A springlike afternoon.

January 25.


P. M. — To Flint's Pond, down railroad.

There is something springlike in this afternoon. In winter, after middle, we are interested in what is springlike. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.

The banks seem to lie in the embrace of the sun. The ground is partly bare. The cress is fresh and green at the bottoms of the brooks.

What is that long-leaved green plant in the brook in Hosmer's meadow on the Turnpike?

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.

There are temporary ponds in the fields made by the rain and melted snow, which hardly have time [to] freeze, they soak up so fast.

As I go up Bare Hill, there being only snow enough there to whiten the ground, the last year's stems of the blueberry (vacillans) give a pink tinge to the hillside, reminding me of red snow, though they do not semble it.

I am surprised to see Flint's Pond a quarter part open, — the middle. Walden, which froze much later, is nowhere open. But Flint's feels the wind and is shallow.

I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds, an inch and more in diameter, with short, apparently abortive leaves from some. The leaves were nearly all single, as in the plants of one or two years' growth, and were finely serrate or toothed, pectinate (?).

On the lot I surveyed for Weston I found the chestnut oak (though the teeth are sharper than E.'s plate), a handsome leaf, still on the young trees. I had taken it for a chestnut before. It is hard to distinguish them by the trunk alone.

I found some barberry sprouts where the bushes had been cut down not long since, and they were covered with small withered leaves be set with stiff prickles on their edges, and you could see the thorns, as it were gradually passing into leaves, being, as one stage, the nerves of the leaf alone, — starlike and branched thorns, gradually, as. you descended the stem, getting some pulp between them. I suppose it was owing to the shortening them in.

I still pick chestnuts.

Some larger ones proved to contain double meats, divided, as it were arbitrarily, as with a knife, each part having the common division without the brown skin transverse to this.


The pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, they are so foreign to the streets, or even the woods; handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty which separates [them] by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock, at least a day old, which we see.

They are as foreign as Arabia to our Concord life, as if the two ends of the earth had come together. These are not green like the pines, or gray like the stones, or blue like the sky; but they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stones.

It is surprising that these fishes are caught here. They are something tropical. That in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims!

They are true topazes, inasmuch as you can only conjecture what place they came from. The pearls of Walden, some animalized Walden water. I never chanced to see this kind of fish in any market.

With a few convulsive quirks they give up their diluted ghosts.

I have noticed that leaves are green and violets bloom later where a bank has been burnt over in the fall, as if the fire warmed it. I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica.

Young white oaks retain their leaves, and large ones on their lower parts.

• Swamp white oak (?)
• Very young rock chestnut oaks 
• The little chinquapin (?) 
• The bear oak 
• The scarlet oak (?) 
• The red 
• The black (?), young trees 
• The witch-hazel, more or less 
• Carpinus Americana 
• Ostrya Virginica, somewhat 
• Sweet-fern, more or less 
• Andromeda 
• Andromeda, panicled (?)
• Kalmia latifolia 
• Kalmia angustifolia 
• Cranberry 

The above are such as I think of which wear their leaves conspicuously now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1853

There is something springlike in this afternoon. See January 25, 1852 ("It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon . . . The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer.") ); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Warmth of the Sun;'; Compare January 25, 1854 ("A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens But this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy. "); January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°, ours in bulb; but about seven, ours was at -8° and Smith's at -24; ours therefore at first about -23°.")

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”)

 I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds. See January 23, 1852 ("I see where . . . in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow"); March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .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?")

The pickerel of Walden! See January 29, 1853("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon . . .all the fishes which in habit this pond, are as much handsomer than ordinary, as the water is purer than that of other ponds.") See  also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel and Walden ("Ah, the pickerel of Walden! . . . ")

I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica. See December 23, 1855 ("At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, mullein, columbine, veronica, thyme-leaved sandwort, spleenwort, strawberry, buttercup, radical johnswort, mouse-ear, radical pinweeds, cinquefoils, checkerberry, Wintergreen, thistles, catnip, Turritis strictae specially fresh and bright."); 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"); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed."); February 27, 1860 ("Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle")