P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven.
Though there has been quite a number of light snows, we have had no sleighing fairly since about February 14th. Walden is already on the point of breaking up. In the shallow bays it is melted six or eight rods out, and the ice looks dark and soft.
As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again.
When first in the spring, as you walk over the rustling leaves amid bare and ragged bushes, you hear this at first faint, hard, dry, and short sound, it hardly sounds like the note of an animal. It may have been heard some days.
[The next day at 2.30 P. M., or about the same time, and about the same weather, our thermometer is at 48°.]
I lay down on the fine, dry sedge in the sun, in the deep and sheltered hollow a little further on, and when I had lain there ten or fifteen minutes, I heard one fine, faint peep from over the windy ridge between the hollow in which I lay and the swamp, which at first I referred to a bird, and looked round at the bushes which crowned the brim of this hollow to find it, but ere long a regularly but faintly repeated phe-phe-phe-phe revealed the Hylodes Pickeringii.
It was like the light reflected from the mountain-ridges within the shaded portions of the moon, forerunner and herald of the spring.
At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, though the flower is very little exposed yet, and some still earlier have been killed by frost. Some of those cabbage buds are curved and short like the beak of a bird.
The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it.
The chrysosplenium is very conspicuous and pretty now. This can afford to be forward, it lies so flat and unexposed.
Fair Haven is open; may have been open several days; there is only a little ice on the southeast shore. I sit on the high eastern bank.
Almost every cistus stem has had its bark burst off and left hanging raggedly for an inch or more next the ground by the crystals which formed round it in the fall and winter, but some have escaped.
As I come out of the Spring Woods I see Abiel Wheeler planting peas and covering them up on his warm sandy hillside, in the hollow next the woods. It is a novel sight, that of the farmer distributing manure with a shovel in the fields and planting again.
The earth looks warm and genial again. The sight of the earliest planting with carts in the field so lately occupied with snow is suggestive of the genialness of Nature. I could almost lie down in the furrow and be warmed into her life and growth.
Stopped at Farrar’s little stithy. He is making two nuts to mend a mop with, and when at length he has forged and filed them and cut the thread, he remarks that it is a puttering job and worth a good deal more than he can charge. He has sickness in the house, a daughter in consumption, which he says is a flattering disease, up one day and down the next.
Seeing a monstrous horseshoe nailed against his shop inside, with a little one within it, I asked what that was for. He said that he made the big one when he was an apprentice (of three months’ standing) for a sign, and he picked up the little one the other day in the road and put it within it for the contrast. But he thought that the big one was hardly too big for one of the fore feet of the horse Columbus, which he had seen.
The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time. I saw one hazel catkin much elongated and relaxed. It is surprising always to see this on dry plains or banks where there is so little evidence of life beside.
Farrar spoke of horses driven “tantrum.”
You take your walk some pretty cold and windy, but sunny March day, through rustling woods, perhaps, glad to take shelter in the hollows or on the south side of the hills or woods. When ensconced in some sunny and sheltered hollow, with some just melted pool at its bottom, as you recline on the fine withered sedge, in which the mice have had their galleries, leaving it pierced with countless holes, and are, perchance, dreaming of spring there, a single dry, hard croak, like a grating twig, comes up from the pool.
Such is the earliest voice of the pools, where there is a small smooth surface of melted ice bathing the bare button-bushes or water andromeda or tufts of sedge; such is the earliest voice of the liquid pools, hard and dry and grating. Unless you watch long and closely, not a ripple nor a bubble will be seen, and a marsh hawk will have to look sharp to find one. The notes of the croaking frog and the hylodes are not only contemporary with, but analogous to, the blossoms of the skunk-cabbage and white maple.
Are not March and November gray months?
Men will hardly believe me when I tell them of the thickness of snow and ice at this time last year.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1857
The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time. See March 26, 1860 ("TFair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in ’56, or twenty-three days later. Tried by the skunk-cabbage, this may flower March 2 (‘60) or April 6 or 8 (as in ’55 and ’54), or some five weeks later, — say thirty-six days . . .The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days. That is, tried by the last four phenomena, there may be about a month’s fluctuation, so that March may be said to have receded half-way into February or advanced half-way into April, i. e., it borrows half of February or half of April."); March 27, 1853 ("though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound . . .")
Fair Haven is open; may have been open several days . . . See March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later.”) Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
Are not March and November gray months? See March 30, 1855 (“He must have a great deal of life in him to draw upon, who can pick up a subsistence in November and March. . . . Except for science, do not travel in such a climate as this in November and March.”); March 12, 1854 (“The scenery is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”)
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