Good solid winter.
Intense cold, deep lasting snows;
clear, tense winter sky.
April 1, 1852
The star-studded sky,
water reflecting the stars.
The dark land between.
April 1, 1853
Warm and showery
April begins like itself,
a burst of melody.
April 1, 1854
Warm rain on the roof
puddles shining in the road,
April comes in true.
April 1, 1855
The snow is so deep
we are confined to the roads
or the river still.
April 1, 1856
True April evening,
A robin or two singing
and it looks like rain.
April 1, 1857
Pre-VEE, the phoebe
sings with emphasis as it
sits over the water.
April 1, 1859
True April evening,
A robin or two singing
and it looks like rain.
April 1, 1857
How to see a hawk
distant in the sky once you
turn your eyes away?
Pre-VEE, the phoebe
sings with emphasis as it
sits over the water.
April 1, 1859
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| April 1, 2018 |
I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come. April 1, 1852
As I come over the Turnpike, the song sparrow's jingle comes up from every part of the meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the blossoms of the spirea, the meadow-sweet, soon to spring. Its cheep is like the sound of opening buds. The sparrow is continually singing on the alders along the brook-side, while the sun is continually setting. April 1, 1852
Saw the fox-colored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith's Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle. April 1, 1852
Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings . . . We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with. April 1, 1852
There will be no moon till toward morning. There are but three elements in the landscape now, -- the star-studded sky, the water, reflecting the stars and the lingering daylight, and the dark narrow land between. A slight mist is rising from the surface of the water. April 1, 1853
The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully. April 1, 1854
The birds sing this warm, showery day after a fortnight's cold with a universal burst and flood of melody. The tree sparrows, hyemalis, and song sparrows are particularly lively and musical in the yard this rainy and truly April day. The air rings with them. April 1, 1854
The month comes in true to its reputation. We wake, though late, to hear the sound of a strong, steady, and rather warm rain on the roof, and see the puddles shining in the road. April 1, 1855
At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft; also the cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, sorrel, saxifrage, etc., etc. They seem to improve the least warmer ray to advance themselves, and they hold all they get. April 1, 1855
On some roads you walk in a path recently shovelled out, with upright walls of snow three or four feet high on each side and a foot of snow beneath you. The drifts on the east side of the depot, which have lain there a great part of the winter, still reach up to the top of the first pane of glass. But, generally speaking . . . the snow is so deep, that we are confined to the roads or the river still. April 1, 1856
Hear a phoebe, and this morning ... It is a true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song. April 1, 1857
See wood turtles coupled on their edges at the bottom, where the stream has turned them up. April 1, 1858
I see six Sternothaerus odoratus in the river thus early. Two are fairly out sunning. One has crawled up a willow. It is evident, then, that they may be earlier in other places or towns than I had supposed, where they are not concealed by such freshets as we have. I took up and smelt of five of these, and they emitted none of their peculiar scent! It would seem, then, that this may be connected with their breeding, or at least with their period of greatest activity. They are quite sluggish now. April 1, 1858
I observed night before last, as often before, when geese were passing over in the twilight quite near, though the whole heavens were still light and I knew which way to look by the honking, I could not distinguish them. It takes but a little obscurity to hide a. bird in the air. How difficult, even in broadest daylight, to discover again a hawk at a distance in the sky when you have once turned your eyes away! April 1, 1858
At the Pokelogan up the Assabet, I see my first phcebe, the mild bird. It flirts its tail and sings pre vit, pre vit, pre vit, pre vit incessantly, as it sits over the water, and then at last, rising on the last syllable, says pre-vEE, as if insisting on that with peculiar emphasis. April 1, 1859
I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. April 1, 1860
As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles -- the first I have noticed — and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, and see where they have travelled over the sand and the mud. This and the previous two days have brought them out in numbers . . . Also see the sternothærus on the bottom. April 1, 1860
The fruit a thinker bears is sentences, - statements or opinions. He seeks to affirm something as true. I am surprised that my affirmations or utterances come to me ready-made, - not fore-thought, - so that I occasionally awake in the night simply to let fall ripe a statement which I had never consciously considered before, and as surprising and novel and agreeable to me as anything can be. As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep. There is such a necessity to make a definite statement that our minds at length do it without our consciousness. April 1, 1860
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle (Emys picta);
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Phoebe
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
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 © 2009-2021
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