As soon as those spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser. I am waked by my genius. I wake to inaudible melodies and am surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.
I have an appointment with spring. She comes to the window to wake me, and I go forth an hour or two earlier than usual.
It is by especial favor that I am waked, not rudely but gently, as infants should be waked. Though as yet the trill of the chip-bird is not heard, — added, — like the sparkling bead which bursts on bottled cider or ale.
When we wake indeed, with a double awakening, not only from our ordinary nocturnal slumbers, but from our diurnal, we burst through the thallus of our ordinary life with a proper exciple, we awake with emphasis.
To Cliffs. 6 A. M.- There is a white frost on the ground.
One robin really sings on the elms. Even the cockerel crows with new lustiness. Already I hear from the railroad the plaintive strain of a lark or two. They sit now conspicuous on the bare russet ground.
The tinkling bubbles of the song sparrow are wafted from distant fenceposts, little rills of song that begin to flow and tinkle as soon as the frost is out of the ground.
The blackbird tries to sing, as it were with a bone in his throat, or to whistle and sing at once. Whither so fast, the restless creature, chuck, chuck, at every rod, and now and then whistle-ter-ee?
The chill-lill of the blue snowbirds is heard again.
A partridge goes off on Fair Haven Hill-side with a sudden whir like the wad of a six-pounder, keeping just level with the tops of the sprouts. These birds and quails go off like a report.To stay in the house all day, such reviving spring days as the past have been, bending over a stove and gnawing one's heart, seems to me as absurd as for a woodchuck to linger in his burrow. We have not heard the news then! Sucking the claws of our philosophy when there is game to be had!
The Cliff woods are comparatively silent. Not yet the woodland birds, except, perhaps, the woodpecker, so far as it migrates; only the orchard and river birds have arrived.
Probably the improvements of men thus advance the season. This is the Bahamas and the tropics or turning point to the redpoll. Is not the woodpecker (downy?) our first woodland bird? Come to see what effects the frost and snow and rain have produced on decaying trees, what trunks will drum.
That is an in
teresting morning when one first uses the warmth of the sun instead of fire; bathes in the sun, as anon in the river; eschewing fire, draws up to a garret window and warms his thoughts at nature's great central fire, as does the buzzing fly by his side.
Like it, too, our muse, wiping the dust off her long-unused wings, goes blundering through the cobweb of criticism, more dusty still, what venerable cobweb is that, which has hitherto escaped the broom, whose spider is invisible, but the North American Review? — and carries away the half of it.
No sap flows from the maples I cut into, except that one in Lincoln.
What means it? Hylodes Pickeringii, a name that is longer than the frog itself! A description of animals, too, from a dead specimen only, as if, in a work on man, you were to describe a dead man only, omitting his manners and customs, his institutions and divine faculties, from want of opportunity to observe them, suggesting, perchance, that the colors of the eye are said to be much more brilliant in the living specimen, and that some cannibal, your neighbor, who has tried him on his table, has found him to be sweet and nutritious, good on the gridiron.
Having had no opportunity to observe his habits, because you do not live in the country.
Only dindons and dandies.
Nothing is known of his habits.
Food : seeds of wheat, beef, pork, and potatoes.
P. M. — To Martial Miles Meadow, by boat to Nut Meadow Brook.
Launched my new boat. It is very steady, too steady for me; does not toss enough and communicate the motion of the waves. Beside, the seats are not well arranged; when there are two in it, it requires a heavy stone in the stern to trim. But it holds its course very well with a side wind from being so flat from stem to stern.
The cranberries now make a show under water, and I always make it a point to taste a few.
Fresh clamshells have been left by the muskrats at various heights.
C. says he saw a painted tortoise yesterday. Very likely.
We started two ducks feeding behind a low spit of meadow. From Brooks's plates I should think them widgeons. [Brown thinks them sheldrakes.] They had the grayish-white breasts of the wood duck. They look as if they had dropped from heaven, motionless.
Saw a green grasshopper and a common caterpillar, also another beetle similar to that of yesterday, except that this was a sort of slate-color with two or three fawn-colored marks on each wing-case.
The spearheads of the skunk cabbage are now quite conspicuous. I see that many flowers have been destroyed by the cold. In no case is the spathe unrolled, and I think it is not yet in blossom.
At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty.
I see the Emys guttata with red spots. Some which I think to be the same sex have striated scales, while others are smooth above. What I take to be the female has a flat-edged shell as well as depressed sternum. The yellow spots appear like some yellow wood let in. The spots are brightest when they are in the water. They are in couples.
C. saw a frog.
Some willows will be out in a day or two. Silvery catkins of all sizes shine afar.
The two white feathers of the blue snowbird contrast prettily with the slate.
Returning to river, the water is blue as blue ink from this side. Hubbard's field a smooth russet bank lit by the setting sun and the pale skim-milk sky above.
I told Stacy the other day that there was another volume of De Quincey's Essays (wanting to see it in his library).
"I know it " says he, "but I shan't buy any more of them, for nobody reads them."
I asked what book in his library was most read.
He said, “The Wide, Wide World.”
In a little dried and bleached tortoiseshell about an inch and three quarters long, I can easily study his anatomy and the house he lives in. His ribs are now distinctly revealed under his lateral scales, slanted like rafters to the ridge of his roof, for his sternum is so large that his ribs are driven round upon his back.
It is wonderful to see what a perfect piece of dovetailing his house is, the different plates of his shell fitting into each other by a thousand sharp teeth or serrations, and the scales always breaking joints over them so as to bind the whole firmly together, all parts of his abode variously inter-spliced and dovetailed.
An architect might learn much from a faithful study of it.
There are three large diamond-shaped openings down the middle of the sternum, covered only by the scales, through [ which ], perhaps, he feels, he breasts the earth. His roof rests on four stout posts.This young one is very deep in proportion to its breadth. The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches.
The bæomyces is not yet dried up.
So serene and joyful and expectant a mood. See September 2. 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood.")
The spearheads of the skunk cabbage are now quite conspicuous. . . .it is not yet in blossom. See March 22, 1860; ("The phenomena of an average March . . . The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d)"); March 21, 1858 ("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating, according to the condition in which the winter leaves the crust of the meadow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage
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