I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains.

April 4. 

Clear, cold, and very windy; wind north west. 

For a fortnight past, or since the frost began to come out, I have noticed the funnel-shaped holes of the skunk in a great many places and their little mincing tracks in the sand. Many a grub and beetle meets its fate in their stomachs. 

Methinks the peculiar and interesting Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off — as this year the fore part of March — till the frost is generally (or entirely ?) out. Perhaps it will be through the first week of April this year. Ordinary years it must be somewhat later. 

The surface of the earth is never so completely saturated with wet as during this period, for the frost a few inches beneath holds all the ice and snow that are melted and the rain, and an unusual amount of rain falls. All plants, therefore, that love moisture and coolness, like mosses and lichens, are in their glory, but also [?] I think that the very withered grass and weeds, being wet, are blooming at this season. 
The conspicuous reddish brown of the fallen brakes is very rich, contrasting with the paler brown of oak leaves.

 Such an appetite have we for new life that we begin by nibbling the very crust of the earth. We betray our vegetable and animal nature and sympathies by our delight in water. We rejoice in the full rills, the melting snow, the copious spring rains and the freshets, as if we were frozen earth to be thawed, or lichens and mosses, expanding and reviving under this influence. The osier bark now, as usual, looks very yellow when wet, and the wild poplar very green. 

P. M. — To Cliffs. 

Those striped snakes of the 30th were found (several in all) on west side the railroad causeway, on the sand, which is very warm. It would seem, then, that they come out in such places soon after the frost is out. The railroad men who were cutting willows there to set on the sides of the Deep Cut, to prevent the gullying there, came across them. 

The epigaea looks as if it would open in two or three days at least, — showing much color and this form: The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower. These plants blossom by main strength, as it were, or the virtue that is in them, — not growing by water, as most early flowers, — in dry copses. 

I see several earthworms to-day under the shoe of the pump, on the platform. They may have come up through the cracks from the well where the warm air has kept them stirring. 

On the barren railroad causeway, of pure sand, grow chiefly sallows, a few poplars, and sweet-fern and blackberry vines. 

When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold. 

There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1859

 I have noticed the funnel-shaped holes of the skunk in a great many places and their little mincing tracks in the sand. See March 28, 1855 ("The skunk’s nose has made small round holes such as a stick or cane would make."); April 2, 1856 ("There are many holes in the surface of the bare, springy ground amid the rills, made by the skunks or mice, and now their edges are bristling with feather like frostwork, as if they were the breathing-holes or nostrils of the earth."). See also  note to February 25, 1860 ("They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.")

Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off — as this year the fore part of March. Compare March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . . Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.")

Those striped snakes of the 30th were found (several in all) on west side the railroad causeway, on the sand, which is very warm. See April 3, 1859 ("C. says he saw a striped snake on the 30th") See also April 2, 1858 ("At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake.. . . No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out"); April 9, 1856 ("Saw a striped snake, which probably I had scared into the water from the warm railroad bank”); April 16, 1855 (A striped snake rustles down a dry open hillside where the withered grass is long. "); April 20, 1854 ("A striped snake on a warm, sunny bank.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Striped Snake

The cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold. See April 4, 1852 (" I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, and though the ground is bare from the seashore to their base, I presume it is covered with snow from their base to the Icy Sea. I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek."); April 4, 1855 ("far beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.”). See also April 12, 1855 ("the mountains are again thickly clad with snow, and, the wind being northwest, this coldness is accounted for.”); April 30, 1860 ("It snowed there a little, but not here. This is connected with the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country.")