The red maple buds already redden the swamps and the riverside.

March 25.

I forgot to say yesterday that several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. One in Trillium Woods was a favorite because it was so dense and regular, its outline rounded as if it were a moss bed; and another more than two miles from this, at Dugan's, which I went to see yesterday, was then being cut, like the former, to supply charcoal for powder. Dugan does most of this work about the town. The willow hedges by causeways are regularly trimmed and peeled. The small wood brings eight dollars a cord. Alders, also, and poplars are extensively used.

6 A. M. To Brister's Hill.

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. Sitting near together on an oak or pine in the woods or an elm in the village, they keep up a very pleasant, enlivening, and incessant jingling and twittering chill-lill-lill, so that it is difficult to distinguish a single bird's note, – parts of it much like a canary.

This sound advances me furthest toward summer, unless it be the note of the lark, who, by the way, is the most steady singer at present. Notwithstanding the raw and windy mornings, it will sit on a low twig or tussock or pile of manure in the meadow and sing for hours, as sweetly and plaintively as in summer.

I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree.

I thought I heard the note of a robin and of a bluebird from an oak. It proceeded from a small bird about as big as a bluebird] which did not perch like a woodpecker, uttering first some notes robin-like or like the golden robin, then perfect bluebird warbles, and then it flew off with a flight like neither. [Was it not the fox-colored sparrow?] From what I saw and heard afterward I suspected it might be a downy woodpecker.

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water.

When I saw the fungi in my lamp, I was startled and awed, as if I were stooping too low, and should next be found classifying carbuncles and ulcers. Is there not sense in the mass of men who ignore and confound these things, and never see the cryptogamia on the one side any more than the stars on the other? Underfoot they catch a transient glimpse of what they call toad stools, mosses, and frog-spittle, and overhead of the heavens, but they can all read the pillars on a Mexican quarter.

They ignore the worlds above and below, keep straight along, and do not run their boots down at the heel as I do. 

How to keep the heels up I have been obliged to study carefully, turning the nigh foot painfully on side-hills.

I find that the shoemakers, to save a few iron heel-pegs, do not complete the rows on the inside by three or four, — the very place in the whole boot where they are most needed, — which has fatal consequences to the buyer. I often see the tracks of them in the paths. It is as if you were to put no underpinning under one corner of your house.

I have managed to cross very wet and miry places dry-shod by moving rapidly on my heels. I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then.

The various lights in which you may regard the earth, e.g. the dry land as sea bottom, or the sea bottom as a dry down.

Those willow cones appear to be galls, for, cutting open one of the leafy ones, I found a hard core such as are often seen bare, the nucleus of the cone, and in it a grub. This gall had completely checked the extension of the twig, and the leaves had collected and over flowed it as the water at a dam. Perchance when the twig is vigorous and full of sap the cone is leafy; other wise a hard cone.


11 A. M. – To Framingham.

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday.

Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings's new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,-twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread.

Frank's place is on the Concord River within less than ten miles of Whitehall Pond in Hopkinton, one of [the sources], perhaps the principal source, of the river. I thought that a month hence the stream would not be twenty feet wide there.

Mr. Wheeler, auctioneer, of Framingham, told me that the timber of the factory at Saxonville was brought by water to within about one mile of where the mill stands. There is a slight rapid.

Brown says that he saw the north end of Long Pond covered with ice the 22d, and that R. W. E. saw the south end entirely open.

March 25, 2024

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside.

The winter rye greens the ground.

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

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. See March 22, 1859 (" I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow. . .. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. "); March 23, 1852 ("I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.");  April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers")  See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward . . . his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note See March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker."); March 25, 1856 (“There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. ”) See also note to March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring :The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

Several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower"); March 23, 1853 ("The alder catkins, just burst open, are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one revolution in the length of the catkin."); March 26, 1853 ("There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day."); 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 also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water. See March 2, 1860 ("At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome."):  March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); March 4, 1859 ("I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up, and lie just above the surface of the water.  . . (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Brister's Spring

I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then. See July 25, 1853 ("I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually . . . One shoemaker sold us shoe strings made of the hide of a South American jack ass, which he recommended; or rather he gave them to us and added their price to that of the shoes we bought of him. But I could not see that these were any better than the old."); August 5, 1855 ("It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks.")

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. See March 24, 1859 ("C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this!"); March 27 and 28, 1860 ("Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside. See March 28, 1852 ("The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds."); April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops."); April 13, 1854 ('I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days.."); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, . . .and they are of so cheerful and lively a color.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The red maple buds 

already redden the swamps 

and the riverside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The red maple buds redden the swamps

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530325

  

There is something of spring in all seasons.

March 8.

2.30 P. M. — 50°. To Cliffs and Walden.

See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps. Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last. At length, on my very near approach, they fit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. 

This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see, though Channing saw one the 6th. I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet.

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. It may be that they get into that sort of spring-hole in the fall to hibernate, but for some reason die; or perhaps they are always jumping into it in the summer, but at that season are devoured by some animal before they infest the water.

Now and for some days I see farmers walking about their fields, knocking to pieces and distributing the cow dung left there in the fall, that so, with the aid of the spring rains, they fertilize a larger surface and more equally.

To say nothing of fungi, lichens, mosses, and other cryptogamous plants, you cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days, perhaps some cress growing a little (?), certainly some pads, and various naturalized garden weeds steadily growing if not blooming, and apple buds sometimes expanding. Thus much of vegetable life or motion or growth is to be detected every winter.

There is something of spring in all seasons. There is a large class which is evergreen in its radical leaves, which make such a show as soon as the snow goes off that many take them to be new growth of the spring. At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced than those two feet off in the air, for there they receive warmth from the sun, while they are sheltered from cold winds. 

Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. 

In some respects our spring, in its beginning, fluctuates a whole month, so far as it respects ice and snow, walking, sleighing, etc., etc.; for some years winter may be said to end about the first of March, and other years it may extend into April.

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. 

I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least. When I carefully remove this dirt, I cannot see, and can scarcely detect by feeling, any looseness in the sod beneath where the mole came to the surface and discharged all this dirt. I do feel it, to be sure, but it is scarcely perceptible to my fingers. The mole must have filled up this doorway very densely with earth, perhaps for its protection.

Those small green balls in the Pout's-Nest — and in the river, etc. — are evidently the buds by which the Utricularia vulgaris are propagated. I find them attached to the root as well as adrift.

I noticed a very curious phenomenon in this pond. It is melted for two or three rods around the open side, and in many places partly filled with a very slender thread-like spike-rush (apparently Eleocharis tenuis?) which is matted more or less horizontally and floating, and is much bleached being killed. In this fine matting I noticed perfectly straight or even cuts a rod or more in length,just as if one had severed this mass of fine rush as it lay [?] with some exceeding sharp instrument. However, you could not do it with a scythe, though you might with scissors, if it were ruled. It is as if you were to cover a floor with very fine flaccid grass and tread it to one inch in thickness, and then cut this web straight across. The fact is, this floating matting (it also rests partly on soft mud) was not cut at all, but pulled apart on a straight line, producing the exact appearance of a cut, as if you were to pull a piece of felt apart by a force on each side and yet leave the edge as straight as if it had been cut. It had been frozen in, and when the ice cracked it was in an instant thus pulled apart, without further disturbing the relative position of the fibres. I first conjectured this, and then saw the evidence of it for, glancing my eye along such a cut, which ran at right angles with the shore, I saw that it exactly corresponded at its termination to an old crack in the ice which was still unmelted and which continued its course exactly. This in the ice had been filled and cemented so as to look like a white seam. Would this account for such a crack being continued into the meadow itself, as I have noticed?

I meet some Indians just camped on Brister's Hill. As usual, they are chiefly concerned to find where black ash grows, for their baskets. This is what they set about to ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange neighborhood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1860


See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! See March 9, 1859 ("C. also saw a skater-insect on the 7th, and a single blackbird flying over Cassandra Ponds, which he thought a grackle."); March 13, 1859 ("Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th?"): March 14, 1859 ("I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge, just below Dr. Bartlett's. Some wade in the water. They are within a dozen rods of me and the road.It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast.. . .When a grackle sings, it is as if his mouth were full of cotton, which he was trying to spit out"); March 18, 1858 ("Each new year is a surprise to us.We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence... . The blackbird — probably grackle this time —wings his way direct above the swamp northward, with a regular tchuck, carrier haste, calling the summer months along,"); March 19, 1858 ("Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp. . .In the swamp, see grackles, four or five, with the light ring about eye, — their bead eyes. They utter only those ineffectual split notes, no conqueree"); March 29, 1858 ("I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris"); March 29, 1857 ("When I have put my boat in its harbor, I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. . .on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same ?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?")

I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. See February 26, 1856 ("I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? ")

At the pool on the south side of Hubbard's Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced. 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.”); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds. The roads are beginning to be settled. I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")


Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places. See April 8, 1859 ("Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun."); April 26, 1857 ("How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates."); May 10, 1857 ("But now at last I do not go seeking the warm, sunny, and sheltered coves; the strong wind is enlivening and agreeable.”) May 22, 1854 (“I rest in the orchard, doubtful whether to sit in shade or sun.”); May 22, 1857 ("Is it not summer when we do not go seeking sunny and sheltered places, but also love the wind and shade? "); October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides "); November 18, 1857 ("Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places.")

That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. See  March 7, 1855 ("Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago")

A very wild sight.

May 20. 

P. M. – Up Assabet. 

A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. 

May 20, 2018

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island, for a distance of twenty rods. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth, – a very lively sight. 

They keep descending or stooping to within a few inches of the water on a curving wing, without quite touching it, and I suppose are attracted by some small insects which hover close over it. They also stoop low about me as I stand on the flat island there, but I do not perceive the insects. They rarely rise more than five feet above the surface, and a general twittering adds to the impression of sociability. 

The principal note is the low grating sound of the bank swallow, and I hear the vit vit of the barn swallow. The cliff swallow, then, is here. 

Are the insects in any measure confined to that part of the river? Or are they congregated for the sake of society? I have also in other years noticed them over another swift place, at Hubbard's Bath, and also, when they first come, in smaller numbers, over the still and smooth water under the lee of the Island wood. They are thick as the gnats which perhaps they catch. 

Swallows are more confident and fly nearer to man than most birds. It may be because they are more protected by the sentiment and superstitions of men. 

The season is more backward on account of the cloudy and rainy weather of the last four or five days and some preceding. 

The Polygonatum pubescens, not quite. 

The red oak is not out. 

Hear a quail whistle. 

I notice that the sugar maple opposite Barrett's does not bloom this year, nor does the canoe birch by the Hemlocks bear sterile catkins. Perhaps they more or less respect the alternate years. 

3.30 P. M. — To Brister's Hill. 

Going along the deep valley in the woods, just before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. It looked like a rather small dirty-brown fox, and very clumsy, running much like a wood chuck. It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. A few steps further I came upon the remains of a woodchuck, yet warm, which it had been eating. Head, legs, and tail, all remained, united by the skin, but the bowels and a good part of the flesh were eaten. This was evidently a young fox, say three quarters grown, or perhaps less, and appeared as full as a tick. 

There was a fox-hole within three rods, with a very large sand-heap, several cartloads, before it, much trodden. Hearing a bird of which I was in search, I turned to examine it, when I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. 

At first it was a short, puppy-like bark, but afterward it began to bark on a higher key and more prolonged, very unlike a dog, a very ragged half-screaming bur ar-r-r. I proceeded along the valley half a dozen rods after a little delay (the fox being gone), and then looked round to see if it returned to the woodchuck. 

I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. It was rather light tawny (not fox-colored) with dusky-brown bars, and looked very large, wolf-like. The full-grown fox stood much higher on its legs and was longer, but the body was apparently not much heavier than that of the young. 

Going a little further, I came to another hole, and ten feet off was a space of a dozen square feet amid some little oaks, worn quite bare and smooth, apparently by the playing of the foxes, and the ground close around a large stump about a rod from the hole was worn bare and hard, and all the bark and much of the rotten wood was pawed or gnawed off lately. They had pawed a deep channel about one and in between the roots, perhaps for insects. There lay the remains of another woodchuck, now dry, the head, skin, and legs being left, and also part of the skin of a third, and the bones of another animal, and some partridge feathers. The old foxes had kept their larder well supplied. 

Within a rod was another hole, apparently a back door, having no heap of sand, and five or six rods off another in the side of the hill with a small sand-heap, and, as far down the valley, another with a large sand-heap and a back door with none. There was a well-beaten path from the one on the side hill five or six rods long to one in the valley, and there was much blackish dung about the holes and stump and the path. By the hole furthest down the valley was another stump, which had been gnawed (?) very much and trampled and pawed about like the other. I suppose the young foxes play there. 

There were half a dozen holes or more, and what with the skulls and feathers and skin and bones about, I was reminded of Golgotha. These holes were some of them very large and conspicuous, a foot wide vertically, by eight or ten inches, going into the side-hill with a curving stoop, and there was commonly a very large heap of sand before them, trodden smooth. It was a sprout-land valley, cut off but a year or two since. 

As I stood by the last hole, I heard the old fox bark, and saw her (?) near the brow of the hill on the north west, amid the bushes, restless and anxious, overlooking me a dozen or fourteen rods off. I was, on doubt, by the hole in which the young were. She uttered at very short intervals a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound, more like the scream of a large and angry bird than the bark of a dog, trilled like a piece of vibrating metal at the end. 

It moved restlessly back and forth, or approached nearer, and stood or sat on its haunches like a dog with its tail laid out in a curve on one side, and when it barked it laid its ears flat back and stretched its nose forward. Sometimes it uttered a short, puppy like, snappish bark. It was not fox-colored now, but a very light tawny or wolf-color, dark-brown or dusky beneath in a broad line from its throat; its legs the same, with a broad dusky perpendicular band on its haunches and similar ones on its tail, and a small whitish spot on each side of its mouth. There it sat like a chieftain on his hills, looking, methought, as big as a prairie wolf, and shaggy like it, anxious and even fierce, as I peered through my glass. 

I noticed, when it withdrew, – I too withdrawing in the opposite direction, — that as it had descended the hill a little way and wanted to go off over the pinnacle without my seeing which way it went, it ran one side about ten feet, till it was behind a small white pine, then turned at a right angle and ascended the hill directly, with the pine between us. The sight of it suggested that two or three might attack a man. The note was a shrill, vibrating scream or cry; could easily be heard a quarter of a mile. 

How many woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, etc., etc., they must kill, and yet how few of them are seen! A very wolfish color. It must have been a large fox, and, if it is true that the old are white on the sides of the face, an old one. They evidently used more than a half dozen holes within fifteen rods. I withdrew the sooner for fear by his barking he would be betrayed to some dog or gunner. 

It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me. 

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon, and is considered a variety of the red by him and most others, not white beneath as the red fox of Harlan. Emmons says of the red fox, “In the spring the color appears to fade,” and that some are “pale yellow,” but does not describe minutely. This was probably a female, for Bell says of the English fox that the female “loses all her timidity and shyness when suckling her young;” also that they are a year and a half in attaining their full size.

[I find afterward three or four more fox-holes near by, and see where they have sat on a large upturned stump, which had heaved up earth with it. Many large pieces of woodchuck's skin about these holes. They leave the head and feet. A scent of carrion about the holes.]

Hear the pepe. 

See tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. 

Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. It was almost ready to fly, at least two and a half feet in alar extent; tawny with many black bars, and darker on wings. Holmes, in Patent Office Report, says they “pair early in February.” 

So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close on the north side of the path, some ten rods west of the old Stratton cellar in the woods. This is the largest pine thereabouts, and the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. This is a path which somebody travels every half-day, at least, and only a stone's throw from the great road. There were many white droppings about and large rejected pellets containing the vertebrae and hair of a skunk. 

As I stood there, I heard the crows making a great noise some thirty or forty rods off, and immediately suspected that they were pestering one of the old owls, which Skinner had not seen. It proved so, for, as I approached, the owl sailed away from amidst a white pine top, with the crows in full pursuit, and he looked very large, stately, and heavy, like a seventy-four among schooners. I soon knew by the loud cawing of the crows that he had alighted again some forty rods off, and there again I found him perched high on a white pine, the large tawny fellow with black dashes and large erect horns. Away he goes again, and the crows after him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1858

Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river. See note to May 16, 1857 (“An unusual number of swallows are flying low over [the meadows].”)

I heard the old fox bark, a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound. See January 23, 1858 ("What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox! ")

Hear the pepe. See May 18,  1857 ("Hear the pepe, how long?”) ; June 6, 1857 ("As I sit on Lee's Cliff, I see a pe-pe on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. . . . mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.”); June 10, 1855 ("Nest of the Muscicapa Cooperi, or pe pe, on a white spruce in the Holden Swamp . . .”)

Tanagers, male and female, in the top of a pine, one red, other yellow . . . these high colors among birds. See May 23, 1853 ("I hear and see a tanager. How he enhances the wildness and wealth of the woods! That contrast of a red bird with the green pines and the blue sky! ...”); May 24, 1860 ("You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.”); May 28, 1855 (" I see a tanager, the most brilliant and tropical-looking bird we have, bright-scarlet with black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again between wing-tips. . . .A remarkable contrast with the green pines.”)

It was a very wild sight. See November 27, 1857 (“Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight . . . I feel a certain respect for him, . . ., he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst.”)  and note to January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see . . . yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.”)

This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon; Emmons says of the red fox that some are “pale yellow.” See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox.”) and Z. Thompson, Natural History of Vermont 35 (“A blackish stripe passing from the neck down the back and another crossing it alright angles over the shoulders . . . Instead of considering the Cross Fox a distinct species, I have concluded to adopt the opinion of Dr. Richardson, who regards it merely as a variety of the common fox.”)

Fields bristle with a myriad of crystal spears.

December 26

After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had. 

The sun comes out at 9 A. M. and lights up the ice-incrusted trees, but it is pretty warm and the ice rapidly melts. 

I go to Walden 'via the almshouse and up the railroad. 

Trees seen in the West against the dark cloud, the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as frostwork, and their outlines very perfectly and distinctly revealed, with recurved twigs. 

The walls and fences are encased, and the fields bristle with a myriad of crystal spears. 

Already the wind is rising and a brattling is heard overhead in the street. 

The sun, shining down a gorge over the woods at Brister’s Hill, reveals a wonderfully brilliant as well as seemingly solid and diversified region in the air. 

The ice is from an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick about the twigs and pine-needles, only half as thick commonly on one side. Their heads are bowed; their plumes and needles are stiff, as if preserved under glass for the inspection of posterity. 

Thus is our now especially slow-footed river laid up not merely on the meadows, but on the twigs and leaves of the trees, on the needles of the pines. 

The pines thus weighed down are sharp-pointed at top and remind me of firs and even hemlocks, their drooping boughs being wrapped about them like the folds of a cloak or a shawl. The crust is already strewn with bits of the green needles which have been broken ofl. Frequently the whole top stands up bare, while the middle and lower branches are drooping and massed together, resting on one another. 

But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting. 

Here are asters, savory-leaved, whose flat imbricated calyxes, three quarters of an inch over, are surmounted and inclosed in a perfectly transparent icebutton, like a glass knob, through which you see the reflections of the brown calyx. These are very common. 

Each little blue-curls calyx has a spherical button like those brass ones on little boys’ jackets, — little sprigs on them, —and the pennyroyal has still smaller spheres, more regularly arranged about its stem, chandelier-wise, and still smells through the ice. 

The finest grasses support the most wonderful burdens of ice and most branched on their minute threads. These weeds are spread and arched over into the snow again, — countless little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice, which you break with a tinkling crash at each step. 

The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all, for the scarlet is increased and multiplied by reflection through the bubbles and hemispherical surfaces of the crust, as if it covered some vermilion grain thickly strewn. 

And the brown cup lichens stand in their midst. The whole rough bark, too, is encased.

Already a squirrel has perforated the crust above the mouth of his burrow, here and there by the side of the path, and left some empty acorn shells on the snow. He has shovelled out this morning before the snow was frozen on his door-step. 

Now, at 10 A. M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace.

Particularly are we attracted in the winter by greenness and signs of growth, as the green and white shoots of grass and weeds, pulled or floating on the water, and also by color, as cockspur lichens and crimson birds, etc. 

Thorny bushes look more thorny than ever; each thorn is prolonged and exaggerated. 

Some boys have come out to a wood-side hill to coast. It must be sport to them, lying on their stomachs, to hear their sled crouching the crystalled weeds when they have reached the more weedy pasture below.

4 P. M. — Up railroad. 

Since the sun has risen higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. On the trees it is now considerably dissipated, but rather owing to the wind than the sun. 

The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs, etc. The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles off in the horizon, is of sharp points.  

It has grown cold, and the crust bears. The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are. 

The sun is gone before five. 

Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none, only some small pink-dun (?) clouds. In the east still larger ones, which after sunset turned to pale slate.

In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them. 

I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1855

But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting. See December 26, 1853 ("All weeds, with their seeds, rising dark above the snow, are now remarkably conspicuous, which before were not observed against the dark earth.”); November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.”); December 6, 1856  ("Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage.”); February 6, 1857 ("Insignificant weeds and stubble along the railroad causeway and elsewhere are now made very conspicuous, both by their increased size and bristling stiffness and their whiteness.”)

The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump. [British soldier lichen (Cladonia_cristatella).] See  December 6, 1859 ("It is somewhat of a lichen day . . .What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree."); December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); February 7, 1859 ("To study lichens is to get a taste of earth and health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This product of the bark is the essence of all times. The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very crust of the earth. . . .  It fits a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest experience.  A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom like the rose.") See also  Jim Cornish, Lichens: Thoreau's Leaves of Winter and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst

The scarlet fruit of 

cockspur lichen seen glowing 

through the snowy crust.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A myriad of crystal spears

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551226

A driving snow-storm

January 19.

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M., as I was coming down the railroad. I did not have to make a hole in it, but I saw it some rods off in the deep, narrow ravines of the drifts and under their edges or eaves, like the serenest blue of heaven, though the sky was, of course, wholly concealed by the driving snow-storm; suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. 

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous.

 P. M. — The damp snow still drives from the northwest nearly horizontally over the fields. We go through the Spring Woods, over the Cliff, by the wood-path at its base to Walden, and thence by the path to Brister’s Hill, and by road home. There is not a single fresh track on the back road, and the aspect of the road and trees and houses is very wintry.

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung, and you have only to shake them with your hand or foot, when they rise up and make way for you. We go winding between and stooping or creeping under them, fearing to touch them, lest they should relieve themselves of their burden and let fall an avalanche or shower of snow on to us.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1855

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning . . . suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. Compare January 5, 1854  ("There is also some blueness now in the snow, the heavens being now (toward night) overcast. The blueness is more distinct after sunset"); See January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 18, 1852  ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”);  January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast"); January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”)

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pigweed in the garden. See February 10, 1855 ("It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. "); December 11, 1855 ("The snow will be three feet deep, the ice will be two feet thick, and last night, perchance, the mercury sank to thirty degrees below zero. . . .. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow!. . . I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung.  See December 26, 1853 ("The pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side.")

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

I never saw blue

in snow so bright as this damp

dark stormy morning.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A driving snow-storm

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

Trackless snow

December 26.

This forenoon it snows pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep. I go out at 2.30, just as it ceases. Now is the time, before the wind rises or the sun has shone, to go forth and see the snow on the trees. 

It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. 

December 26, 2013

The sight of the pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side, would tempt us to begin life again. 

The ice is covered up, and skating gone. The bare hills are so white that I cannot see their outlines against the misty sky. The snow lies handsomely on the shrub oaks, like a coarse braiding in the air. They have so many small and zigzag twigs that it comes near to filling up with a light snow to that depth. 

The hunters are already out with dogs to follow the first beast that makes a track. 

Saw a small flock of tree sparrows in the sprout- lands under Bartlett's Cliff. Their metallic chip is much like the lisp of the chickadee. 

All weeds, with their seeds, rising dark above the snow, are now remarkably conspicuous, which before were not observed against the dark earth. 

I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning. I was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking-stick, — mark of an invisible and in tangible power, a thunderbolt, mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. It seemed a sacred spot. 

I felt that we had not learned much since the days of Tullus Hostilius. It at length shows the effect of the shock, and the woodpeckers have begun to bore it on one side. 

Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, with the markings, as far as I saw, of the crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail. It dove and swam a few rods under water, and, when on the surface, kept turning round and round warily and nodding its head the while. This being the only pond hereabouts that is open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1853

The first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep. See December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.").See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)

It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. See November 24, 1858 (“Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it."): December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”); February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.”); January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”)

Begin life again: See January 23, 1860 ("Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.”)

All weeds, with their seeds, rising dark above the snow, are now remarkably conspicuous, which before were not observed against the dark earth.  See December 26, 1855 ("But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting.”); See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “)

Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail....This being the only pond hereabouts that is open. See December 27, 1852 (“Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. ... A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

It has snowed for hours

and, as it ceases, we go out

to see the new snow.

Gently fallen snow

has formed an upright wall on

the slenderest twig.

And every twig

thus laden is as still as

the hillside itself.

All weeds with their seeds,

rising dark above the snow,

now conspicuous.

The branches and trees

supporting snowy burdens

bend over the road.

This pure and trackless

road up Brister's Hill  tempts us

to start life again.

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