I do not know at first what it is that charms me

March 27. 

There is no snow now visible from my window except on the heel of a bank in the swallow hole behind Dennis’s. A sunny day, but rather cold air.

8.30 A. M. — Up Assabet in boat. 

At last I push myself gently through the smooth and sunny water, sheltered by the Island woods and hill, where I listen for birds, etc. There I may expect to hear a woodpecker tapping the rotten aspen tree. There I pause to hear the faint voice of some early bird amid the twigs of the still wood-side. You are pretty sure to hear a woodpecker early in the morning over these still waters. 

But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the river side, and I push out into wind and current. 

Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge. The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th. That would be about fifteen days earlier than last year. 

I find a very regular elliptical rolled stone in the freshly (last fall) plowed low ground there, evidently brought from some pond‘or seaside. It is about seven inches long. The Indians prized such a stone, and I have found many of them where they haunted. Commonly one or both ends will be worn, showing that they have used it as a pestle or hammer. 

As I go up the Assabet, I see two Emys insculpta on the bank in the sun, and one picta. They are all rather sluggish, and I can paddle up and take them up. 

Found on the edge of Dodge’s Brook, about midway, in the cedar field, what I did not hesitate to regard as an Emys insculpta, but thickly spotted with rusty-yellowish spots on the scales above, and the back was singularly depressed. Was it a variety? It looked like a very old turtle, though not unusually large; the shell worn pretty smooth beneath. I could count more than thirty striae above. When it dropped into the brook, I saw that the rusty-yellow spots served admirably to conceal it, for while the shell was bronze-colored (for a ground work), the rusty-yellow spots were the color of the sandy and pebbly bottom of the brook. It was very differently shaped from the shell I have, and Storer does not mention yellow spots. 

Hear a lark in that meadow. Twitters over it on quivering wing and awakes the slumbering life of the meadow. 

The turtle and frog peep stealthily out and see the first lark go over. 

Farmer was plowing a level pasture, unplowed for fourteen years, but in some places the frost was not quite out. Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago. 

I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. 

I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory. 

I saw quail-tracks some two months ago, much like smaller partridge-tracks. 

Farmer describes a singular track in the snow the past winter from near his house to Annursnack. Traced it in all five or six miles to a hemlock on the west side, and there he lost it. It travelled like a mink; made a track with all its four feet together, about as big as that of a horse’s foot, eighteen inches apart more or less. Wondered if it was a pine marten.

Men talk to me about society as if I had none and they had some, as if it were only to be got by going to the sociable or to Boston.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply, for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

Pickerel begin to dart in shallows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1857

I would fain make two reports in my Journal,. . . The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory. See notes to March 24, 1857 ("If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times.");  and March 28, 1857 ("Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.")

Pickerel begin to dart in shallows. See  March 22, 1860 ("Pickerel begin to dart in shallows. ");  March 30, 1855  ("The pickerel begin to dart from the shallowest parts not frozen. "); Apri 1, 1858 ("Far up in still shallows, disturb pickerel and perch, etc. They apparently touch the muddy bottom as they dart out, muddying the water here and there."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

There is no snow now

visible from my window –

A cold sunny day.