A man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend.

August 23.

Saturday.

To Walden to bathe at 5.30 A. M.

Traces of the heavy rains in the night. The sand and gravel are beaten hard by them. Three or four showers in succession.

But the grass is not so wet as after an ordinary dew.

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.

At the commencement of my walk I saw no traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular meadows and high up some brooks’valleys, and far in the Deep Cut the wood fog.

First muskmelon this morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty, — little children, a grown man and his wife, and an aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest.

Of what significance are charity and almshouses? That there they live unmolested! in one sense so many degrees below the almshouse! beneath charity!

It is admirable, — Nature against almshouses.

A certain the wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests.

Not to identify health and contentment, aye, and independence, with the possession of this world’s goods!

It is not wise to waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early humblebees, come out on the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant horns from far in the horizon over the woods. It was long before I detected the bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded, like the shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting the king of day.

The farmers now carry — those who have got them — their early potatoes and onions to market, starting away early in the morning or at midnight. I see them returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble those who had not been so provident as to get their hay from the Great Meadows, where it is often lost.

P. M. – Walk to Annursnack and back over stone bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find anything attractive in certain mere trivial employments of men, — that I skip men so commonly, and their affairs, — the professions and the trades, — do not elevate them at least in my thought and get some material for poetry out of them directly. I will not avoid, then, to go by where these men are repairing the stone bridge, — see if I cannot see poetry in that, if that will not yield me a reflection.

It is narrow to be confined to woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The greatest and wisest will still be related to men.

Why not see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees? May not some light be reflected from them as from the stems of trees? I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least.

They are perhaps better animals than men.

Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and affairs with sympathy, though you ever so speak as to suggest a contrast between them and the ideal and divine. You may be excused if you are always pathetic, but do not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belonging to day.

It was long before I could find him, though all the while within a foot or two. I did not know whether to search amid the grass and stones or amid the leaves. At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while under an alder leaf two feet from the ground, - a slender green fellow with long feelers and transparent wings.

When he shrilled, his wings, which opened on each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to his body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each other. The apparently wingless female, as I thought, was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even road in which we may be walking holds its level toward the horizon at a tangent to the earth, is not convex with the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, Epilobium coloratum, colored willow-herb, near the spring.

Also Polygonum sagittatum, scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads which the sun delights to shine along in an August afternoon, playing truant; which seem to stretch themselves with terrene jest as the weary traveller journeys on; where there are three white sandy furrows (lira), two for the wheels and one between them for the horse, with endless green grass borders between and room on each side for huckleberries and birches; where the walls indulge in freaks, not always parallel to the ruts, and goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began to border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was so long; from no point on which can you be said to be at any definite distance from a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air.

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge.

There was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the blessed, — far off, as in picture.

When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted, and what wonder if I do not speak to thee? 

I saw a snake by the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he were alive.

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled; and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations, — without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad earth still? he said.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1851

The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering. See  August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 (" It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season."); August 22, 1859 The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Blue Vervain

He had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled. See May 19, 1856 ("saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris, within three feet of the water. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); April 16, 1861 ("Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake")

 Account to yourself –

always resolve to live 

deliberately.

HDT ~ August 23, 1851

This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring.

February 14. 

February 14. 2014

P. M. — Down railroad. A moist, thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain.

The telegraph resounds at every post. It is a harp with one string, — the first strain from the American lyre. 

In Stow's wood, by the Deep Cut, hear the gnah gnah of the white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch. 

I went up the bank and stood by the fence. A little family of titmice gathered about me, searching for their food both on the ground and on the trees, with great industry and intentness, and now and then pursuing each other. 

There were two nuthatches at least, talking to each other. One hung with his head down on a large pitch pine, pecking the bark for a long time, — leaden blue above, with a black cap and white breast. It uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp quivet or creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to be answered by a baser and louder gnah gnah from the other. 

A downy woodpecker also, with the red spot on his hind head and his cassock open behind, showing his white robe, kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. 

All at once an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, a small, rather slender bird, with a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts to the bottom of a new tree and repeats the same movement, not resting long in one place or on one tree. 

These birds are all feeding and flitting along together, but the chickadees are the most numerous and the most confiding. I observe that three of the four thus associated, viz. the chickadee, nuthatch, and woodpecker, have black crowns, at least the first two, very conspicuous black caps. I cannot but think that this sprightly association and readiness to burst into song has to do with the prospect of spring, — more light and warmth and thawing weather. 

The titmice keep up an incessant faint tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a lively day day day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and springlike.

Beside this I heard the distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony  of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds. 

The chickadee has quite a variety of notes. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. 

I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue. 

This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring. 

F. Brown, who has been chasing a white rabbit this afternoon with a dog, says that they do not run off far, — often play round within the same swamp only, if it is large, and return to where they were started. Spoke of it as something unusual that one ran off so far that he could not hear the dogs, but he returned and was shot near where he started. He does not see their forms, nor marks where they have been feeding.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1854

There were two nuthatches talking to each other. One uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp quivet or creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to be answered by a baser and louder gnah gnah from the other. See . February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah"); 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. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. 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") See also 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

A downy woodpecker, with the red spot on his hind head and his cassock open behind, showing his white robe, kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. See January 20, 1856 ("A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet"); February 2, 1854 (". I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

All at once an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, a small, rather slender bird, with a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts to the bottom of a new tree and repeats the same movement, not resting long in one place or on one tree. See November 26, 1859 (" I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course"); December 21, 1855 ("Scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company, from near the base of a small elm within three feet of me. The former dashes off with a loud rippling of the wing, and the creeper flits across the street to the base of another small elm, whither I follow. At first he hides behind the base, but ere long works his way upward and comes in sight. He is a gray-brown, a low curve from point of beak to end of tail, resting flat against the tree") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

Beside this I heard the distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds. See 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"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The titmice keep up an incessant faint tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a lively day day day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and springlike. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. See March 1, 1854 ("The sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the spring note of the chickadee

F. Brown, who has been chasing a white rabbit this afternoon with a dog. See  March 5, 1853  ("F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday."); March 8, 1853 ("Rode to Saxonville with F. Brown to look at a small place for sale . . . I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms ")

February 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 14

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

tinyurl.com/hdt541214

Wind northwest, growing cooler.

February 7. 

2 p. m. — To Walden and Flint's. 

Thermometer 43°. Fair, with many clouds, mostly obscuring the sun. Wind northwest, growing cooler.

The sand has begun to flow on the west side of the cut, the east being bare. Nature has some bowels at last.

I notice over the ditch near the Turnpike bridge, where water stands an inch or two deep over the ice, that the dust which had blown on to the ice from the road is now very regularly and handsomely distributed over the ice by the water, i. e., is broken into prettily shaped small black figures equally distant from one another, — so that what was a deformity is now a beauty. 

Some kinds of worms or caterpillars have apparently crawled over it and left their trails on it, white or clear trails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 7, 1860

The sand has begun to flow on the west side of the cut. See Walden ("When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes . . . As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopards' paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It"); March 30, 1856 ("I come out to see the sand and subsoil in the Deep Cut, as I would to see a spring flower, some redness in the cheek of Earth.")

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

March 2

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

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, reaching 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. 

March 1, 2019

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.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

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.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

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. See  March 6, 1854  ("Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle."); See Also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Red-wing Arrives

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, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

March 2.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 2

We talk about spring 

as at hand before the end 

of February.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  We commonly antedate the spring

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-590302

A fine spring morning. Get my boat out the cellar.

February 24 

A fine spring morning. 

The ground is almost completely bare again. There has been a frost in the night. 

Now, at 8.30, it is melted and wets my feet like a dew. The water on the meadow this still, bright morning is smooth as in April. 

I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside, and as I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. 

As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts. Their short, rich, crispy warble curls through the air. Its grain now lies parallel to the curve of the bluebird's warble, like boards of the same lot. 

It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced. Perhaps they are fabulous. 

I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. I now see where one has pawed out the worm-dust or other chankings from a hole in base of a walnut and torn open the fungi, etc., there, exploring for grubs or insects. They are very busy these nights. 

If I should make the least concession, my friend would spurn me. I am obeying his law as well as my own. 

Where is the actual friend you love? Ask from what hill the rainbow's arch springs! It adorns and crowns the earth. 

Our friends are our kindred, of our species. There are very few of our species on the globe. 

Between me and my friend what unfathomable distance! All mankind, like motes and insects, are between us. 

If my friend says in his mind, I will never see you again, I translate it of necessity into ever. That is its definition in Love's lexicon. 

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent. 

P. M. — To Walden. The railroad in the Deep Cut is dry as in spring, almost dusty. The best of the sand foliage is already gone. I walk without a greatcoat. A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. 

Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore. 

The French (in the Jesuit Relations) say fil de l'eau for that part of the current of a river in which any floating thing would be carried, generally about equidistant from the two banks. It is a convenient expression, for which I think we have no equivalent.

Get my boat out the cellar.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1857

I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed”) January 28, 1857 (“Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.”); February 2, 1858 ("As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain.”); February 26, 1851 ("See five red-wings and a song sparrow(?) this afternoon.”); March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.");  March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away."); March 5, 1860 ("The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.");  March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”); March 11, 1859 (“By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet.”); .March 18, 1857 (“I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two”); March 27, 1857 (“But now chiefly there comes borne on the breeze the tinkle of the song sparrow along the riverside.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Song Sparrow Sings

Thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.  See February 27, 1861 ("Walking down the Boston road under the hill this side Clark's, it occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. See  February 24,1854 (“The other day I thought that I smelled a fox very strongly, and went a little further and found that it was a skunk.”); February 26, 1860 ("They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Skunks Active

The railroad in the Deep Cut is dry as in spring, almost dusty. The best of the sand foliage is already gone. See February 24, 1852 ("I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut. The frost is partly come out of this bank, and it is become dry again in the sun");

I walk without a greatcoat. See February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm. "); February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: My Greatcoat on my Arm

A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. See January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be.”); February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee"); March 1, 1854 (" I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee"); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Chickadee  and February 24, 1854 ("Chickadees, with their silver tinkling, are flitting high above through the tops of the pines. ")

Get my boat out the cellar. See February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat.”); March 17, 1857 (“Launch my boat.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A fine Spring morning.

I hear a song sparrow and

the bluebirds warble.

Chickadee pipes forth

its phebe note the instant

I think it is time.

That instant, thinking

of the bluebird, its note deep

in the softened air.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Get my boat out of the cellar

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-570224

This remarkable winter disappears at last.

April 10

Fast-Day. — 

Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up, and also with the uncertainty I always experienced whether the shops would be shut, whether we should have an ordinary dinner, an extraordinary one, or none at all, and whether there would be more than one service at the meeting-house. This last uncertainty old folks share with me. 

This is a windy day, drying up the fields; the first we have had for a long time. 

Therien describes to me the diagonal notch he used to cut in maples and birches (not having heard of boring) and the half-round spout, cut out of chestnut or other straight-grained wood with a half-round chisel, sharped and driven into a new-moon cut made by the same tool partly sidewise to the tree. This evidently injured the trees more than the auger. 

He says they used to boil the birch down to a syrup, and he thought that the black birch would run more than any tree. 

P. M. —I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments. Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.

I reach my port, and go to Trillium Wood to get yellow birch sap. 

The Deep Cut is full of dust. 

This wind, unlike yesterday’s, has a decidedly cold vein in it. The ditch by Trillium Wood is strewn with yellowish hemlock leaves, which are still falling. 

In the still warmer and broader continuation of this ditch, south of the wood, in the southwest recess, I see three or four frogs jump in, some probably large Rana palustris, others quite small. They are in before I see them plainly, and bury themselves in the mud before I can distinguish them clearly. They were evidently sitting in the sun by that leafy ditch in that still and warm nook. Let them beware of marsh hawks. 

I saw also four yellow-spot tortoises paddling about under the leaves on the bottom there. Once they were all together. This ditch is commonly dry in the summer. 

The yellow birch sap runs very fast. I set three spouts in a tree one foot in diameter, and hung on a quart pail; then went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. When I came back, the pail was running over. This was about 3 P. M. 

Each spout dropped about as fast as my pulse, but when I left, at 4 P. M., it was not dropping so fast.

The red maples here do not run at all now, nor did they yesterday. Yet one up the Assabet did yesterday. Apparently the early maples have ceased to run. 

We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. 

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last. 

Here and there its veteran snow-banks spot the russet landscapes. In the shade of walls and north hillsides and cool hollows in the woods, it is panting its life away. I look with more than usual respect, if not with regret, on its last dissolving traces. 

Is not that a jungermannia which so adorns the golden epidermis of the yellow birch with its fine fingers? 

I boil down about two quarts of this yellow birch sap to two teaspoonfuls of a smart-tasting syrup. I stopped there; else should have boiled it all away. A slightly medicinal taste, yet not disagreeable to me. It yields but little sugar, then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1856

I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.") See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing

Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can. See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit."); 

Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”) [Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.  See Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

 I look with respect –

this remarkable winter 

disappears at last.

How silent are the footsteps of Spring!

March 30

March 30, 2016

P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven. 

Still cold and blustering. I come out to see the sand and subsoil in the Deep Cut, as I would to see a spring flower, some redness in the cheek of Earth.

These cold days have made the ice of Walden dry and pretty hard again at top. It is just twenty-four inches thick in the middle, about eleven inches of snow ice. It has lost but a trifle on the surface. The inside is quite moist, the clear ice very crystalline and leaky, letting the water up from below, so as to hinder my cutting. It seems to be more porous and brittle than the snow ice. 

I go to Fair Haven via the Andromeda Swamps. The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. There is a little bare ground in and next to the swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow, where the springs and little black rills are flowing. I see already one blade, three or four inches long, of that purple or lake grass, lying flat on some water, between snow—clad banks, — the first leaf with a rich bloom on it. 

How silent are the footsteps of Spring! 

There, too, where there is a fraction of the meadow, two rods over, quite bare, under the bank, in this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two); and the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish; and the golden saxifrage, green and abundant; also there are many fresh tender leaves of (apparently) the gold thread in open meadow there, all surrounded and hemmed in by snow, which has covered the ground since Christmas and stretches as far as you can see on every side; and there are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw. 

The spring advances in spite of snow and ice, and cold even. 

The ground under the snow has long since felt the influence of the spring sun, whose rays fall at a more favorable angle. The tufts or tussocks next the edge of the snow were crowned with dense phalanxes of stiff spears of the stiff triangularish sedge-grass, five inches high but quite yellow with a very slight greenness at the tip, showing that they pushed up through the snow, which melting, they had not yet acquired color. This is the greatest growth of any plant I have seen. I had not suspected any. 

I can just see a little greening on our bare and dry south bank. In warm recesses and clefts in meadows and rocks in the midst of ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vegetation commences and steadily advances. 

I find Fair Haven Pond and the river lifted up a foot or more, the result of the long, steady thaw in the sun. The water of the pond and river has run over the meadows, mixing with and partly covering the snow, making it somewhat difficult to get into the river on the east side. On the east side of the pond, the ice next the shore is still frozen to the bottom under water by one edge, while the other slants upward to meet the main body of the ice of the pond. This sort of canal on one or both sides of the river is from a rod to three or four rods wide. This is the most decided step toward breaking up as yet.

But the pond and river are very solid yet. I walk over the pond and down on the middle of the river to the bridge, without seeing an opening. 

See probably a hen-hawk (?) (black tips to wings), sailing low over the low cliff next the river, looking probably for birds. [May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.] 

The south hillsides no sooner begin to be bare, and the striped squirrels and birds resort there, than the hawks come from southward to prey on them. I think that even the hen-hawk is here in winter only as the robin is. 

For twenty-five rods the Corner road is impassable to horses, because of their slumping in the old snow; and a new path has been dug, which a fence shuts off the old. Thus they have served the roads on all sides the town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1856

See probably a hen hawk (?) ... may have been a marsh hawk or harrier. See March 27, 1855 (“See . . . [the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male.] Slate-colored; . . . black tips to wings and white rump.”); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks (?), white on rump... think I saw a hen-hawk”);  March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter."); March 15, 1860 ("These hawks[hen-hawks], as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. . . . An easily recognized figure anywhere.”); March 23, 1859 (“. . .we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves.”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk. Note What HDT calls the "marsh hawk/hen harrier" is the northern harrier.   The “hen-hawk” is the red-tailed  hawk. ~ zphx

The south hillsides no sooner begin to be bare, and the striped squirrels and birds resort there, than the hawks come from southward to prey on them. See March 30, 1853 ("Hawks are hunting now. You have not to sit long on the Cliffs before you see one.") 

The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. See February 19, 1856 (" seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level."); March 26, 1857 ("Men will hardly believe me when I tell them of the thickness of snow and ice at this time last year.")

Man comes out of his

winter quarters this month as

lean as a woodchuck.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  How silent are the footsteps of Spring!

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

*****

Rob and Eldred cut down trees at both views it really has improved things, the view spectacular but it is a sad day for the trees there is of course a jumble at the base. We survey the upper view around sunset. And somehow in the dark coming to the Moss Trail up the trail we go and then made a trail at the top of it I thought towards our land but when we left the marked area we walked and walked and talked and said she frankly didn't know where we were I got out the compass and we were headed east we found the main  Kendall trail and presently she said I think we should cut through here we come out somewhat south of where we usually do to ascend what I call the Saddletrail and go to sit at the view again. 20160330 Zphx