May 8
May 8, 2017
I am most impressed by the rapidity of the changes within a week.
Saw a load of rock maples on a car from the country. Their buds have not yet started, while ours are leaved out. They must have been brought from the northern part of Vermont, where is winter still.
A tree, with all its roots, which has not felt the influence of spring is a most startling evidence of winter, – of the magic worked by the railroad.
The young sugar maples in our streets are now green with young leaves.
These trees from the north are whirled into their midst from a region of ice and snow, with not a bud yet started, at least a fortnight or three weeks more backward, not fairly awaked from their winter's sleep.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1852
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1852
I am most impressed by the rapidity of the changes within a week. See May 8, 1857 ("Summer has suddenly come upon us.")
They must have been brought from the northern part of Vermont. See November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon, . . . From Vermont.”); See also November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . .So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”); February 21, 1855 ("I see a train go by . . .from somewhere up country. . . thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow,. . . It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.")
They must have been brought from the northern part of Vermont. See November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon, . . . From Vermont.”); See also November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . .So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”); February 21, 1855 ("I see a train go by . . .from somewhere up country. . . thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow,. . . It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.")
Trees from the north are whirled into their midst from a region of ice and snow. Compare May 7, 1852 ("The first wave of summer from the south.")
Rock maples brought from
the northern part of Vermont –
where is winter still.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The last wave of winter whirls in from the north
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
tinyurl.com/hdt-520508
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