A Book of the Seasons: March 26.

March 26.

Light reflected from 

mountain-ridges in shaded 

portions of the moon. 

March 26, 1857

Withered tawny grass
now brightly lit by the sun –
fore-glow of the year. 
March 26, 1860

Shadows of ripples

passing over yellow sand

in a sunny brook.

March 26, 1860

The yellow sands of

a lonely brook – the shadows

of rippling water.

 March 26, 1860

A mackerel sky
of pine boughs sunny above
and shaded beneath.
March 26, 1860

March 26, 2018

I lay down on the fine, dry sedge in the sun, in the deep and sheltered hollow a little further on, and when I had lain there ten or fifteen minutes, I heard one fine, faint peep from over the windy ridge between the hollow in which I lay and the swamp, which at first I referred to a bird, and looked round at the bushes which crowned the brim of this hollow to find it, but ere long a regularly but faintly repeated phe-phe-phe-phe revealed the Hylodes Pickeringii. It was like the light reflected from the mountain-ridges within the shaded portions of the moon, forerunner and herald of the spring.  March 26, 1857

One of the most interesting sights this afternoon is the color of the yellow sand in the sun at the bottom of Nut Meadow and Second Division Brooks. The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it. March 26, 1860 

The yellow sands of 

a lonely brook seen through 

the rippling water.

By degrees you pass from heaven to earth up the trunk of the white pine. See the flash of its boughs reflecting the sun, each light or sunny above and shaded beneath, even like the clouds with their dark bases, a sort of mackerel sky of pine boughs. March 26, 1860

The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April.The first part of it, when the frost is rapidly coming out and transient snows are melting, the surface of the earth is saturated with moisture. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses (that commonest one) and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields — withered grass lit by the sun — is the color of a teamster’s coat. March 26, 1860

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 © 2009-2017