A Book of Seasons, the Cowslip in Early Spring

 

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

 completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

It takes several years' faithful search

to learn where to look

for the earliest flowers. 

February 28, 1857

An arctic voyage 

was this in which I find two 

cowslips in full bloom.

April 8, 1856

March 5.  The cowslip there [Well Meadow] is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly. March 5, 1859

March 14.  The cowslip in pitcher has fairly blossomed to-day. March 14, 1859 

March 24.  It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. March 24, 1855 

March 26.  The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it. March 26, 1857 

March 27.  Am surprised to see the cowslip so forward, showing so much green, in E. Hubbard’s Swamp, in the brook, where it is sheltered from the winds. The already expanded leaves rise above the water. If this is a spring growth, it is the most forward herb I have seen.  March 27, 1855 

April 2.  In the warm recess at the head of Well Meadow, which makes up on the northeast side of Fair Haven, I find many evidences of spring . . . The cowslip appears to be coming next to it [the skunk cabbage]. Its buds are quite yellowish and half an inch, almost, in diameter. April 2, 1856

April 3.  The white maple buds on the south side of some trees have slightly opened, so that I can peep into their cavities and detect the stamens. They will probably come next to the skunk-cabbage this year, if the cowslip does not. April 3, 1856

April 8.  There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see. Have they not been eaten off? Do we not often lose the earliest flowers thus? A little more, or if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged. What an arctic voyage was this in which I find cowslips, the pond and river still frozen over for the most part as far down as Cardinal Shore! April 8, 1856

April 9.  The cowslips are well out, – the first conspicuous herbaceous flower, for the cabbage is concealed in its spathe. April 9, 1853

April 11.  I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little  hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under a russet tussock. It is the cowslips’ forward green. Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water’s edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty nights come. Have not these been mistaken for dandelions? April 11, 1856

April 12.   Cowslip will apparently open in two days at Hubbard’s Close. April 12, 1855

April 13.  Many cowslip buds show a little yellow, but they will not open there [Second Division] for two or three days. The road is paved with solid ice there.  April 13, 1855

April 13.  Still no cowslips nor saxifrage. April 13, 1856 

April 29.  At the Second Division Brook the cowslip is in blossom. April 29, 1852

May 4. The cowslip's is a vigorous growth and makes at present the most show of any flower. Leaf, stem, bud, and flower are all very handsome in their place and season. It has no scent, but speaks wholly to the eye. The petals are covered at base with a transparent, dewy (dew-like), apparently golden nectar. Better for yellows than for greens. May 4, 1852

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early 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 ©  2009-2026

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

December 20

Saturday. 2 P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill and plain below.

Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight.

Travelling ever by wider circles.

What a symbol of the thoughts, now soaring, now descending, taking larger and larger circles, or smaller and smaller. It flies not directly whither it is bound, but advances by circles, like a courtier of the skies. No such noble progress! How it comes round, as with a wider sweep of thought! But the majesty is in the imagination of the beholder, for the bird is intent on its prey.

Circling and ever circling, you cannot divine which way it will incline, till perchance it dives down straight as an arrow to its mark.

It rises higher above where I stand, and I see with beautiful distinctness its wings against the sky, primaries and secondaries, and the rich tracery of the outline of the latter (?), its inner wings, or wing-linings, within the outer, - like a great moth seen against the sky.

A will-o'-the-wind. Following its path, as it were through the vortices of the air. The poetry of motion.

Not as preferring one place to another, but enjoying each as long as possible. Most gracefully so surveys new scenes and revisits the old.

As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my thought, how bravely he came round over those parts of the wood which he had not surveyed, taking in a new segment, annexing new territories! Without ”heave-yo!” it trims its sail. It goes about without the creaking of a block.

That America yacht of the air that never makes a tack, though it rounds the globe itself, takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter, -- its sky - scrapers all under its control.

Holds up one wing, as if to admire, and sweeps off this way, then holds up the other and sweeps that. If there are two concentrically circling, it is such a regatta as Southampton waters never witnessed.

Flights of imagination, Coleridgean thoughts.

So a man is said to soar in his thought, ever to fresh woods and pastures new. Rises as in thought. 

Snow-squalls pass, obscuring the sun, as if blown off from a larger storm. 

Since last Monday the ground has been covered half a foot or more with snow; and the ice also, before I have had a skate. Hitherto we had had mostly bare, frozen ground.

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. I view it now from the cliffs. The red shrub oaks on the white ground of the plain beneath make a pretty scene.

Most walkers are pretty effectually shut up by the snow.

I observe that they who saw down trees in the woods with a cross-cut saw carry a mat to kneel on. It is no doubt a good lesson for the woodchopper, the long day alone in the woods, and he gets more than his half dollar a cord. 

Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste. 

The red oak leaves are even more fresh and glossy than the white.

A clump of white pines, seen far westward over the shrub oak plain, which is now lit up by the setting sun, a soft, feathery grove, with their gray stems indistinctly seen, like human beings come to their cabin door, standing expectant on the edge of the plain, impress me with a mild humanity.

The trees indeed have hearts.

With a certain affection the sun seems to send its farewell ray far and level over the copses to them, and they silently receive it with gratitude, like a group of settlers with their children.

The pines impress me as human.

A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon.

Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.


The dull and blundering behavior of clowns will as surely polish the writer at last as the criticism of men of thought. It is wonderful, wonderful, the unceasing demand that Christendom makes on you, that you speak from a moral point of view. Though you be a babe, the cry is, Repent, repent. The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner."

What made the hawk mount? Did you perceive the manæuvre? Did he fill himself with air? Before you were aware of it, he had mounted by his spiral path into the heavens. 

Our country is broad and rich, for here, within twenty miles of Boston, I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. 

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods, about Well Meadow Head. 

December 20, 2019

They say that the Indians of the Great Basin live on the almonds of the pine. Have not I been fed by the pine for many a year? 

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1851

<<<<< December 19, 1851                                                December 21, 1851 >>>>>

The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner." See 1850? (“Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him.”)

A large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight. See December 20, 1857 ("A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail.");See also June 15, 1852 ("I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it "); June 8, 1853 ("As I stand by this pond, I hear a hawk scream, and, looking up, see, a pretty large one circling not far off and incessantly screaming, as I at first suppose to scare and so discover its prey, but its screaming is so incessant and it circles from time to time so near me, as I move southward, that I begin to think it has a nest near by and is angry at my intrusion into its domains."); October 28, 1857 ,("His scream . . . is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? Is it to scare his prey, that he may see by its motion where it is, or to inform its mate or companion of its where about? ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. See  December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail."); December 21, 1854 ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.") See also December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us,")

The trees indeed have hearts . . . like a group of settlers with their children.The pines impress me as human. See February 15, 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.")

And he looked up, and said,

I see men as trees, walking.

— Mark 8:22-25.

The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Compare December 19, 1851 ("Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it? . . .Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud– & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon."); December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west.");  December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. ”); December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand?”)

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”); November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.")

I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. See January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns.  . . . How long will these last?")

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.");  January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.");  January 20, 1852  ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.");  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); January 7, 1857 ("I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight . . . I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late.")

December 20.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 20

Sunset in winter 

from a clearing in the woods –

gold clouds like mountains.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

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-511220

A flying squirrel's nest and young.

June 19. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Heywood Meadow and Well Meadow. 

June 19, 2020

In Stow's meadow by railroad, Scirpus Eriophorum, with blackish bracts, not long out. 

A flying squirrel's nest and young on Emerson's hatchet path, south of Walden, on hilltop, in a covered hollow in a small old stump at base of a young oak, covered with fallen leaves and a portion of the stump; nest apparently of dry grass. Saw three young run out after the mother and up a slender oak. The young half-grown, very tender-looking and weak-tailed, yet one climbed quite to the top of an oak twenty-five feet high, though feebly. Claws must be very sharp and early developed. The mother rested quite near, on a small projecting stub big as a pipe-stem, curled cross wise on it. Have a more rounded head and snout than our other squirrels. The young in danger of being picked off by hawks. 

Find by Baker Rock the (apparently) Carex Muhlenbergii gone to seed, dark-green, as Torrey says. Resembles the stipata. 

Blackbirds nest in the small pond there, and generally in similar weedy and bushy pond-holes in woods. 

The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta. On this the musquash there commonly makes its stools. A tall slender sedge with conspicuous brown staminate spikes. Also some C. lanuginosa with it. C. canescens, too, grows there, less conspicuous, like the others gone to seed. 

Scare up young partridges; size of chickens just hatched, yet they fly. The old one in the woods near makes a chuckling sound just like a red squirrel's bark, also mewing. 

Flies rain about my head. 

Notice green berries, — blueberries and huckleberries. 

Is that red-top, nearly out on railroad bank? 

Eriophorum polystachyon of Torrey, Bigelow, and Gray, the apparently broadish-leaved, but Gray makes the wool too long. In Pleasant and Well Meadow; at height. 

Carex polytrichoides in fruit and a little in flower, Heywood Meadow in woods and Spanish Meadow Swamp. 

Trisetum palustre (?), Well Meadow Head, in wet; apparently at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 19, 1859

The young half-grown climbed quite to the top of an oak twenty-five feet high, though feebly. See June 23, 1855 ("Hear of flying squirrels now grown."); March 23, 1855 ("It sprang off from the maple at the height of twenty-eight and a half feet, and struck the ground at the foot of a tree fifty and a half feet distant, measured horizontally.")

The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta.  See April 22, 1859 ("Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there.")

Scare up young partridges; size of chickens just hatched, yet they fly. See June 23, 1854 (" Disturb three different broods of partridges in my walk this afternoon in different places. One in Deep Cut Woods, big as chickens ten days old, went flying in various directions a rod or two into the hillside. Another by Heywood's meadow, the young two and a half inches long only, not long hatched, making a fine peep. Held one in my hand, where it squatted without winking. A third near Well Meadow Field. We are now, then, in the very midst of them. Now leading forth their young broods. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

Notice green berries, — blueberries and huckleberries. See June 6, 1852 ("The earliest blueberries are now forming as greenberries.”)

Is that red-top, nearly out on railroad bank? See July 13, 1860 ("First we had the June grass reddish-brown, and the sorrel red, of June; now the red-top red of July.")

The spring note of the nuthatch.

March 5. 

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. [Also the 21st March.] 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! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. 

It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent to the spring within it. 

If I am not mistaken, it is what I have heard in former springs or winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, when we men had but just begun to anticipate the spring, — for it would seem that we, in our anticipations and sympathies, include in succession the moods and expressions of all creatures. 

When only the snow had begun to melt and no rill of song had broken loose, a note so dry and fettered still, so inarticulate and half thawed out, that you might (and would commonly) mistake for the tapping of a woodpecker. As if the young nuthatch in its hole had listened only to the tapping of woodpeckers and learned that music, and now, when it would sing and give vent to its spring ecstasy and it can modulate only some notes like that, that is its theme still. That is its ruling idea of song and music, — only a little clangor and liquidity added to the tapping of the woodpecker. 

It was the handle by which my thoughts took firmly hold on spring. This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark. 

P. M. — Up river to Well Meadow. The snow melts and sinks very rapidly. This spring snow is peculiarly white and blinding. The inequalities of the surface are peculiar and interesting when it has sunk thus rapidly. 

I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet. We see one or two little gnats or mosquitoes in the air. 

See a large light-colored hawk circling a long time over Fair Haven Hill, and another, probably its mate, starts away from Holden Wood and circles toward it. The last being nearest, I distinguished that its wings were black tipped. (I have no glass ) What can they be? I think that I have seen the same in previous springs. They are too light-colored for hen-hawks, and for a pair of marsh hawks, — being apparently alike. Then the fish hawk is said by the books not to get here nearly so early, and, beside, they would not circle about so much over the hill. 

The goshawk, which I next think of, has no black tip to wings that I can learn. May it not be the winter hawk of Wilson? for he says its primaries are black at the tips, and that [it] is lighter than the red-shouldered, of same species. 

At the same time I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement. 

Turkeys gobble in some distant farmyard at the same time. 

At length the sun is seen to have come out and to be shining on the oak leaves on the south side of Bear Garden Hill, and its light appears to be exactly limited to them. 

I saw on the ice, quite alive, some of those black water-beetles, which apparently had been left above by a rise of the river. Were they a Gyrinus? 

When I was last at Well Meadow, I saw where apparently a dozen hounds had all crossed the brook at exactly one point, leaving a great trail in the slosh above the ice, though there was but one track of a man. It reminded me of a buffalo-trail. 

Every half-mile, as you go up the river, you come to the tracks of one or two dogs which have recently crossed it without any man. 

Those skunk-cabbage buds which are most advanced have cast off their outmost and often frost-bitten sheaths, and the spathe is broader and slightly opened (some three quarters of an inch or more already) and has acquired brighter and more variegated colors. The out side of the spathe shows some ripeness in its colors and markings, like a melon-rind, before the spadix begins to bloom. 

I find that many of the most forward spathes, etc., have been destroyed since I was here three days ago. Some animal has nibbled away a part of the spathes (or sometimes only a hole in it) — and I see the fragments scattered about — and then eaten out the whole of the spadix. Indeed, but few forward ones are left. 

Is this a mouse or musquash? or a bird ? The spadix is evidently a favorite titbit to some creature. 

That more entire-leaved plant amid the early skunk- cabbage which I called a cress on the 3d has the bitter taste of cress. The common cress has in one place grown considerably, and is fresh and clean and very good to eat. I wonder that I do not see where some creatures have eaten it. 

The sweet-gale brush seen in a mass at a little distance is considerably darker than the alders above it. This will do for the sweet-gale maze in November. 

The cowslip there is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1859

"The notes of the White-breasted Nuthatch

are remarkable on account of their nasal sound.

Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables

hank, hank, kank, kank;

but now and then in the spring,

they emit a sweeter kind of chirp,

whenever the sexes meet,

or when they are feeding their young.”

( J. J. Audubon)

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. See January 5, 1859 ("I hear a fine busy twitter, and, looking up, see a nuthatch hopping along . . . and then it utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion. Indeed, that other, finer twitter seemed designed to keep some companion in tow, or else it was like a very busy man talking to himself. The companion was a single chickadee, which lisped six or eight feet off.. . .And when the nuthatch flitted to another tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly followed.")

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 March 13, 1853 ("Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. . . .But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch?"); February 17, 1855 (" Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). . . Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”); February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”);  March 17, 1857 (" I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound."); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering to the other, as it were like a vibrating watch-spring.Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker."); March 20, 1858 ("I hear now, at 7 A. M., from the hill across the water, probably the note of a woodpecker, I know not what species; not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year.").; March 25, 1859 ("P. M.— To Clamshell. I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. “); April 25, 1859 ("I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Nuthatch

I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. See March 5, 1854 ("See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I distinguished that its wings were black tipped. (I have no glass ) What can they be? Compare March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk. . . .It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump."); March 30, 1856 ("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.]" ) May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

White-bellied nuthatch –

its peculiar note addressed

to the chickadee.

This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade.

April 9.

April rain at last, but not much; clears up at night.

At 4.30 P.M. to Well Meadow Field.

The yew looks as if it would bloom in a day or two, and the staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.

I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier.

Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. 

I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window. Yet common and annual and remarkable as it is, not one in a hundred of the villagers hears it, and hardly so many know what it is. Yet the majority know of the Germanians who have only been here once. Mr. Hoar was almost the only inhabitant of this street whom I had heard speak of this note, which he used annually to hear and listen for in his sundown or evening walks.

R. Rice tells me that he has seen the pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush, especially where a tree had fallen in. He thinks it was the pickerel’s because he has seen them about at the time. This seems to correspond with mine of April 3d, though he did [not] recognize the peculiar form of it.

I doubt if men do ever simply and naturally glorify God in the ordinary sense, but it is remarkable how sincerely in all ages they glorify nature. The praising of Aurora, for instance, under some form in all ages is obedience to as irresistible an instinct as that which impels the frogs to peep.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 9, 1858

The yew looks as if it would bloom in a day or two, and the staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. See April 13, 1858 ("That unquestionable staminate Salix humilis beyond yew will not be out for three or four days. Its old leaves on the ground are turned cinder-color, as are those under larger and doubtful forms.")

This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. See April 9, 1853 ("Evening. -- Hear the snipe a short time at early starlight. . . . Louder than all is heard the shrill peep of the hylodes and the hovering note of the snipe, circling invisible above them all.");  April 9, 1855 ("Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe."); See also April 15, 1856 (" I hear a part of the hovering note of my first snipe, circling over some distant meadow"); April 18, 1854 (" One[snipe] booms now at 3 p. m."); April 18, 1856 ("This evening I hear the snipes generally and peeping of hylas from the door. ")' April 25, 1859 ("The snipe have hovered commonly this spring an hour or two before sunset and also in the morning . . . and they appear to make that sound when descending, — one quite by himself.") and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

Pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush. See April 3, 1858 ("a curious kind of spawn. It was white, each ovum about as big as a robin-shot or larger, with mostly a very minute white core, no black core, and these were agglutinated together in the form of zigzag hollow cylinders, two or three inches in diameter and one or two feet long, looking like a lady's ruff or other muslin work, on the bottom or on roots and twigs of willow and button-bush")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood.

November 1

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond over Cliffs.

Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus. 

Going over the high field west of the cut, my foot strikes a rattle-pod in the stubble, and it is betrayed. From that faint sound I knew it must be there, and went back and found it. I could have told it as well in the dark. How often I have found pennyroyal by the fragrance it emitted when bruised by my feet! 

The lowest and most succulent oak sprouts in exposed places are red or green longest. Large trees quite protected from sun and wind will be greener still. 

The larches are at the height of their change. 

I see much witch-hazel in the swamp by the south end of the Abiel Wheeler grape meadow. Some of it is quite fresh and bright. Its bark is alternate white and smooth reddish-brown, the small twigs looking as if gossamer had lodged on and draped them. What a lively spray it has, both in form and color! Truly it looks as if it would make divining-rods, – as if its twigs knew where the true gold was and could point to it. The gold is in their late blossoms. Let them alone and they never point down to earth. They impart to the whole hillside a speckled, parti-colored look. 

I see the common prinos berries partly eaten about the hole of a mouse under a stump. 

As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. 

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. 

Jersey tea has perhaps the most green leaves of any shrub at present.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1857


The larches are at the height of their change. See November 1, 1858 (Now you easily detect where larches grow ... They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill""); November 4, 1855 (“Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.”); October 27 1855 (“Larches are yellowing.”); October 24, 1852 (“The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. ”)

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”)

November 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 1

This dry crisp rustle – 

withered leaves on oak trees, a 

sharper susurrus. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A  man will eat his heart,

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

Two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow go off with a whistling flight.

July 15. 

July 15, 2017

Tephrosia is generally considerably past its prime. 

Vaccinium vacillans berries. 

Scare up a snipe (?) by riverside, which goes off with a dry crack, and afterward two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight. 

Rhus glabra under Cliffs, not yet. 

When I entered the woods there, I was at once pursued by a swarm of those wood flies which gyrate around your head and strike your hat like rain-drops. As usual, they kept up with me as I walked, and gyrated about me still, as if I were stationary, advancing at the same time and receiving reinforcements from time to time. Though I switched them smartly for half a mile with some indigo-weed, they did not mind it in the least, nor a better switch of Salix tristis; but though I knocked down many of them, they soon picked them selves up and came on again. 

They had a large black spot on their wings and some yellowish rings about their abdomens. They keep up a smart buzzing all the while. When I descended into the swamp at Well Meadow, they deserted me, but soon pursued me again when I came out. 

Apparently the same swarm followed me quite through the wood (with this exception), or for two miles, and they did not leave me till I had got some twenty rods from the woods toward Hayden's. They did not once sting, though they endeavored sometimes to alight on my face. What they got by their perseverance I do not know, — unless it were a switching.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 15, 1857

Scare up a snipe (?) by riverside, which goes off with a dry crack, and afterward two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight. See July 3, 1856 ("I scare up one or two woodcocks in different places by the shore, where they are feeding, and in a meadow. They go off with a whistling flight. Can see where their bills have probed the mud. ") July 11, 1856 (“I scare up several apparent snipes (?), which go off with a crack. They are rather heavy-looking, like woodcocks. ”):  July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps.");  July 18, 1856 (“Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

Rhus glabra under Cliffs, not yet. See  July 12, 1856 (“Smooth sumach, apparently yesterday.”): July 24, 1852 (“The smooth sumach berries are red. ”): July 31,1856 (“The smooth sumach is pretty generally crimson-berried on the Knoll . . .”)

July 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau July 15

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 © 2009-2021

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? / The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow.

January 15. 

January 15, 2017

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond and across to railroad. 

As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what I thought a tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere roof open at the side, under which several men were at that time employed sawing wood with a horse power. Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood. When I advanced, instead of flying away, it concealed itself in the wood, just as it often dodges behind a wall.

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. 

Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. 

The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.

The tracks of the mice near the head of Well Meadow were particularly interesting. There was a level surface of pure snow there, unbroken by bushes or grass, about four rods across, and here were nine tracks of mice running across it from the bushes on this side to those on the other, the tracks quite near together but repeatedly crossing each other at very acute angles, but each particular course was generally quite direct. The snow was so light that only one distinct track was made by all four of the feet, five or six inches apart, but the tail left a very distinct mark. 

A single track, thus stretching away almost straight, sometimes half a dozen rods, over unspotted snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new pattern; and then they suggest an airy lightness in the body that impressed them. Though there may have been but one or two here, the tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. 

Such is the delicacy of the impression on the surface of the lightest snow, where other creatures sink, and night, too, being the season when these tracks are made, they remind me of a fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors were here. I can easily imagine all the rest. Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves. 

Yet I should like much to see by broad daylight a company of these revellers hopping over the snow. There is a still life in America that is little observed or dreamed of. Here were possible auditors and critics which the lecturer at the Lyceum last night did not think of. How snug they are somewhere under the snow now, not to be thought of, if it were not for these pretty tracks! 

And for a week, or fortnight even, of pretty still weather the tracks will remain, to tell of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse who was not beneath the notice of the Lord. 

So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. 

Cold as the weather is and has been, almost all the brook is open in the meadow there, an artery of black water in the midst of the snow, and there are many sink-holes, where the water is exposed at the bottom of a dimple in the snow. Indeed, in some places these little black spots are distributed very thickly, the snow in swells covering the intervening tussocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1857



Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, taken refuge in this shed. January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter."); 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.”)

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? See  January 13, 1857 ("one thrumming a guitar . . . reminds me of moments that I have lived. . . .”); May 19, 1856 ("I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. “);April19, 1856 ("Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, — passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. “); May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.”); December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. . . . It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. . . . The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); August 3, 1852 (" At the east window. — A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano. . . . At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”);  July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

The tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. See January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding.”); December 27, 1857 ("Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks.”)