April 5
Fast-Day. 9 A. M. —To Sudbury line by boat.
A still and rather warm morning, with a very thick haze concealing the sun and threatening to turn to rain.
April 5, 2015
Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge, and soon after a hen-hawk from the Clamshell oaks. The last looks larger on his perch than flying.
The snipe too, then, like crows, robins, blackbirds, and hens, is found near the waterside, where is the first spring (e.g. alders and white maples, etc., etc), and there too especially are heard the song and tree sparrows and pewees, and even the hen-hawk at this season haunts there for his prey.
Inland, the groves are almost completely silent as yet. The concert of song and tree sparrows at willow-row is now very full, and their different notes are completely mingled.
See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over the river. He, too, is attracted here by the early insects that begin to be seen over the water. See this forenoon a great many of those little fuzzy gnats in the air.
It being Fast-Day, we on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns.
It is a sober, moist day, with a circle round the sun, which I can only see in the reflection in the water.
The river appears to have risen still last night, owing to the rain of the 1st, and many spring cranberries are washed together at last, and now many new seeds, apparently of sedges, are loosened and washed up.
Now that for the most part it is melted quite to its edge, and there is no ice there, the water has a warmer, April look close under my eye. Now is the first time this year to get spring cranberries.
In many places now the river wreck is chiefly composed of Juncus militaris. Was it so in fall?
There is a strong muskrat scent from many a shore. See a muskrat floating, which may have been drowned when the river was so high in midwinter, —for this is the second I have seen, —with the rabbit.
I saw yesterday a yellow-spot and see to-day a painted tortoise, already out on the bank on a tuft of grass.
The muskrat-hunter sits patiently with cocked gun, waiting for a muskrat to put out his head amid the button-bushes. He gets half a dozen in such a cruise.
Bush our boat with hemlock to get near some ducks, but another boat above, also bushed, scares them.
Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.
Hear the cry of the peacock again.
By 4 P. M. it begins to rain gently or mizzle.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1855
Fast Day. ~ A traditional day of fasting and prayer in New England celebrated on the third Monday in April, was replaced in Massachusetts by Patriots' Day, commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Juncus militaris. ~ Bayonet rush. Inhabits shallow water of lakes and slow-moving rivers. Its fruit is a capsule, with at least three seeds in it.
We on the water hear the loud and musical sound of bells ringing for church in the surrounding towns. See April 15, 1855 ("The sound of church bells, at various distances, in Concord and the neighboring towns, sounds very sweet to us on the water this still day. It is the song of the villages heard with the song of the birds."); see also May 3, 1852 ("There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike. . . like a flower of sound. ") ; Walden ("Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles
The muskrat-hunter . . . gets half a dozen in such a cruise. See April 7, 1853 ("It is Fast-Day, and many gunners are about the shore, which makes them shy. I never cross the meadow at this season without seeing ducks")
That low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.. See April 5, 1854 ("the shrill peep of the hylodes borne to me from afar through the woods"); April 5, 1855 ("Hear from one half-flooded meadow that low, general, hard, stuttering tut tut tut of frogs,—the awakening of the meadow.”); April 5, 1857 ("I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M.");; April 5, 1858 ("The woods resound with the one [R. sylvatica], and the meadows day and night with the other [R. halecina], so that it amounts to a general awakening of the pools and meadows. "); April 5, 1860 (" a very faint distant ring of toads."). See also April 3, 1858 ("This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows."); April 9, 1853 (“The whole meadow resounds, probably from one end of the river to the other, this evening, with this faint, stertorous breathing. It is the waking up of the meadows.")
April 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 5
A sober moist day
with a circle round the sun
seen in reflection.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A circle round the sun.
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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