We go listening for early birds with bread and cheese for our dinners.

March 20.  

A rather cool and breezy morning, which was followed by milder day.

March 20, 2022

We go listening

for early birds with bread and

cheese for our dinners.

(Yesterday I forgot to say I painted my boat. Spanish brown and raw oil were the ingredients. I found the painter had sold me the brown in hard lumps as big as peas, which I could not reduce with a stick; so I passed the whole when mixed through an old coffee-mill, which made a very good paint-mill, catching it in an old coffee- pot , whose holes I puttied up, there being a lack of vessels ; and then I broke up the coffee-mill and nailed a part over the bows to protect them , the boat is made so flat. I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax I had, melted.) 

How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular, sweeping entirely round the pond  as if defined by a vast, bold sweep! 

It is evident that the English do not enjoy that contrast between winter and summer that we do, that there is too much greenness and spring in the winter.  There is no such wonderful resurrection of the year. Birds kindred with our first spring ones remain with them all winter, and flowers answering to our earliest spring ones put forth there in January. In one sense they have no winter but such as our spring. Our April is their March; our March, their February; our February, January, and December are not theirs at all under any name or sign. 

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. 

Here and there around the pond, within a rod of the water, is the fisherman's stone fireplace, with its charred brands, where he cheered and warmed himself and ate his lunch. 

The peculiarity of to-day is that now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. The warm [ sic ] makes a man young again. There is also some dryness, almost dustiness, in the roads. 

The mountains are white with snow, and sure as the wind is northwest it is wintry; but now it is more westerly. The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision, -actually to look into rich lands of promise. 

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. 

Goose Pond is wholly open. 

Unexpectedly dry and crispy the grass is getting in warm places.

 At Flint's Pond, gathered a handful or two of chestnuts on a sloping bank under the leaves, every one sound and sweet, but mostly sprouting. There were none black as at C. Smith's, proving that in such places as this, somewhat warm and dry, they are all preserved the winter through. Now, then, new groves of chestnuts (and of oaks?) are being born. 

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. 

Some brooks are full of little wiggling creatures somewhat like caddis-worms, stemming the stream, — food for the early fishes. 

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon- colored like those of the common, but soon they cast off their salmon - colored jackets and come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. 

What is that little bird that makes so much use of these curls in its nest, lined with coarse grass? 

The snow still covers the ground on the north side of hills, which are hard and slippery with frost. 

I am surprised to find Flint's Pond not more than half broken up. Probably it was detained by the late short but severe cold, while Walden, being deeper, was not. Standing on the icy side, the pond appears nearly all frozen; the breadth of open water is far removed and diminished to a streak; I say it is beginning to break up. Standing on the water side (which in Flint's is the middle portion ), it appears to be but bordered with ice, and I say there is ice still left in the pond.

Saw a bluish-winged beetle or two. 

In a stubble-field east of Mt. Tabor, started up a pack ( though for numbers, about twenty, it may have been a bevy ) of quail, which went off to some young pitch pines, with a whir like a shot, the plump  round birds. 

The redpolls are still numerous.

On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I was surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings. What does it do these frosty nights? Its chrysalis must have hung in some sunny nook of the rocks. Born to be food for some early bird.

Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see the sap falling in large, clear drops from the wound. 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1853

March 20, 1853 How handsome the curves which the edge of the ice makes, See Walden is melting apace

I painted my boat . . . I had first filled the seams with some grafting- wax. See March 16, 1854 ("See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

Those alder catkins on the west side of Walden tremble and undulate in the wind, they are so relaxed and ready to bloom, the most forward blossom-buds. See  March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The edges of the mountains now melt into the sky. It is affecting to be put into communication with such distant objects by the power of vision. See February 21, 1855 ("We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields"); March 11, 1854 ("The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare."); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.");  October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?")See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

Now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging scent from dry oak and other leaves, on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the summer from afar. See February 18, 1857 (“I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it”); March 4, 1854 ("I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground."); March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”) April 2, 1856 ("I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves . I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa.”); April 27, 1860 ("There is a certain summeriness in the air now, especially under a warm cliff like this, where you smell the very dry leaves, and hear the pine warbler and the hum of insects")

In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines, probably the under sides of their leaves. See February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 21, 1859 (“That fine silvery light reflected from its needles (perhaps their undersides) incessantly in motion.”); April 29, 1852 ("The pines have an appearance they have not worn before, yet not easy to describe"); May 1, 1855 ("Why have the white pines at a distance that silvery look around their edges or thin parts? Is it owing to the wind showing the under sides of the needles? Methinks you do not see it in the winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind

Goose Pond is wholly open. Compare March 21, 1855("Crossed Goose Pond on ice."); March 24, 1854 ("Goose Pond half open. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. See January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

The canoe birch sprouts are red or salmon-colored . . . but soon they . . . come forth with a white but naked look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. See April 7, 1856 ("The tops of young white birches now have a red-pink color."); January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond. There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off. . . .It is as if the tree unbuttoned a thin waistcoat and suffered it to blow aside, revealing its bosom or inner garment, which is a more ruddy brown, or sometimes greenish or coppery; and thus one cuticle peels off after another till it is a ruddy white, as if you saw to a red ground through a white wash; . . .It may be, then, half a dozen years old before it assumes the white toga which is its distinctive dress. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

The redpolls are still numerous. See March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early. See  March 21, 1853 ("Saw two more of those large black and buff butterflies. The same degree of heat brings them out everywhere.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Rejoiced to see the sap. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We go listening for early birds

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-530329

In some years it may thaw and freeze again.

 

March 30.

March 30, 2017

High water, — up to sixth slat (or gap) above Smith's second post. It is said to have been some nine inches higher about a month ago, when the snow first went off. 

R. W. E. lately found a Norway pine cut down in Stow's wood by Saw Mill Brook. 

According to Channing's account, Walden must have skimmed nearly, if not entirely, over again once since the 11th or 12th, or after it had been some time completely clear. It seems, then, that in some years it may thaw and freeze again.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1861

High water —nine inches higher about a month ago, See March 30, 1855 ("The river is but about a foot above the lowest summer level.")

R. W. E. lately found a Norway pine. See February 27, 1851 ("Saw to-day on Pine Hill . . . a Norway pine, the first I have seen in Concord. . . . It was a very handsome tree, about twenty-five feet high.")

 Walden must have skimmed nearly, if not entirely, over again once since the 11th or 12th. See March 11, 1861 ("C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, . . . This shows how many things are to be taken into account in judging of such a pond. I have not been able to go to the pond the past winter. I infer that, if it has broken up thus early, it must be because the ice was thin, and that it was thin not for want of cold generally, but because of the abundance of snow which lay on it.")  Compare March 30, 1856 ("These cold days have made the ice of Walden dry and pretty hard again at top. It is just twenty-four inches thick"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Walden is two-thirds broken up.

 March 27.

Walden is two-thirds broken up. It will probably be quite open by to-morrow night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1851

It will probably be quite open by to-morrow night. See note to March 14, 1860 (" I am surprised to find Walden open. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.") See also  April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out In Thoreau’s records, March 14th was the earliest ice out; April 18th was the latest. From 1995 to 2015, ice out ranged from Jan. 29 (!) to April 12 with the median ice out date March 21.

Walden not melted.

March 26.

Walden not melted about shore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1852

Walden not melted about shore. See  April 14, 1852 ("Walden is only melted two or three rods from the north shore yet.  It is a good thermometer of the annual heats, because, having no outlet nor inlet on the surface, it has no stream to wear it away more or less rapidly or early as the water may be higher or lower, and also, being so deep, it is not warmed through by a transient change of temperature"):  April 19, 1852 ("Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th.[the latest in Thoreau's records]") See also March 26, 1857 ("Walden is already on the point of breaking up. In the shallow bays it is melted six or eight rods out, and the ice looks dark and soft."); March 11, 1861 ("t will be open then the 12th or 13th. This is earlier than I ever knew it to open. ");  April 18, 1856 ("I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th")and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

The ice still remains in Walden, though it will not bear.

March 23. 

March 23, 2021

For a week past the elm buds have been swollen. The willow catkins have put out. 

The ice still remains in Walden, though it will not bear. Mather Howard saw a large meadow near his house which had risen up but was prevented from floating away by the bushes.


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

 

The willow catkins have put out. See March 21, 1859 ("The willow catkins are also very conspicuous, in silvery masses rising above the flood. "); March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water.");March 22, 1856 ("The down of willow catkins in very warm places has in almost every case peeped out an eighth of an inch, generally over the whole willow.")
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The ice still remains in Walden. See March 11, 1861 ("It will be open then the 12th or 13th.This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.") See also Walden ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March; in '54, about the 7th of April. ")

For a week past elm 

buds have been swollen–willow 

catkins have put out. 

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

This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.

March 11.

C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, so that the lines on my map would not strike any ice, but that there is ice in the deep cove.

It will be open then the 12th or 13th.

This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.

Fair Haven was solid ice two or three days ago, and probably is still, and Goose Pond is to - day all ice.

Why, then, should Walden have broken up thus early? for it froze over early and the winter was steadily cold up to February at least.

I think it must have been because the ice was uncommonly covered with snow, just as the earth was, and as there was little or no frost in the earth, the ice also was thin, and it did not increase upward with snow ice as much as usual because there was no thaw or rain at all till February 2d, and then very little.

According to all accounts there has been no skating on Walden the past winter on account of the snow. It was unusually covered with snow.

This shows how many things are to be taken into account in judging of such a pond.

I have not been able to go to the pond the past winter.

I infer that, if it has broken up thus early, it must be because the ice was thin, and that it was thin not for want of cold generally, but because of the abundance of snow which lay on it.

The water is now high on the meadows and there is no ice there, owing to the recent heavy rains.

Yet C. thinks it has been higher a few weeks since.

C. observes where mice (?) have gnawed the pitch pines the past winter. Is not this a phenomenon of a winter of deep snow only? as that when I lived at Walden, a hard winter for them. I do not commonly observe it on a large scale.

My Aunt Sophia, now in her eightieth year, says that when she was a little girl my grandmother, who lived in Keene, N. H., eighty miles from Boston, went to Nova Scotia, and, in spite of all she could do, her dog Bob, a little black dog with his tail cut off, followed her to Boston, where she went aboard a vessel.

Directly after, however, Bob returned to Keene. 

One day, Bob, lying as usual under his mistress's bed in Keene, the window being open, heard a dog bark in the street, and instantly, forgetting that he was in the second story, he sprang up and jumped out the chamber window. He came down squarely on all fours, but it surprised or shocked him so that he did not run an inch, --- which greatly amused the children, - my mother and aunts.



The seed of the willow is exceedingly minute, - as I measure, from one twentieth to one twelfth of an inch in length by one fourth as much in width, - and is surrounded at base by a tuft of cotton - like hairs about one fourth of an inch long rising around and above it, forming a kind of parachute. These render it the most buoyant of the seeds of any of our trees, and it is borne the furthest horizontally with the least wind.

It falls very slowly even in the still air of a chamber, and rapidly ascends over a stove. It floats the most like a mote of any, — in a meandering manner, — and, being enveloped in this tuft of cotton, the seed is hard to detect.

Each of the numerous little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, which form the fertile catkin is closely packed with down and seeds. At maturity these pods open their beaks, which curve back, and gradually discharge their burden like the milkweed. It would take a delicate gin indeed to separate these seeds from their cotton.

If you lay bare any spot in our woods, however sandy, as by a railroad cut, no shrub or tree is surer to plant itself there sooner or later than a willow (commonly S. humilis or tristis) or poplar.

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.

The principal habitat of most of our species, such as love the water, is the river's bank and the adjacent river meadows, and when certain kinds spring up in an inland meadow where they were not known before, I feel pretty certain that they come from the river meadows.

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.

The barren and fertile flowers are usually on separate plants. I observe [?] that the greater part of the white willows set out on our causeways are sterile ones.

You can easily distinguish the fertile ones at a distance when the pods are bursting.

And it is said that no sterile weeping willows have been introduced into this country, so that it cannot be raised from the seed.

Of two of the indigenous willows common along the brink of our river I have detected but one sex.

The seeds of the willow thus annually fill the air with their lint, being wafted to all parts of the country, and, though apparently not more than one in many millions gets to be a shrub, yet so lavish and persevering is Nature that her purpose is completely answered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1861

It will be open then the 12th or 13th.This is earlier than I ever knew it to open. See Walden ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March; in '54, about the 7th of April. "); April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th. ") NoeFrom 1995 to 2015, ice out ranged from Jan. 29 in the record-breaking warm winter of 2012 to as late as April 12. The median ice out date over that period was March 21.  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

C. observes where mice (?) have gnawed the pitch pines the past winter. See January 23, 1852 ("Mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow."); April 8, 1861 ("The pitch pines have been much gnawed or barked this snowy winter . . . At the base of each, also, is a quantity of the mice droppings. It is probably the white-footed mouse. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

   

We have many kinds, but each is confined to its own habitat. See May 12, 1857 ("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,")

The seed of the willow is exceedingly minute. . .and is surrounded at base by a tuft of cotton - like hairs about one fourth of an inch long rising around and above it, forming a kind of parachute. These render it the most buoyant of the seeds of any of our trees . . and, though apparently not more than one in many millions gets to be a shrub, yet so lavish and persevering is Nature that her purpose is completely answered. See October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens, or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. ... How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft."); November 8, 1860 ("Consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow. and  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact

April 19

6 a. m. — Rain still, a fine rain. The robin sang early this morning over the bare ground, an hour ago, nevertheless, ushering in the day.

Then the guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation's liberty.

The birds must live on expectation now. There is nothing in nature to cheer them yet.

That last flock of geese yesterday is still in my eye. After hearing their clangor, looking southwest, we saw them just appearing over a dark pine wood, in an irregular waved line, one abreast of the other, as it were breasting the air and pushing it before them. It made you think of the streams of Cayster, etc., etc. They carry weight, such a weight of metal in the air. Their dark waved outline as they disappear. The grenadiers of the air. Man pygmifies himself at sight of these inhabitants of the air. These stormy days they do not love to fly; they alight in some retired marsh or river. From their lofty pathway they can easily spy out the most extensive and retired swamp. How many there must be, that one or more flocks are seen to go over almost every farm in New England in the spring.

That oak by Derby's is a grand object, seen from any side. It stands like an athlete and defies the tem pests in every direction. It has not a weak point. It is an agony of strength. Its branches look like stereo typed gray lightning on the sky. But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber, for knees to make stiff the sides of ships against the Atlantic billows. Like an athlete, it shows its well- developed muscles.

I saw yesterday that the farmers had been out to save their fencing-stuff from the flood, and everywhere it was drawn above high-water mark.

The North River had fallen nearly a foot, which I cannot account for, unless some of the dams above had broken away or been suddenly raised [sic]. This slight difference in the character of the tributaries of a river and their different histories and adventures is interesting, — all making one character at last.

The willow catkin might be the emblem of spring. The buds of the lilac look ready to take advantage of the first warm day. The skin of my nose has come off in consequence of that burning of the sun reflected from the snow.

A stormy day. 2 p. m. — With C. over Wood's Bridge to Lee's and back by Baker Farm.

It is a violent northeast storm, in which it is very difficult and almost useless to carry an umbrella. I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry. It is a wind to turn umbrellas.

The meadows are higher, more wild and angry, and the waves run higher with more white to their caps than before this year. I expect to hear of shipwrecks and of damage done by the tide. This wind, too, keeps the water in the river. It is worth the while to walk to-day to hear the rumbling roar of the wind, as if it echoed through the hollow chambers of the air. It even sounds like thunder sometimes, and when you pass under trees, oaks or elms, that overhang the road, the sound is more grand and stormy still. The wind sounds even in open fields as if on a roof over our heads. It sounds as if amid sails.

The mists against the woods are seen driving by in upright columns or sections, as if separated by waves of air. Drifting by, they make a dimly mottled land scape.

What comes flapping low with heavy wing over the middle of the flood ? Is it an eagle or a fish hawk ? Ah, now he is betrayed, I know not by what motion, — a great gull, right in the eye of the storm. He holds not a steady course, but suddenly he dashes upward even like the surf of the sea which he frequents, showing the under sides of his long, pointed wings, on which do I not see two white spots ? He suddenly beats upward thus as if to surmount the airy billows by a slanting course, as the teamster surmounts a slope. The swallow, too, plays thus fantastically and luxuriously and leisurely, doubling some unseen corners in the sky. Here is a gull, then, long after ice in the river. It is a fine sight to see this noble bird leisurely advancing right in the face of the storm.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original [sic], or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived. 

The thing that pleases me most within these three days is the discovery of the andromeda phenomenon. It makes all those parts of the country where it grows more attractive and elysian to me. It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world. At sight of any redness I am excited like a cow.

To-day you can find arrowheads, for every stone is washed bright in the rain.

On the Miles road, the Bceomyces roseus is now in perfection. Seen on the clay-like surface, amid the dark dead birch and pine leaves, it looks like a mi nute dull-pinkish bloom, a bloom on the earth, and passes for a terrene flower. It impresses me like a mildew passing into a higher type. It covers large tracts of ground there [with] a pink color. C. calls it flesh-colored, but it is high-colored for that.

Observed the thistle again covered with the beads of rain-drops and tinged with purple on the edges of the leaves. It impressed me again as some rich fruit of the tropics ready to be eaten with a spoon. It suggests pineapples, custard-apples, or what is it? The pasture thistle.

All the farmers' cart-paths (for their meadow-hay) are now seen losing themselves in the water.

In the midst of this storm I see and hear the robin still and the song sparrow, and see the bluebird also, and the crow, and a hawk a-hunting (a marsh hawk?), and a blue woodpecker, I thought about the size of the hairy.

The meadow from Lee's causeway, looking northeast against the storm, looks dark and, as C. says, slate-colored. I observe that, to get the dark color of the waves, you must not only look in the direction whence they come, but stand as low and nearly on a level with them as possible. If you are on the top of a hill, light is reflected upward to you from their surface.

In all this storm and wet, see a muskrat's head in the meadow, as if some one thrust up a mop from below, — literally a drowned rat. Such independence of the moods of nature! He does not care, if he knows, when it rains. Saw a woodchuck out in the storm. The elder buds are forward. I stood by Clematis Brook, hearing the wind roar in the woods and the water in the brook; and, trying to distinguish between these sounds, I at last concluded that the first was a drier sound, the last a wetter. There is a slight dry hum to the wind blowing on the twigs of the forest, a softer and more liquid splashing sound to the water falling on rocks.

Scared up three blue herons in the little pond close by, quite near us. It was a grand sight to see them rise, so slow and stately, so long and limber, with an undulating motion from head to foot, undulating also their large wings, undulating in two directions, and looking warily about them. With this graceful, lim ber, undulating motion they arose, as if so they got under way, their two legs trailing parallel far behind like an earthy re siduum to be left behind. They are large, like birds of Syrian lands, and seemed to oppress the earth, and hush the hillside to silence, as they winged their way over it, looking back toward us. It would affect our thoughts, deepen and perchance darken our reflections, if such huge birds flew in numbers in our sky. Have the effect of magnetic passes. They are few and rare. Among the birds of celebrated flight, storks, cranes, geese, and ducks. The legs hang down like a weight which they [ ?] raise, to pump up as it were with its [sic] wings and convey out of danger. The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of. I saw, looking from the railroad to Fair Haven Hill soon after we started, four such, — the wood on E. Hubbard's meadow, dark but open; that of Hubbard's Grove, showing the branches of the trees; Potter's pitch pines, perhaps one solid black mass with outline only distinct; Brown's on the Cliff, but dimly seen through the mist, — one above and be yond the other, with vales of mist between.

To see the larger and wilder birds, you must go forth in the great storms like this. At such times they frequent our neighborhood and trust themselves in our midst. A life of fair-weather walks might never show you the goose sailing on our waters, or the great heron feeding here. When the storm increases, then these great birds that carry the mail of the seasons lay to.

To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.

In pleasant sunny weather you may catch butterflies, but only when the storm rages that lays prostrate the forest and wrecks the mariner, do you come upon the feeding-grounds of wildest fowl, — of heron and geese.

The light buff( ?)-colored hazel catkins, some three inches long, are conspicuous now. 

Beside the direct and steady rain, large drops fall from the trees and dimple the water. Stopped in the barn on the Baker Farm. Sat in the dry meadow-hay, where the mice nest. To sit there, rustling the hay, just beyond reach of the rain while the storm roars without, it suggested an inexpressible dry stillness, the quiet of the haymow in a rainy day; such stacks of quiet and undisturbed thought, when there is not even a cricket to stir in the hay, but all without is wet and tumultuous, and all within is dry and quiet. 

Oh, what reams of thought one might have here! The crackling of the hay makes silence audible. It is so deep a bed, it makes one dream to sit on it, to think of it. 

The never-failing jay still screams. 

Standing in Pleasant Meadow, Conantum shore, seen through the mist and rain, looks dark and heavy and without perspective, like a perpendicular upon its edge. 

Crossed by the chain of ponds to Walden. The first, looking back, appears elevated high above Fair Haven between the hills above the swamp, and the next higher yet. Each is distinct, a wild and interesting pond with its musquash house. 

The second the simplest perhaps, with decayed spruce (?) trees, rising out of the island of andromeda in its midst, draped with usnea, and the mists now driving between them.

Saw the Veratrum viride, seven or eight inches high, in Well Meadow Swamp, — the greatest growth of the season, at least above water, if not above or below. I doubt if there is so much recent vegetable matter pushed above ground elsewhere; certainly there is not unless of pads under water. Yet it did not start so early as it has grown fast.

Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th.

Trillium Woods make a lee thirty or forty rods off, though you are raised twenty feet on the causeway.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 19, 1852

The guns were fired and the bells rung to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of a nation's liberty. See April 19, 1855 ("The guns are firing and bells ringing")

That oak by Derby's is a grand object,. . .But I fear a price is set upon its sturdy trunk and roots for ship-timber,  See February 10, 1854 ("The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.").

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!  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"); July 7, 1851

("Knowledge does not come

to us by details but by

lieferungs from the gods.")

The andromeda phenomenon. See April 17, 1852 ("From this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color . . . And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon

To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. See  December 25, 1856 ("Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. "); February 28, 1852 ("To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin,"); March 8, 1859 (" If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage. . ., and come home as if from an adventure. There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out"); March 31, 1852 ("I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system."); April 13, 1852 ("I love to hear the wind howl"); May 13, 1852  ("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty")

Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. See April 17, 1852 ("The pond is still half covered with ice, and it will take another day like this to empty it. It is clear up tight to the shore on the south side, — dark-gray cold ice, completely saturated with water. The air from over it is very cold.")[In Thoreau’s records, the latest  ice out occurred April 18th]. See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

The pasture thistle

covered with beads of rain-drops

and tinged with purple.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact

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

Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me

March 30. 

March 30, 2013

Dug some parsnips this morning. They break off about ten inches from the surface, the ground being frozen there.

The Cliffs remind me of that narrow place in the brook where two meadows nearly meet, with floating grass, though the water is deeper there under the bank than anywhere. So the Cliffs are a place where two summers nearly meet. 

Put up a bluebird-box, and found a whole egg in it. Saw a pewee from the rail road causeway. 

Having occasion to-day to put up a long ladder against the house, I found, from the trembling of my nerves with the exertion, that I had not exercised that part of my system this winter  How much I may have lost! It would do me good to go forth and work hard and sweat. Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me. It is a backward season with me. 

Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up. 

To-day, as frequently for some time past, we have a raw east wind, which is rare in winter. 

I see as yet very little, perhaps no, new growth in the plants in open fields, but only the green radical leaves which have been kept fresh under the snow; but if I should explore carefully about their roots, I should find some expanding buds and even new-rising shoots. 

The farmers are making haste to clear up their wood-lots, which they have cut off the past winter, to get off the tops and brush, that they may not be too late and injure the young sprouts and lose a year's growth in the operation, also that they may be ready for their spring work.

From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, — which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker' s Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was. It is pretty central. 

I perceive the hollow sound from the rocky ground as I tread and stamp about the Cliffs, and am reminded how much more sure children are to notice this peculiarity than grown persons. I remember when I used to make this a regular part of the entertainment when I conducted a stranger to the Cliffs. 

On the warm slope of the Cliffs the radical (?) leaves of the St. John's- wort (somewhat spurge-like), small on slender sprigs, have been evergreen under the snow. In this warm locality there is some recent growth nearest the ground. 

The leaves of the Saxifraga vernalis on the most mossy rocks are quite fresh. 

That large evergreen leaf sometimes mistaken for the mayflower is the Pyrola rotundifolia and perhaps some other species. 

What are those leaves in rounded beds, curled and hoary beneath, reddish-rown above, looking as if covered with frost? It is now budded, - a white, downy bud. [The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium and G. purpureum.]


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1852

Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up. See March 31, 1852 ("Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months"); August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.”)

Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me. See March 9, 1852 (" When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man.”); March 21, 1853 ("Winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.")

I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river. See March 30, 1856 ("I walk over the pond and down on the middle of the river to the bridge, without seeing an opening."); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later.”)  See Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out


On the warm slope of the Cliffs the radical leaves of the St. John's- wort  have been evergreen under the snow. See January 9, 1855 ("How pretty the evergreen radical shoots of the St. John’s-wort now exposed, partly red or lake, various species of it.. . .A little wreath of green and red lying along on the muddy ground amid the melting snows.")

The leaves of the Saxifraga vernalis on the most mossy rocks are quite fresh. See March 30, 1856 ("[I]n 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 golden saxifrage, green and abundant")

The Library a wilderness of books.

March 16. 

Before sunrise. 

With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature. 

Spent the day in Cambridge Library. 

Walden is not yet melted round the edge. 

It is, perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual. 

Mr. Bull thinks that the pine grosbeaks, which have been unusually numerous the past winter, have killed many branches of his elms by budding them, and that they will die and the wind bring them down, as heretofore. 

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. 

The Library a wilderness of books. 

Looking over books on Canada written within the last three hundred years, could see how one had been built upon another, each author consulting and referring to his predecessors. You could read most of them without changing your leg on the steps.

It is necessary to find out exactly what books to read on a given subject. Though there may be a thousand books written upon it, it is only important to read three or four; they will contain all that is essential, and a few pages will show which they are. Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. 

I saw that while we are clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses. 

The volumes of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, which lie so near on the shelf, are rarely opened, are effectually forgotten and not implied by our literature and newspapers. 

When I looked into Purchas's Pilgrims, it affected me like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat. 

Those old books suggested a  certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literatures to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bullfrogs and the hum of mosquitoes reverberating through the thick embossed covers when I had closed the book. 

Decayed literature makes the richest of all soils.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 16, 1852

Saw a large flock of geese go over Cambridge and heard the robins in the College Yard. See March 14, 1854 ("From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

Walden is not yet melted round the edge.  See March 14, 1852 ("The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun.");  Journal, March 18, 1852("The pond is still very little melted around the shore.");  April 1, 1852 ("Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores."); April 14. 1852 (" Walden is only melted two or three rods from the north shore yet."); April 19, 1852 (" Walden is clear of ice. The ice left it yesterday, then, the 18th. ");Walden. ("In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April;  in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March;  in '54, about the 7th of April.")

Keeping a journal.

January 25. 

In keeping a journal of one's walks and thoughts it seems to be worth the while to record those phenomena which are most interesting to us at the time. Such is the weather. 

It makes a material difference whether it is foul or fair, affecting surely our mood and thoughts. Then there are various degrees and kinds of foulness and fairness. 

It may be cloudless, or there may be sailing clouds which threaten no storm, or it may be partially overcast. 

On the other hand it may rain, or snow, or hail, with various degrees of intensity. It may be a transient thunder-storm, or a shower, or a flurry of snow, or it may be a prolonged storm of rain or snow. Or the sky may be overcast or rain-threatening. 

So with regard to temperature. It may be warm or cold. Above 40° is warm for winter. One day, at 38 even, I walk dry and it is good sleighing; the next day it may have risen to 48, and the snow is rapidly changed to slosh. 

It may be calm or windy. 

The finest winter day is a cold but clear and glittering one. There is a remarkable life in the air then, and birds and other creatures appear to feel it, to be excited and invigorated by it. 

Also warm and melting days in winter are inspiring, though less characteristic. 

I will call the weather fair, if it does not threaten rain or snow or hail; foul, if it rains or snows or hails, or is so overcast that we expect one or the other from hour to hour. 

To-day it is fair, though the sky is slightly overcast, but there are sailing clouds in the southwest. 

The river is considerably broken up by the recent thaw and rain, but the Assabet much the most, probably because it is swifter and, owing to mills, more fluctuating. When the river begins to break up, it becomes clouded like a mackerel sky, but in this case the blue portions are where the current, clearing away the ice beneath, begins to show dark. The current of the water, striking the ice, breaks it up at last into portions of the same form with those which the wind gives to vapor. First, all those open places which I measured lately much enlarge themselves each way. 

Saw A. Hosmer approaching in his pung. He calculated so that we should meet just when he reached the bare planking of the causeway bridge, so that his horse might as it were stop of his own accord and no other excuse would be needed for a talk. 

He says that he has seen that little bird (evidently the shrike) with mice in its claws. Wonders what has got all the rabbits this winter. Last winter there were  hundreds near his house; this winter he sees none.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1860

In keeping a journal of one's walks and thoughts it seems to be worth the while to record those phenomena which are most interesting to us at the time. See February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.") See also Do not tread on the heels your experience.

The river is considerably broken up by the recent thaw and rain. See January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . . I am surprised to see Flint's Pond a quarter part open."); February 12, 1860 ("I see . . . here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water. That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

When one kind of life goes, another comes. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies.

March 28
P. M. — To Cliffs.

After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning.

Israel Rice says that he heard two brown thrashers sing this morning! Is sure because he has kept the bird in a cage. I can’t believe it.

I go down the railroad, turning off in the cut. I notice the hazel stigmas in the warm hollow on the right there, just beginning to peep forth. This is an unobserved but very pretty and interesting evidence of the progress of the season. I should not have noticed it if I had not carefully examined the fertile buds. It is like a crimson star first dimly detected in the twilight. The warmth of the day, in this sunny hollow above the withered sedge, has caused the stigmas to show their lips through their scaly shield. They do not project more than the thirtieth of an inch, some not the sixtieth. The staminate catkins are also considerably loosened. Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so these put forth their stigmas in the spring. How many accurate thermometers there are on every hill and in every valley: Measure the length of the hazel stigmas, and you can tell how much warmth there has been this spring. How fitly and exactly any season of the year may be described by indicating the condition of some flower! 

I go by the springs toward the epigaea. 

It is a fine warm day with a slight haziness. It is pleasant to sit outdoors now, and, it being Sunday, neighbors walk about or stand talking in the sun, looking at and scratching the dry earth, which they are glad to see and smell again. 

In the sunny epigaea wood I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves be fore, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies. 

It is surprising that men can be divided into those who lead an indoor and those who lead an outdoor life, as if birds and quadrupeds were to be divided into those that lived a within nest or burrow life and [those] that lived without their nests and holes chiefly. How many of our troubles are house-bred! He lives an out door life; i.e., he is not squatted behind the shield of a door, he does not keep himself tubbed. It is such a questionable phrase as an “honest man,” or the “naked eye,” as if the eye which is not covered with a spy glass should properly be called naked.

From Wheeler's plowed field on the top of Fair Haven Hill, I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. The strong and cold northwest wind of about a week past has probably detained them. Knowing that the meadows and ponds were swarming with ducks yesterday, you go forth this particularly pleasant and still day to see them at your leisure, but find that they are all gone. No doubt there are some left, and many more will soon come with the April rains. It is a wild life that is associated with stormy and blustering weather. When the invalid comes forth on his cane, and misses improve the pleasant air to look for signs of vegetation, that wild life has withdrawn itself. 

But when one kind of life goes, another comes. This plowed land on the top of the hill — and all other fields as far as I observe — is covered with cobwebs, which every few inches are stretched from root to root or clod to clod, gleaming and waving in the sun, the light flashing along them as they wave in the wind. How much insect life and activity connected with this peculiar state of the atmosphere these imply! Yet I do not notice a spider. Small cottony films are continually settling down or blown along through the air. [A gossamer day. I see them also for a week after.] Does not this gossamer answer to that of the fall? They must have sprung to with one consent last night or this morning and bent new cables to the clods and stubble all over this part of the world. 

The little fuzzy gnats, too, are in swarms in the air, peopling that uncrowded space. They are not confined by any fence. Already the distant forest is streaked with lines of thicker and whiter haze over the successive valleys. 

Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night.

Fair Haven Pond is open.

[This and Flint's and Walden all open together this year, the latter was so thinly frozen! (For C. says Flint's and Walden were each a third open on the 25th.)]

Sitting on the top of the Cliffs, I look through my glass at the smooth river and see the long forked ripple made by a musquash swimming along over the  meadow. While I sit on these warm rocks, turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here. I see, too, warm and cosy seats on the rocks, where the flies are buzzing, and probably some walker is enjoying the prospect. 

From this hilltop I overlook, again bare of snow, putting on a warm, hazy spring face, this seemingly concave circle of earth, in the midst of which I was born and dwell, which in the northwest and southeast has a more distant blue rim to it, as it were of more costly manufacture. On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. I see those familiar features, that large type, with which all my life is associated, unchanged. 

Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there. There is very little mud, however, and the rill never runs more than four or five rods before it is soaked up, and the whole spring often dries up in the summer. It seems, then, that two or three frogs, the sole inhabitants of so small a spring, will bury them selves at its head. A few frogs will be buried at the puniest spring-head. 

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. 

Near the sand path above Potter's mud-hole I find what I should call twenty and more mud turtles’ eggs close together, which appear to have been dug from a hole close by last year. They are all broken or cracked and more or less indented and depressed, and they look remarkably like my pigeon's egg fungi, a dirty white covered thickly with a pure white roughness, which through a glass is seen to be oftenest in the form of minute but regular rosettes of a very pure white substance. If these are turtles' eggs, –and there is no stem mark of a fungus, – it is remarkable that they should thus come to resemble so closely another natural product, the fungus.

The first lark of the 23d sailed through the meadow with that peculiar prolonged chipping or twittering sound, perhaps sharp clucking.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1858

I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves before, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. See March 28, 1857 ("The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa’s wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools.."); March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 (" Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? "); March 26, 1857 ("As I go through the woods by Andromeda Ponds, though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard, but, after listening long, one or two more suddenly croaked in confirmation of my faith, and all was silent again"); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools. . . . I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.")