We thus commonly antedate the spring more than any other season.

March 2. 

Wednesday. P. M. — To Cassandra Ponds and down river. 

March 1, 2019

It is a remarkably cold day for March, and the river, etc., are frozen as solidly as in the winter and there is no water to be seen upon the ice, as usually in a winter day, apparently because it has chiefly run out from beneath on the meadows and left the ice, for often, as you walk over the meadows, it sounds hollow under your tread. 

I see in the Deep Cut, on the left-hand, or east, side, just beyond the clay, a ravine lately begun, in a slightly different manner from the Clamshell one. The water running down the steep sand-bank (which is some thirty or thirty-five feet high), it being collected from the field above, had worn a channel from four to six inches wide, gradually, through the frozen crust of the sand, which was one to two feet thick, and, reach ing the loose unfrozen sand beneath, had washed it downward, and out through the narrow channel lower down, until quite a cavern was formed, whose bottom was eight or ten feet below the surface, while it was five or six feet wide. But within a few days the crust, thawing, had fallen in, and so the cavern, with its narrow "crack," or skylight, was turned into an open ravine, and there is no telling where the mischief will end. 

The willow catkins by the railroad where you first come in sight of the [sic] have now all (on one or two bushes) crept out about an eighth of an inch, giving to the bushes already a very pretty appearance when you stand on the sunny side, the silvery-white specks contrasting with the black scales. Seen along the twigs, they are somewhat like small pearl buttons on a waist coat. 

Go and measure to what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' the year it is by Nature's clock. 

As I go through the Cassandra Ponds, I look round on the young oak woods still clad with rustling leaves as in winter, with a feeling as if it were their last rustle before the spring, but then I reflect how far away still is the time when the new buds swelling will cause these leaves to fall. 

We thus commonly antedate the spring more than any other season, for we look forward to it with more longing. We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. 

We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water, and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with this distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them toward the rising sun and rubbing them. 

We listen to the February cock-crowing and turkey-gobbling as to a first course, or prelude. 

The bluebird which some woodchopper or inspired walker is said to have seen in that sunny interval between the snow-storms is like a speck of clear blue sky seen near the end of a storm, reminding us of an ethereal region and a heaven which we had forgotten. 

Princes and magistrates are often styled serene, but what is their turbid serenity to that ethereal serenity which the bluebird embodies? His Most Serene Bird-ship! His soft warble melts in the ear, as the snow is melting in the valleys around. The bluebird comes and with his warble drills the ice and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground. 

As the sand flows down the slopes a little way, assuming the forms of foliage where the frost comes out of the ground, so this little rill of melody flows a short way down the concave of the sky. 

The sharp whistle of the blackbird, too, is heard like single sparks or a shower of them shot up from the swamps and seen against the dark winter in the rear.

Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk- cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather. But for the most part, here and generally elsewhere, the spathes are quite small, slender, and closed as yet, or frost bitten. 

The caltha leaves have grown decidedly. They make nearly a handful in one place, above the surface of the springy water, the leaves not yet quite flatted out, but curled up into a narrow ellipse. They barely peep above the water. 

Also what I take to be a kind of cress is quite fresh-looking, as if it had grown a little there. 

The chrysosplenium may have looked as it does, even under the snow, or all winter (?). It already, at any rate, makes pretty (dirty) green beds, about level with the surface of the water. These plants (i. e. first ones) are earlier than any pads, for the brooks, and ditches even, are generally frozen over still, firmly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1859

The willow catkins by the railroad have a very pretty appearance when you stand on the sunny side, the silvery-white specks contrasting with the black scales. Seen along the twigs, they are somewhat like small pearl buttons on a waist coat. See March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)

We listen to the February cock-crowing. See February 11, 1856 (" I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning.”); February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”); February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.”)

Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk-cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather. See March 10, 1853 (“Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins, then the pushing up of skunk-cabbage spathes (and pads at the bottom of water). This is the order I am inclined to, though perhaps any of these may take precedence of all the rest in any particular case.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage