Columbine already eaten by bees.

April 18.

To Lee’s Cliff by boat. 

A strong northwest wind. The waves were highest off Hubbard’s second grove, where they had acquired their greatest impetus and felt the full force of the wind. Their accumulated volume was less beyond on account of the turn in the river. The greatest undulation is at the leeward end of the longest broad reach in the direction of the wind. I was steering there diagonally across the black billows, my boat inclined so as almost to drink water. 

Scare up the same two black ducks (and twice again). The under sides of their wings show quite light and silvery as they rise in the light. 

Red maple stamens in some places project considerably, and it will probably blossom to-morrow if it is pleasant. 

The farmer neglects his team to watch my sail. 

The slippery elm, with its round rusty woolly buds and pale-brown ashy twigs. 

That pretty, now brown-stemmed moss with green oval fruit. 

Common saxifrage and also early sedge I am surprised to find abundantly out—both—considering their backwardness April 2d. Both must have been out some, i. e. four or five, days half-way down the face of the ledge. 

Crowfoot, apparently two or three days. Antennaria at end of Cliff as you descend, say yesterday. Turritis stricta. 

Columbine, and already eaten by bees. Some with a hole in the side. 

It is worth the while to go there to smell the catnep. I always bring some home for the cat at this season. 

See those great chocolate puffballs burst and diffusing their dust on the side of the hill. 

At the sandy place where I moored my boat, just this side this Cliff, the Selaginella apus is abundant, and on Conantum shore near elms thirty or forty rods below.

Left boat opposite Bittern Cliff. 

Bear-berry grows by path from river, seven rods beyond last pine, south side, now strongly flower budded. 

Observed a large mass of white lily root with the mud washed up, the woolly steel-blue root, with  singular knobs for offshoots and long, large, succulent white roots from all sides, the leaf-buds yellow and lightly rolled up on each side. 

Small sallow next above tristis, three feet high, in path to Walden. 

Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th. 

This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door. 

A small brown wasps’ (?) nest (last year’s, of course) hung to a barberry bush on edge of Lee’s Cliff.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1856


Steering there diagonally across the black billows, my boat inclined so as almost to drink water. See . April 14, 1856 ("The boat, tossed up by the rolling billows, keeps falling again on the waves with a chucking sound which is inspiriting"); April 29, 1856 (" Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it")

Scare up the same two black ducks See April 17, 1856 ("Now I hear ducks rise, and know by their hoarse quacking that they are black ones, and see two going off as if with one mind, along the edge of the wood. .") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

Red maple stamens in some places project considerably. See April 23, 1856 ("The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d.") See also note to April 11, 1860 ("Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out.") Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The farmer neglects his team to watch my sail. March 26, 1855 ("Sail down to the Great Meadows. A strong wind with snow driving from the west and thickening the air. The farmers pause to see me scud before it.")

This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door. See April 18, 1854 ("One[snipe] booms now at 3 p. m."); April 18, 1855 ("The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool."); April 18, 1860 ("Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, ... the average date has been April 4th. See note to March 14, 1860  ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out