A Book of the Seasons: March 23.

March 23

For a week past elm 

buds have been swollen–willow 

catkins have put out. 

March 23, 1851

Heard this forenoon a

pleasant jingling note from the

slate-colored junco.

March 23, 1852

I have a slight dry

headache as the result of

all this observing.

March 23, 1853

Birds active in yard

heard now all together on

apple trees these days.

March 23, 1854

My flying squirrel 

up a slender maple springs 

off and skims downward. 

March 23, 1855

The eternity

that I detect in Nature

I see in myself.

March 23, 1856

See something stirring

amid the dead leaves at the 

bottom of a ditch.

March 23, 1858

Sitting on this rock

we hear the first wood frog’s croak

and begin to dream.

March 23, 1859

Spring has a beauty –

beauty we would not exchange

for that of summer.

March 23, 1859

Small dark-based spring clouds

mostly in rows parallel

with the horizon.

March 23, 1860

 

March 23, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

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