Tuesday, March 8, 2016

A Book of the Seasons: March 8


The distant view of
flooded meadows all dark blue—
surrounded by snow.
March 8, 1853 

A sound reminds me –
a robin in misty rain.
April days, past years.
March 8, 1855

Above railroad bridge
a small flock of grackles seen
on the willow-row. 

See a small flock of 
grackles on the willow-row 
above railroad bridge.

Some years winter may
end about the first of March —
other years April. 
March 8, 1860


Steady rain on the roof in the night, suggesting April-like warmth. This will help melt the snow and ice and take the frost out of the ground.  March 8, 1854

A spring sheen on the snow. The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. The snow pure white, but full of water and dissolving through the heat of the sun.  March 8, 1853


There is something of spring in all seasons. March 8, 1860

The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter. March 8, 1853

The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright.  March 8, 1859 


I still see the bluish bloom on thimble-berry vines quite fresh. March 8, 1855

Am surprised to see a cluster of those large leek buds on a rock in Clark’s meadow between the oak and my house that was. March 8, 1855

Under the south edge of Woodis Park, in the low ground, I see many radical leaves of the Solidago altissima and another — I am pretty sure it is the S. stricta — and occasionally also of the Aster imdulatus, and all are more or less lake beneath. The first, at least, have when bruised a strong scent. Some of them have recently grown decidedly.  So at least several kinds of goldenrods and asters have radical leaves lake-colored at this season.   March 8, 1859

Saw some very large willow buds expanded (their silk) to thrice the length of their scales, indistinctly carved or waved with darker lines around them. They look more like, are more of, spring than anything I have seen. March 8, 1853

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. March 8, 1855


Another fair day with easterly wind. 
March 8, 1855

The distant view of the open flooded Sudbury meadows, all dark blue, surrounded by a landscape of white snow, gave an impulse to the dormant sap in my veins. March 8, 1853

This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it.  The blue river, now almost completely open, admonishes me to be swift. March 8, 1855

Stopping in a sunny and sheltered place on a hillock in the woods, — for it is raw in the wind, — I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, —— a sort of tche tche tche tche tche. March 8, 1855


This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years.    March 8, 1855

The tree sparrows sing a little on this still sheltered and sunny side of the hill, but not elsewhere. March 8, 1857

Such a day as this, I resort . . . to the bare ground and the sheltered sides of woods and hills — and there explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing. March 8, 1859

Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. March 8, 1860


Saw the F. hyemalis March 4th. March 8, 1861

Saw two or three hawks sailing. March 8, 1853

Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season. March 8, 1857

I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter, Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird. March 6, 1858


See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. March 8, 1860

How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps.March 8, 1860

 Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last.March 8, 1860

 At length, on my very near approach, they fit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. March 8, 1860

This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see. March 8, 1860


When I cut a white pine twig the crystalline sap instantly exudes. How long has it been thus? March 8, 1857

 A partridge goes off from amid the pitch pines. It lifts each wing so high above its back and flaps so low, and withal so rapidly, that they present the appearance of a broad wheel, almost a revolving sphere, as it whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun.  March 8, 1857

There is no track on the snow, which is soft, but the scales must have been dropped within a day or two. I see near one pine, however, the fresh track of a partridge and where one has squatted all night.   March 8, 1859


Heard the first flies buzz in the sun on the south side of the house. March 8, 1853

Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, now, before any spring bird has arrived. March 8, 1853

I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam. March 8, 1855


Then probably it dashed through the birches. March 8, 1855

And so they fetch the year about. March 8, 1855

Just from the South Shore, perchance, it alighted not in the village street, but in this remote birch wood.March 8, 1855

I walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc. March 8, 1855 

As the ice melts in the swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence of the sun, - the most prepared for spring—to look at— of any plant. March 8, 1855

You cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days . . .There is something of spring in all seasons.  March 8, 1860

I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown. March 8, 1855

Went to a concert of instrumental music this evening. March 8, 1858

 The sounds of the clarionet were the most liquid and melodious.   March 8, 1858

 Its sounds entered every cranny of the hall and filled it to repletion with sweet liquid melody . . . pure melody, flowing in its own invisible and impalpable channels. March 8, 1858

If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure.  March 8, 1859

There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out. March 8, 1859

In some respects our spring, in its beginning, fluctuates a whole month, so far as it respects ice and snow, walking, sleighing, etc., etc.; for some years winter may be said to end about the first of March, and other years it may extend into April. March 8, 1860

Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains. March 8, 1854


I just heard peculiar faint sounds made by the air escaping from a stick which I had just put into my stove. March 8, 1861

The note of a robin
reminds me of rainy
misty April days.



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 © 2009-2060

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