A crevice in the sky.

March 2

Another still, warm, beautiful day like yesterday. 

Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind through a crevice in the sky, which, like a cracked blue saucer, overlaps the woods. 

Such are the first rude notes which prelude the summer’s quire, learned of the whistling March wind.

A crevice in the sky

March 2, 2022

Where the last year's shoots or tops of the young white maples, at the Salix Purshiana shore, are brought together, as I walk, into a mass, a quarter of a mile off, with the sun on them, they present a fine dull- scarlet streak. Young twigs are thus more florid than the old wood, as if from their nearness to the flower, or like the complexion of children. 

You see thus a fine dash of red or scarlet against the distant hills, which near at hand or in their midst is wholly unobservable. 

I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of a bluebird from the old orchard across the river.  I love to look now at the fine grained russet hillsides in the sun, ready to relieve and contrast with the azure of the bluebirds. 

I made a burning-glass of ice, which produced a slight sensation of warmth on the back of my hand, but was so untrue that it did not concentrate the rays to a sufficiently small focus.

Returning over Great Fields, found half a dozen arrowheads, one with three scallops in the base. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1855

Another still, warm, beautiful day like yesterday, See March 1, 1855 ("It is a very pleasant and warm day, the finest yet. ")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Hear two hawks scream. See March 2, 1856 ("I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The Hawks of March

The whistling March wind. See March 4, 1860 ("The last three have been true March days for wind.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: March is famous for its winds

I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of a bluebird. See March 1, 1855 ("We go listening for bluebirds, but only hear crows and chickadees"); March 2, 1859 ("The bluebird comes and with his warble drills the ice and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

I love to look now at the fine grained russet hillsides in the sun. See March 5, 1855 ("This strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Brown Season

Arrowheads. See Stonefruit and March 28, 1859 ("It is now high time to look for arrowhead.  I spend many hours every spring gathering the crop which the melting snow and rain have washed bare.. . . Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America. ")

March 2.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 2

Two hawks scream like wind 

through a crevice in the sky –

that cracked blue saucer.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A crevice in the sky

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 ©  2009-2025

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