Warn wind, blue haze and russet earth

March 5.

To Beck Stow’s. 

A strong but warm southwesterly wind has produced a remarkable haze. As I go along by Sleepy Hollow, 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. 

There was the less thick, more remotely blue, haze of the 11th February, succeeded by a thaw, beginning on the 14th. Will not rain follow this much thicker haze?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1855

A strong but warm southwesterly wind has produced a remarkable haze. . . . a new season has come. See February 21, 1855 (“What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? The wind is rapidly drying up earth . . . How much light there is in the sky and on the surface of the russet earth! ”); March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air yesterday and to-day, as if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed amid our wintry hills? . . .”); March 12, 1854 (“ . . .that peculiar scenery of March . . . is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”)