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| March 8, 2019 |
A rainy day. P. M. — To Hill in rain.
To us snow and cold seem a mere delaying of the spring. How far we are from understanding the value of these things in the economy of Nature! The earth is still mostly covered with ice and snow.
As usual, I notice large pools of greenish water in the fields, on an icy bottom, which cannot owe their greenness to the reflected blue mingled with the yellowish light at sundown, as I supposed in the case of the green ice and water in clear winter days, for I see the former now at midday and in a rain-storm, when no sky is visible. I think that these green pools over an icy bottom must be produced by the yellow or common earth stain in the water mingling with the blue which is reflected from the ice. Many pools have so large a proportion of this yellow tinge as not to look green but yellow. The stain, the tea, of withered vegetation — grass and leaves — and of the soil supplies the yellow tint.
But perhaps those patches of emerald sky, sky just tinged with green, which we sometimes see, far in the horizon or near it, are produced in the same way as I thought the green ice was, — some yellow glow reflected from a cloud mingled with the blue of the atmosphere. One might say that the yellow of the earth mingled with the blue of the sky to make the green of vegetation.
I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow which fell on the 4th, and also settled an inch into it, and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about, or, being opened, have closed over a cavity.
Many scales rest amid the needles.
There is no track on the snow, which is soft, but the scales must have been dropped within a day or two. I see near one pine, however, the fresh track of a partridge and where one has squatted all night. Tracks might possibly have been obliterated by the rapid melting of the snow the last day or two.
Yet I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?
There is a fine freezing rain with strong wind from the north; so I keep along under shelter of hills and woods, along their south sides, in my india-rubber coat and boots.
Under the south edge of Woodis Park, in the low ground, I see many radical leaves of the Solidago altissima and another — I am pretty sure it is the S. stricta — and occasionally also of the Aster imdulatus, and all are more or less lake beneath. The first, at least, have when bruised a strong scent. Some of them have recently grown decidedly.
So at least several kinds of goldenrods and asters have radical leaves lake-colored at this season.
The common strawberry leaves, too, are quite fresh and a handsome lake- color beneath in many cases.
There are also many little rosettes of the radical leaves of the Epilobium coloratum, half brown and withered, with bright-green centres, at least. And even the under side of some mullein leaves is lake or crimson also.
There is but a narrow strip of bare ground reaching a few rods into the wood along the south edge, but the less ground there is bare, the more we make of it.
Such a day as this, I resort where the partridges, etc., do — to the bare ground and the sheltered sides of woods and hills — and there explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing. If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure.
There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out.
I go looking for green radical leaves.
What a dim and shadowy existence have now to our memories the fair flowers whose localities they mark! How hard to find any trace of the stem now, after it has been flattened under the snows of the winter! I go feeling with wet and freezing fingers amid the withered grass and the snow for these prostrate stems, that I may reconstruct the plant.
But greenness so absorbs our attention that sometimes I do not see the former rising from the midst of those radical leaves when it almost puts my eyes out.
The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright.
I see there a dead white pine, some twenty-five feet high, which has been almost entirely stripped of its bark by the woodpeckers.
Where any bark is left, the space between it and the wood is commonly closely packed with the gnawings of worms, which appear to have consumed the inner bark. But where the bark is gone, the wood also is eaten to some depth, and there are numerous holes penetrating deep into the wood.
Over all this portion, which is almost all the tree, the woodpeckers have knocked off the bark and enlarged the holes in pursuit of the worms.
The fine rain with a strong north wind is now forming a glaze on my coat. When I get home the thermometer is at 29°. So a glaze seems to be formed when a fine rain is falling with the thermometer very little below the freezing-point.
Men of science, when they pause to contemplate "the power, wisdom, and goodness" of God, or, as they sometimes call him, "the Almighty Designer," speak of him as a total stranger whom it is necessary to treat with the highest consideration. They seem suddenly to have lost their wits.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1859
I see near one pine, however, the fresh track of a partridge and where one has squatted all night. See March 8, 1857 ("A partridge goes off from amid the pitch pines.")
Such a day as this, I explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing. See February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.”); January 27, 1858 ("Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward."); see April 29, 1852 (“The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.”)
If there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage. See December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”)
The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright. See January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew")
Men of science speak of him as a total stranger whom it is necessary to treat with the highest consideration. They seem suddenly to have lost their wits. See March 5, 1852 ("It is encouraging to know that, though every kernel of truth has been carefully swept out of our churches, there yet remains the dust of truth on their walls, so that if you should carry a light into them they would still, like some powder-mills, blow up at once.")
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