Up the hill beyond the brook I sit on a rock below the old trough.

April 21.

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

April 21, 2018

How silent and deserted the woods are! I do not fairly see a chickadee even. Snow with its tracks would make it seem more inhabited. 

As I go up the hill beyond the brook, while the hylodes are heard behind, I perceive the faintest possible flower-like scent as from the earth, reminding me of anemonies and houstonias. Can it be the budded mouse-ears under my feet? Downy-swaddled, they lie along flat to the earth like a child on its mother's bosom.

 I sit on a rock awhile just below the old trough. 

These are those early times when the rich golden-brown tassels of the alders tremble over the brooks — and not a leaf on their twigs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1854

How silent and deserted the woods are! Compare March 29, 1857 ("How empty and silent the woods now, before leaves have put forth or thrushes and warblers are come! Deserted halls, floored with dry leaves, where scarcely an insect stirs as yet.”)

I go up the hill beyond the brook, while the hylodes are heard behind. See March 31, 1857 ("As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

I perceive the faintest possible flower-like scent as from the earth. See April 17, 1852 ("That early yellow smell. The odor of spring, of life developing amid buds, of the earth's epithalamium."); See also note to May 6, 1855 ("Near Jenny Dugan’s, perceive that unaccountable fugacious fragrance, as of all flowers, bursting forth in air . . . It is the general fragrance of the year.”)

Can it be the budded mouse-ears under my feet? See April 29, 1854("The mouse-ear is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now in an April rain, covered with pearly drops. Its corymbs of five heads with one in the centre (all tinged red) look like a breast-pin set with pearls. "); May 6, 1859 ("I perceive a peculiar fragrance in the air . . . like that of vernal flowers or of expanding buds. The ground is covered with the mouse-ear in full bloom.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

The rich golden-brown tassels of the alders tremble over the brooks. See March 20, 1853 (“Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, — the most forward blossom-buds.”); April 16, 1852 (“It is pleasant to walk the windy causeways where the tassels of the alders are dangling and swinging now.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Alders

Up the hill beyond

the brook I sit on a rock

below the old trough.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Up the hill beyond the brook 

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

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