A Book of the Seasons: March 10.

March 10.

There is a season

when daily we expect spring.

To-day it arrives.

March 10, 1853

Drizzling and misty
weather almost April-like.
Expect to hear geese.
March 10, 1854

"I respect the skunk 

as a human being in a 

very humble sphere." 

 March 10, 1854

To-day they are here
and yesterday they were not.
First water bugs out.
March 10, 1855

The snow hard and dry
now squeaking under the feet –
excellent sleighing.
March 10, 1856

The weather is almost April-like. We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese. March 10, 1854

 But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede . . . to-day they are here and yesterday they were not. March 10, 1855
It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. 

You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. March 10, 1855


At the end of winter there is a season in which are are daily expecting spring, and finally a day when it arrives. March 10, 1853

The earth is perhaps two thirds bare to-day. March 10, 1852

Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins, then the pushing up of skunk-cabbage spathes (and pads at the bottom of water). March 10, 1853

By John Hosmer's ditch by the riverside I see the skunk-cabbage springing freshly, the points of the spathes just peeping out of the ground. March 10, 1853

Thermometer at 7 A. M. 6° below zero.. . . Thermometer +9° at 3.30 P. M. (the same when I return at five). The snow hard and dry, squeaking under the feet; excellent sleighing. March 10, 1856

10 P. M.—Thermometer at zero. March 10, 1856

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 © 2009-2018