cloudy but springlike.

March 9.

A warm spring rain in the night. 

3 P.M. - Down the railroad. 

Cloudy but springlike. The earth is now half bare. Yesterday all was tight as a stricture on my breast; to-day all is loosened. It is a different element from what it was. Though cloudy, the air excites me. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man. 


 These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. I have no doubt they serve some such use, as well as to hasten the evaporation of the snow and water. I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind. I am cheered by the sound of running water now down the wooden troughs on each side the cut. Already these puddles on the railroad, relflecting pinewoods, remind me of summer lakes. Again it rains, and I turn about. The sound of water falling on rocks and of air falling on trees are very much alike. The pond is covered with puddles. I see one farmer trimming his tree.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1852

These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. See March 9, 1860 ("You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds"); See also March 6, 1855 ("Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This the third day of wind."); March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle");

The moon, the stars, the trees, the snow

March 7.

A very pleasant, spring-promising day. Yet I walk up the river on the ice to Fair Haven Pond. As I cross the snow (2 P.M.) where it lies deepest in hollows, its surface honeycombed by the sun, I hear it suddenly sink under and around me with a crash, and look about for a tree or roof from which it may have fallen. It has melted next the earth, and my weight makes it fall. In one instance, when I jump over a wall on to snow nearly three feet deep, I hear this loud and startling crash and look round in vain to discover the cause of it. I hear it settle over many rods. 

At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon. 

It is rather mild to-night. I can walk without gloves. There is no snow on the trees. The ground is thinly covered with a crusted snow, through which the dead grass and weeds appear, telling the nearness of spring. 

Going through the high field beyond the lone graveyard, I see the track of a boy's sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon.

Though the snow-crust between me and the moon reflects the moon at a distance, westward it is but a dusky white; only where it is heaped up into a drift, or a steep bank occurs, is the moonlight reflected to me as from a phosphorescent place. I distinguish thus large tracts an eighth of a mile distant in the west, where a steep bank sloping toward the moon occurs, that glow with a white, phosphorescent light, while all the surrounding snow is comparatively dark, as if shaded by the woods. I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me.

As I look down the railroad, standing on the west brink of the Deep Cut, I see a promise or sign of spring in the way the moon is reflected from the snow covered west slope,-- a sort of misty light as if a fine vapor were rising from it. The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow, --a monumental stillness, whose void must be supplied by thought. 

The student of lichens has his objects of study brought to his study on his fuel without any extra expense. 

What a man does abroad by night requires and implies more deliberate energy than what he is encouraged to do in the sunshine. 


The moon appears to have waned a little, yet, with this snow on the ground, I can plainly see the words I write. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1852

The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow. See January 7, 1857 ("The stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. ")

I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me. See February 3, 1852 (I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter.")

Sap is flowing

March 5.

A misty afternoon, but warm, threatening rain. I find myself inspecting little granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little shields or apothecia springing from a thallus. Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the apothecium) of a lichen disproportionately large compared with the universe? The minute apothecium of the pertusaria, which the woodchopper never detected, occupies so large a space in my eye at present as to shut out a great part of the world. Surely I might take wider views.


So round even to the white bridge, where the red maple buds are already much expanded, foretelling summer, though our eyes see only winter as yet. As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1852

Studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically . . . occupies so large a space in my eye at present as to shut out a great part of the world.  See ; July 23, 1851 (" But this habit of close observation, — in Humboldt, Darwin, and others. Is it to be kept up long, this science?"); September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”): February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”);March 23, 1853 (“I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. . . . I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.”); See also Chapter 3, Thoreau and Humboldtean Science in Seeing New Worlds; and Chapter 19, Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt in The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Surely I might take wider views See April 2, 1852 ("It appears to me that, to one standing on the heights of philosophy, mankind and the works of man will have sunk out of sight altogether; that man is altogether too much insisted on. The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe. That is the egotism of the race. In order to avoid delusions, I would fain let man go by and behold a universe in which man is but as a grain of sand. It is a test I would apply to my companion, — can he forget man? What is the village, city, State, nation, aye the civilized world, that it should concern a man so much? I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite. It is not a chamber of mirrors which reflect me. When I reflect, I find that there is other than me. The universe is larger than enough for man's abode. Man is a past phenomenon to philosophy.")

Sap is flowing. See February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th.”); March 14, 1856 (“[A]bove Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely. . . . "); March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap")

A misty afternoon , but warm , threatening rain . Standing on Walden , whose eastern shore is laid waste , men walking on the hillside a quarter of a mile off are sin- gularly interesting objects , seen through this mist , which has the effect of a mirage . The persons of the walkers black on the snowy ground , and the horizon limited , makes them the more important in the scene . This kind of weather is very favorable to our landscape . I must not forget the lichen - painted boles of the beeches . . .

I find myself inspecting little granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little shields or apothecia springing from a thallus, such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. That is merely the prospect which is afforded me. It is short commons and innutritious. Surely I might take wider views. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk. Would it not be noble to study the shield of the sun on the thallus of the sky, cerulean, which scatters its infinite sporules of light through the universe? To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the apothecium of a lichen disproportionately large compared with the universe? The minute apothecium of the pertusaria , which the woodchopper never detected, occupies so large a space in my eye at present as to shut out a great part of the world.

The explosive truth of all religion.

March 5.

It is encouraging to know that, though every kernel of truth has been carefully swept out of our churches, there yet remains the dust of truth on their walls, so that if you should carry a light into them they would still, like some powder-mills, blow up at once.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1852

Powder-mills blow up at once. See January 7, 1853 ("I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time.”); July 21, 1859 ("The canal is still cluttered with the wreck of the mills that have been blown up in times past.”)

Up River on Ice to Fair Haven Pond: changing seasons.

March 4. 

We have this morning the clear, cold, continent sky of January. 

Now I take that walk along the river highway and the meadow. The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings. A liberal walk, so level and wide and smooth, without underbrush.


I see the shore from the waterside and easily approach and study the boughs of the maples and the swamp white oaks, etc., which usually overhang the water. There I now stand at my ease, and study their phenomena, amid the sweet-gale and button-bushes projecting above the snow and ice.


Seeking a sunny nook on the south side of a wood which keeps off the cold wind, sitting among the maples and the swamp white oaks which are frozen in, I hear the chickadees and the belching of the ice. The sun has got a new power in his rays after all, cold as the weather is. He could not have warmed me so much a month ago, nor should I have heard such rumblings of the ice in December. 

I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar.


I look between my legs up the river across Fair Haven. The landscape thus at this season is a plain white field hence to the horizon. Now, at 11.30 perhaps, the sky begins to be slightly overcast. Thus, as the fishes look up at the waves, we look up at the clouds.


I cut my initials on the bee tree.  

Crossing the shrub oak plain to the Cliffs, I find a place on the south side of this rocky hill where the snow is melted and the bare gray rock appears, covered with mosses and lichens and beds of oak leaves in the hollows. As I sit an invisible flame and smoke seems to ascend from the leaves, and the sun shines with a genial warmth.


The snow is melting on the rocks; the water trickles down in shining streams; the mosses look bright; the first awakening of vegetation at the root of the saxifrage. An oasis in the snow.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1852

I cut my initials on the bee tree. See February 25, 1856 ( "As I stood there, I saw that they had just felled my bee tree, the hemlock. The chopper even then stood at its foot. I went over and saw him cut into the cavity at my direction. He broke a piece out of his axe as big as my nail against a hemlock knot in the meanwhile. There was no comb within.”)


I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar. See February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's.”); March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”); See March 14, 1856 ("Tapped several white maples with my knife, but find no sap flowing; but, just above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely. . . . "); March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap.”)

As I sit an invisible flame and smoke seems to ascend from the leaves, and the sun shines with a genial warmth. See March 4, 1855 (“Though a cold and strong wind, it is very warm in the sun, and we can sit in the sun where sheltered on these rocks with impunity. It is a genial warmth. The rustle of the dry leaves . . . reminds me of fires in the woods. They are almost ready to burn.”)