How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early!

April 28. 

Surveying the Tommy Wheeler farm.

April 28, 2017

Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye. 

The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal. 

Mr. Newton, with whom I rode, thought that there was a peculiar kind of sugar maple which he called the white; knew of a few in the middle of Framingham and said that there was one on our Common. 

How promising a simple, unpretending, quiet, some what reserved man, whether among generals or scholars or farmers! How rare an equanimity and serenity which are an encouragement to all observers! Some youthfulness, some manliness, some goodness. Like Tarbell, a man apparently made a deacon on account of some goodness, and not on account of some hypocrisy and badness as usual. 

Is not the Hubbard Ditch plant the same I see in a Nut Meadow pool, and a remarkable evergreen? with much slime and many young snails on it? 

I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that, from J. P. Brown’s wood bounding on Dugan. It is not a note, nor a bird, to attract attention; only suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further. 

See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge.  

Many Anemone nemorosa in full bloom at the further end of Yellow Thistle Meadow, in that warm nook by the brook, some probably a day or two there. I think that they are thus early on account of Miles’s dam having broken away and washed off all the snow for some distance there, in the latter part of the winter, long before it melted elsewhere. - It is a warm corner under the south side of a wooded hill, where they are not often, if ever before, flooded. 

As I was measuring along the Marlborough road, a fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. How daring, even rash, Nature appears, who sends out butterflies so early! Sardanapalus-like, she loves extremes and contrasts.

I began to survey the meadow there early, before Miles’s new mill had been running long this Monday morning and flooded it, but a great stream of water was already rushing down the brook, and it almost rose over our boots in the meadow before we had done. 

Observing the young pitch pines by the road south of Loring’s lot that was so heavily wooded, George Hubbard remarked that if they were cut down oaks would spring up, and sure enough, looking across the road to where Loring’s white pines recently stood so densely, the ground was all covered with young oaks. 

Mem. — Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods which I remember, and see what has sprung up; e. g. pitch pines on Thrush Alley and the white pines on Cliffs, also at Baker’s chestnuts, and the chestnut lot on the Tim. Brooks farm. 

This was a very pleasant or rather warm day, looking a little rainy, but on our return the wind changed to easterly, and I felt the cool, fresh sea-breeze. 

This has been'a remarkably pleasant, and I think warm, spring. We have not had the usual sprinklings of snow, having had so much in the winter, — none since I can remember. There is none to come down out of the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1856

Pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, —seeing with the side of the eye. See April 28, 1858 ("While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound . . ., I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road,"); See also, e.g. September 13, 1852 ("Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 (" It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 ("It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came . . .to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.")

A fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch the year about. See April 24, 1855 ("That fine slaty-blue butterfly, bigger than the small red, in wood-paths."); March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me."); March 10, 1855; ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. . . . But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")

A bird suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further.  See April 27, 1855 ("The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes."); See also August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.”); September 17, 1857 (“How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone.!”); March 23, 1856 ("By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

See, but not yet hear, the familiar chewink amid the dry leaves amid the underwood on the meadow’s edge. See April 26, 1854  ("Hear the first chewink hopping and chewinking among the shrub oaks."); April 26, 1855 ("See and hear chewinks, — all their strains; the same date with last year, by accident"): April 26, 1858 (" See a chewink (male) in the Kettell place woods."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink  (Rufous-sided Towhee)

Let me look at the site of some thick pine woods. . .and see what has sprung up. . . . See October 27, 1860 ("I have now examined many dense pine woods, both pitch and white, and several oak woods, and I do not hesitate to say that oak seedlings under one foot high are very much more abundant under the pines than under the oaks. They prevail and are countless under the pines, while they are hard to find under the oaks.")