A Book of the Seasons: February 14 (signs of spring)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

February 14

We are made to love

river and meadow, as wind

to ripple water.

February 14, 1851

February 14, 2017

Slight snow of last night. February 14, 1852

At nine last evening and at nine this morning, the thermometer stood at 20°. February 14, 1855

There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails. . . .These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like. February 14, 1855

Still colder this morning, -7° at 8.30 A. M. February 14, 1856

This winter was remarkable for the long continuance of severe cold weather after it had once set in. February 14, 1852

About one inch of snow falls. February 14, 1858

We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons. The back of the winter is broken. February 14, 1851

Higginson told me yesterday . . . of a person in West Newbury, who told him that he once saw the moon rising out of the sea from his house in that place, and on the moonlight in his room the distinct shadow of a vessel which was somewhere on the sea between him and the moon!!  February 14, 1857

How adapted these forms and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its islands! What are these things? February 14, 1851

Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is so reserved!  February 14, 1851

We are made to love the river and the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water. February 14, 1851

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. February 14, 1851

At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; icicles at once hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock. February 14, 1852

The melting ice and snow now drips from their points with a slight clinking and lapsing sound. February 14, 1852

The shadow of the water flowing and pulsating behind this transparent icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole. February 14, 1852

Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain. February 14, 1852

I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp; can run and stamp without danger of breaking through. February 14, 1856

I walk in the bare maple swamps and detect the minute pensile nests of some vireo high over my head, in the fork of some unattainable twig, where I never suspected them in summer . . . And where is that young family now, while their cradle is filled with ice? February 14, 1856

As I walk over thin ice, settling it down, I see great bubbles under, three or four feet wide, go waddling or wobbling away like a seared lady impeded by her train.   February 14, 1859

I have but little doubt that the musquash gets air from these bubbles, which are probably very conspicuous under the ice.  February 14, 1859

The distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony  of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds.  February 14, 1854

It is a fine, somewhat springlike day.  February 14, 1857 .

I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the railroad causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence.  February 14, 1856

Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. February 14, 1857

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 chickadee has quite a variety of notes. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. February 14, 1854

There were two nuthatches at least, talking to each other. . . .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. February 14, 1854

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. February 14, 1854

I find that a great many pine-needles, both white and pitch, of ’54 still hold on, bristling around the twigs, especially if the tree has not grown much the last year. So those that strew the snow now are of both kinds.  February 14, 1856

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.  February 14, 1854

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. February 14, 1854

These birds are all feeding and flitting along together . . . 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. February 14, 1854

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Downy Woodpecker

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-eyed Vireo

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February Moonlight

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of Spring

*****

October 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.. . .To conceive of [any natural object] with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange.. . . You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be.")
November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night.")
November 21, 1850 ("I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it.")
January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.”);
January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”)
January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”)
January 11, 1854 ("Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes.)
January 14, 1860 ("About an inch more snow fell this morning.")

January 20, 1856 ("A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet")

February 1, 1857 ("Thermometer at 42°.")
February 5, 1860 ("2 p. m., 40°")
February 7, 1857 ("The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m.")
February 7, 1860 ("Thermometer 43°.")
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.")

February 8, 1852 ("This afternoon, the first crust to walk on.")
February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike).")
February 8. 1860 ("Thermometer 43. 40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.")
February 9, 1851 ("Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust. and can walk across the river in most places. It is easier to get about the country than at any other season.")
February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee."

)February 9, 1858 ("Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground.")
February 9, 1860 ("A hoar frost on the ground this morning . . . was quite a novel sight. I had noticed some vapor in the air late last evening.")
February 12, 1856 (" Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°. . . .How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . . I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. ")
February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”)
February 13, 1859 ("A dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets.")




February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air.")
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")
February 24, 1857 ("A fine spring morning. . . It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced")
February 24, 1857 ("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. ")
February 24, 1860 ("Thermometer 42. A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air")
February 28, 1860 ("It is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.")
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.")

March 1, 1856 (" I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.")
March 3, 1857 ("[W]hen the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock.")
March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? ")
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")
March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”)

February 14, 2022

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

  February 13  <<<<<<<<  February 14 >>>>>>>>    February 15

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

  .

Winter's Seasons

February 14.

3 P. M. – Walden road to pond, thence to Cliffs.

February 14, 2017

The slight snow of last night, lodging on the limbs of the oaks, has given them the wintry and cobwebbed appearance which distinguishes them so plainly from the pines. They are great cladonias, perchance.

Met Joshua Brown returning from the pond (Walden) without having caught a fish. Has had no luck there this winter, he thinks because of the woodcutters' falling trees on to the ice.

He, too, tells how many weighed a certain number of pounds. Four pounds and three quarters is the heaviest he ever caught, but the pickerel that ran off with his reel (before he got to it), which he did not see, he set at ten pounds.

I noticed a white pine, rotten within, near the pond, or, rather, eaten out, honeycombed, by the ants, as I think, — and I was struck by the regular cellular character of the cavities they had made, separated by thin partitions, each cell about an inch and a half long, reminding me of Chinese puzzles carved in wood.

The seeds or seed - vessels of wintergreen are conspicuous above the snow.

The winter has had its seasons somewhat in this order, as near as I now remember: 

• First there were a few glowing sunsets after raw and blustering days, setting the pines and oaks on fire with their blaze, when the summer and fall had set, — the afterglow of the year.
• Then, if I remember, came the snows, and true winter began, the snow growing gradually deeper and the cold more intense.
• I think it was before the first thaw, which this winter came before the end of December, that the main attraction in my afternoon walks ( at any rate when the days were shortest and the cold most intense ) was the western sky at and before sunset, when, through the vistas there between the clouds, you saw a singularly crystalline, vitreous sky, which perhaps is not seen at any other season of the year, at least not in such perfection. I will see if we have any more this winter.
• Well, then there was the thaw, January thaw, which this year came in December, for it is the first thaw after long - continued cold weather and snow, when we have fairly forgotten summer.[In the January thaw I should have mentioned the sand foliage in the Cut.]
• This winter was remarkable for the long continuance of severe cold weather after it had once set in.
• Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain, but now I do not see the crystalline sky.
• Now we have the swollen river, and yellow water over the meadow ice to some extent.

Other epochs I might find described in my Journal.

At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; and the least inclination beyond a perpendicular in their faces is betrayed by the formation of icicles at once, which hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock.

They are now conducting downward the melting ice and snow, which drips from their points with a slight clinking and lapsing sound, but when the sun has set will freeze there and add to the icicles ' length.

Where the icicles have reached the ground and are like thick pillars, they have a sort of annular appearance, somewhat like the successive swells on the legs of tables and on bed - posts.

There is perhaps a harmony between the turner's taste and the law of nature in this instance.

The shadow of the water flowing or pulsating behind this transparent icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole.

The traveller's is so apt to be a progress more or less rapid toward his home (I have read many a voyage round the world more than half of which, certainly, was taken up with the return voyage; he no sooner is out of sight of his native hills than he begins to tell us how he got home again) that I wonder he did not stay at home in the first place.

The laws of nature always furnish us with the best excuse for going and coming. If we do not go now, we shall find our fire out.

I hate that my motive for visiting a friend should be that I want society; that it should lie in my poverty and weakness, and not in his and my riches and strength. His friendship should make me strong enough to do without him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1852 

See February 14, 1852 (version 1)

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

As I walk over thin ice, settling it down, I see great bubbles under, three or four feet wide, go waddling or wobbling away.

February 14

P. M. — On ice up Assabet to railroad. 

The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old, and though it was then six or eight inches thick, it is now only two or three, or much less, in many places nearly wasted away, and those once horizontal tables are often fallen aslant, like shields pierced with many holes. 

That belt, at first consisting of more or less blunt triangles projecting four or five feet from the bank, was at first, of course, perfectly horizontal and level (I see where dogs and foxes have run along on it for half a mile together), but now, such is the flexibility of the ice, it is bent downward by its own weight, or if you stand in front of it, it is a waving or undulating line instead of a level one, i. e. on its edge. 

I see one table, where the ice is a little more than one inch thick, which is curved downward on the sides eighteen inches within a horizontal distance of two and a half feet. There is nothing like a crack at this bend. Some of the belt itself, where three inches thick, has bent downward eighteen inches at four or five feet from the bank.

 I also see on Sunset Interval a large cake a rod square and a foot thick with more than a foot of soil attached beneath, which, by its own weight resting high and dry there, has bent very considerably. 

In one great cake there just like this, I see a fence-post with three holes in it standing upright, and perhaps the whole of it has been brought away in the soil beneath. 

It does not appear where it came from. Looking at the edge of one of these cakes, I notice some bubbles, seen edgewise, in the form of some buttons or of an inverted Moorish dome. 

These are they which when you look down on them appear thus: 

As I walk over thin ice, settling it down, I see great bubbles under, three or four feet wide, go waddling or wobbling away like a seared lady impeded by her train.

I have but little doubt that the musquash gets air from these bubbles, which are probably very conspicuous under the ice. They are its reservoirs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1859


The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old. See  January 1, 1857 (" I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze.""); January 16, 1857("As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. . . . The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north.”); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight.")

I have but little doubt that the musquash gets air from these bubbles. See January 22, 1859 ("J. Farmer tells me that he once saw a musquash rest three or four minutes under the ice with his nose against the ice in a bubble of air about an inch in diameter, and he thinks that they can draw air through the ice,"); January 24, 1859 ("He might... come to breathe in such a bubble as this already existing.")

One inch of snow.

February 14


About one inch of snow falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1858

See November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night."); January 14, 1860 ("About an inch more snow fell this morning."); February 9, 1858 ("Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground.");  February 13, 1859 ("A dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets.")

It is a fine, somewhat springlike day.

February 14

Pico, February 14, 2017

Higginson told me yesterday of a large tract near Fayal and near Pico (Mountain), covered with the reindeer (?) (as I suggested and he assented) lichens, very remarkable and desolate, extending for miles, the effect of an earthquake, which will in course of time be again clothed with a larger vegetation. 

Described at length remarkable force of the wind on the summit of Pico. 

Told of a person in West Newbury, who told him that he once saw the moon rising out of the sea from his house in that place, and on the moonlight in his room the distinct shadow of a vessel which was somewhere on the sea between him and the moon!! 

It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. 

The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1857

Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow... So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.   See February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. "); See also January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.”);  January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? "); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active

A Book of the Seasons: February 14.

February 14.

We are made to love
river and meadow, as wind
to ripple water.
February 14, 1851

How few things can a

man measure with the tape of 

his understanding. 

February 14, 1851

I see great bubbles 

wobbling away as I

walk over thin ice.

February 14, 1859

February 14, 2017

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 © 2009-2019

The dispersion of seed on the snow crust

February 14

Still colder this morning, -7° at 8.30 A. M. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I find that a great many pine-needles, both white and pitch, of ’54 still hold on, bristling around the twigs, especially if the tree has not grown much the last year. So those that strew the snow now are of both kinds. 

I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp; can run and stamp without danger of breaking through, raised quite above the andromeda (which is entirely concealed), more than two feet above the ground. But in the woods, and even in wood-paths, I slump at every other step. 

In all the little valleys in the woods and sprout-lands, and on the southeast sides of hills, the oak leaves which have blown over the crust are gathered in dry and warm-looking beds, often five or six feet in diameter, about the base of the shrub oaks. So clean and crisply dry and warm above the cold, white crust, they are singularly inviting to my eye. No doubt they are of service to conceal and warm the rabbit and partridge and other beasts and birds. They fill every little hollow, and betray thus at a distance a man’s tracks made a week ago, or a dog’s many rods off on a hillside. If the snow were not crusted, they would not be gathered thus in troops. 

I walk in the bare maple swamps and detect the minute pensile nests of some vireo high over my head, in the fork of some unattainable twig, where I never suspected them in summer, —a little basket cradle that rocked so high in the wind. And where is that young family now, while their cradle is filled with ice?

I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the railroad causeway, at the foot of the embankment, next to the fence. Some twelve years ago, when that causeway was built through the meadows, there were no willows there or near there, but now, just at the foot of the sand-bank, where it meets the meadow, and on the line of the fence, quite a dense willow hedge has planted itself.  

I used to think that the seeds were brought with the sand from the Deep Cut in the woods, but there is no golden willow there; but now I think that the seeds have been blown hither from a distance, and lodged against the foot of the bank, just as the snow-drift accumulates there, for I see several ash trees among them, which have come from an ash ten rods east in the meadow, though none has sprung up elsewhere. There are also a few alders, elms, birch, poplars, and some elder. 

For years a willow might not have been persuaded to take root in that meadow; but run a barrier like this through it, and in a few years it is lined with them. They plant themselves here solely, and not in the open meadow, as exclusively as along the shores of a river. The sand-bank is a shore to them, and the meadow a lake. 

How impatient, how rampant, how precocious these osiers! They have hardly made two shoots from the sand in as many springs, when silvery catkins burst out along them, and anon 

 Thus they multiply and clan together. Thus they take advantage even of the railroad, which elsewhere disturbs and invades their domains. 

May I ever be in as good spirits as a willow! How tenacious of life! How withy! How soon it gets over its hurts! They never despair. Is there no moisture longer in nature which they can transmute into sap?

They are emblems of youth, joy, and everlasting life. Scarcely is their growth restrained by winter, but their silvery down peeps forth in the warmest days in January (?). 

The very trees and shrubs and weeds, if we consider their origin, have drifted thus like snow against the fences and hillsides. Their growth is protected and favored there. Soon the alders will take their places with them. This hedge is, of course, as straight as the railroad or its bounding fence. 

Over this crust, alder and birch and pine seeds, etc., which in summer would have soon found a resting place, are blown far and wide.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, February 14, 1856

I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp; can run and stamp without danger of breaking through. See February 13, 1856 ("This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields"); See also  February 8, 1852 ("This afternoon, the first crust to walk on.");   February 9, 1851 ("Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust. and can walk across the river in most places. It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); February 14, 1852   ("Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain.")

In all the little valleys in the woods and sprout-lands, and on the southeast sides of hills, the oak leaves which have blown over the crust are gathered in dry and warm-looking beds, . . and betray thus at a distance a man’s tracks made a week ago. See January 8, 1852 ("Almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow - perhaps ten inches deep - has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around."); January 24, 1852 ("The oaks are made thus to retain their leaves, that they may play over the snow - crust and add variety to the winter landscape");  February 4, 1856 ("The oak leaves which have blown over the snow are collected in dense heaps on the still side of the bays at Walden, where I suspect they make warm beds for the rabbits to squat on.”)  December 9, 1856 ("Coming through the Walden woods, I see already great heaps of oak leaves collected in certain places on the snow-crust by the roadside, where an eddy deposited them."); December 11, 1858 ("Already, in hollows in the woods and on the sheltered sides of hills, the fallen leaves are collected in small heaps on the snow-crust, simulating bare ground and helping to conceal the rabbit and partridge, etc. They are not equally diffused, but collected together here and there as if for the sake of society. ")

I walk in the bare maple swamps and detect the minute pensile nests of some vireo high over my head. See  December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”); January 24, 1856 ("The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer."); January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!”); February 9, 1856 ("See a pensile nest eighteen feet high, within a lichen clad red maple on the edge of the Assabet Spring or Pink Azalea Swamp . . . Is it a yellow throat vireo’s? It is not shaped like the red-eye’s, on a side twig to one of the limbs and about a foot from the end of the twig."); February 24, 1858 ("What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, inweaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature between the two twigs of a maple.");  

I was struck to-day by the size and continuousness of the natural willow hedge on the east side of the rail road causeway . . . now I think that the seeds have been blown hither from a distance. See June 9, 1854 ("The willow down and seeds are blowing over the causeway."); May 12, 1857 ("When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of. "); March 11, 1861("We have many kinds, but each is confined to its own habitat. I am not aware that the S. nigra has ever strayed from the river's brink. Though many of the S. alba have been set along our causeways, very few have sprung up and maintained their ground elsewhere. . .  I have but little doubt that the seed of four of those that grow along the railroad causeway was blown from the river meadows, viz. S. pedicellaris, lucida, Torreyana, and petiolaris."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

May I ever be in as good spirits as a willow! See May 14, 1852  ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! "); See also  A Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

Scarcely is their growth restrained by winter, but their silvery down peeps forth. 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."); March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now. The silvery down of the former has in some places crept forth from beneath its scales a third of an inch at least. This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March, perhaps earlier. It appears to be a very gradual expansion, which begins in the warm days of winter. It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Over this crust, alder and birch and pine seeds, etc., which in summer would have soon found a resting place, are blown far and wide. See December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it."); February 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed, blown thirty rods from J. Hosmer’s little grove."); March 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed with its wing, far out on Walden."); December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. ")

Golden blossoms and 

downy seeds, spreading their race 

with rapidity.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The dispersion of seed on the snow crust

 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

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