The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring

February 24.

February 24, 2018

Clear, but very cold and windy for the season. 

P. M. -To young willow-row near Hunt’s Pond road. 

The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more,—arctic enough to look at. 

The willow-row does not begin to look bright yet. The top two or three feet are red as usual at a distance, the lower parts a rather dull green. 

The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring, showing that the dormant sap is awakened. I now remember a few osiers which I have seen early in past springs, thus brilliantly green and red (or yellow), and it is as if all the landscape and all nature shone. Though the twigs were few which I saw, I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. 

You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them.

Thermometer at 10° at 10 P. M.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1855

Clear, but very cold and windy for the season . . .Thermometer at 10° at 10 P. M. See February 26, 1855 ("Still clear and cold and windy . . .This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more,—arctic enough to look at. See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”)

The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring. See  February 24, 1852 ("The brightness of the willow's bark. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality.");  See also  November 18, 1858 ("Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway"); December 5, 1858 (" On the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice."); March 2, 1860 ('Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. ");  March 20, 1859 ("A rich yellow or orange yellow in the upper three or four feet. This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness"); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them. See March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season")

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The brightening of the willows or of osiers

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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