A Book of the Seasons: the Lark in Early Spring

 

For the first time I perceive this spring

that the year is a circle.  

I would make a chart of our life, 

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

The lark sings – perched on 

the top of an apple tree – 

quite sweet and plaintive.

March 26, 1855

The turtle and frog 

peep stealthily out and see

first larks go over.

March 27, 1857 

March 11. E. Hosmer says that a man told him that he had seen my uncle Charles take a twelve-foot ladder, set it up straight, and then run up and down the other side, kicking it from behind him as he went down. E. H. told of seeing him often at the tavern toss his hat to the ceiling, twirling it over, and catch it on his head every time.      Large flocks of blackbirds to-day in the elm-tops and other trees. These are the first conspicuous large flocks of birds. J. Farmer says he saw ducks this morning and has seen larks some days. Channing saw geese to-day. March 11, 1859 [Uncle Charles died March 27, 1856, about midnight, aged seventy-six.]

March 12. Now I see and hear the lark sitting with head erect, neck outstretched, in the middle of a pasture, and I hear another far off singing. Sing when they first come. March 12, 1854

March 13. Excepting a few bluebirds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still. March 13, 1853

March 13. Going down railroad, listening intentionally, I hear, far through the notes of song sparrows (which are very numerous), the song of one or two larks. Also hearing a coarse chuck, I look up and see four black birds, whose size and long tails betray them crow blackbirds. Also I hear, I am pretty sure, the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker. The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. March 13, 1859

March 16. See larks about, though I have heard of them in the winter. March 16, 1860

March 18. The bluebird and song sparrow sing immediately on their arrival , and hence deserve to enjoy some preeminence. They give expression to the joy which the season inspires. But the robin and blackbird only peep and chuck at first, commonly, and the lark is silent and flitting. March 18, 1853

March 21. Hear a lark far off in the meadow. March 21, 1855

March 22. Already I hear from the rail road the plaintive strain of a lark or two. They sit now conspicuous on the bare russet ground. March 22, 1853

March 25. This sound [the dark-eyed junco] advances me furthest toward summer, unless it be the note of the lark, who, by the way, is the most steady singer at present. Notwithstanding the raw and windy mornings, it will sit on a low twig or tussock or pile of manure in the meadow and sing for hours, as sweetly and plaintively as in summer. March 25, 1853

March 26. The lark sings, perched on the top of an apple tree, quite sweet and plaintive, contrasting with the cheerless season and the bleak meadow. March 26, 1855

March 27, 2020

March 27. Hear a lark in that meadow. Twitters over it on quivering wing and awakes the slumbering life of the meadow. The turtle and frog peep stealthily out and see the first lark go over. March 27, 1857

March 28. The first lark of the 23d sailed through the meadow with that peculiar prolonged chipping or twittering sound, perhaps sharp clucking. March 28, 1858

March 30. The pewee [phoebe] is heard, and the lark. March 30, 1851

March 30. You see a few blackbirds, robins, bluebirds, tree sparrows, larks, etc., but the song sparrow chiefly is heard these days. March 30, 1855

April 2. The sun is up. The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth and placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain), bluebirds, - and I hear also a lark, - as if all the earth had burst forth into song. The influence of this April morning has reached them, for they live out-of-doors all the night, and there is no danger that they will oversleep themselves such a morning. April 2, 1852

April 6. The robin is the singer at present, such is its power and universality, being found both in garden and wood. Morning and evening it does not fail, perched on some elm or the like, and in rainy days it is one long morning or evening. The song sparrow is still more universal but not so powerful. The lark, too, is equally constant, morning and evening, but confined to certain localities, as is the blackbird to some extent. The bluebird, with feebler but not less sweet warbling, helps fill the air, and the pheobe does her part . . . I cannot describe the lark's song. I used these syllables in the morning to remember it by, -- heetar-su-e-oo.  April 6, 1853

April 9. I hear the note of a lark amid the other birds on the meadow. April 9, 1856

April 13. The larks are not yet in sufficient numbers or sufficiently musical. The robin is the prime singer as yet. April 13, 1852

April 14. Going down the railroad at 9 A. M., I hear the lark singing from over the snow. This for steady singing comes next to the robin now. It will come up very sweet from the meadows ere long.    I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note? April 14, 1852

April 21. The robins sing through the ceaseless rain, and the song sparrows, and I hear a lark’s plaintive strain. April 21, 1852

April 23. The lark sings morning and evening. April 23, 1854

April 26. The lark on the top of an apple tree sings a tchea te che, then perhaps tche tchea, only a plaintive clear round note.

*****

The lark sings a note 

which belongs to New England

summer evenings.

June 30, 1851

See also:

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata) 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the grackle arrives

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,The Eastern Phoebe

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Wood Pewee

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Bluebird in Spring.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Robin in Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red-wing in Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Colors of March-- Brown Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, March 27

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lark in Early Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTlark

The second important snow (cont.)

December 23. 


[The second important snow] ---- there is seven or eight inches of snow at least.

Larks were about our house the middle of this month.



H. D. Thoreau , Journal, December 23, 1860

Seven or eight inches of snow at least. See December 22, 1860 ("This evening and night, the second important snow.")

Larks were about our house the middle of this month. See note to  November 8, 1853 ("Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous, reminding me of arctic snowbirds by their size and form also.")

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground.

November 8

Mayweed and shepherd’s-purse.

10 A. M. — Our first snow, the wind southerly, the air chilly and moist; a very fine snow, looking like a mist toward the woods or horizon, which at 2 o’clock has not whitened the ground. The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.

P. M. – To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it.

By Merrick’s pasture it is mainly a fine, still more or less green, thread-like weed or grass of the river bottom (?), sedges, utricularias (that coarse one especially, whose name I am not sure of, with tassels (?), yellow water ranunculus, potamogeton’s translucent leaves, a few flags and pontederia stems.

By Peter’s there was much of that coarse triangular cellular stem mentioned yesterday as sparganium (?). I would not have thought it so common.

There is not so much meadow grass or hay as I expected, for that has been raked and carried off.

The pads, too, have wasted away and the pontederias’ leaves, and the stems of the last for the most part still adhere to the bottom.

Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous, reminding me of arctic snowbirds by their size and form also.

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.

November 8, 2023

Birds generally wear the russet dress of nature at this season. They have their fall no less than the plants; the bright tints depart from their foliage or feathers, and they flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks.

The sparrow is a withered leaf.

The Stellaria media still blooms in Cheney’s garden, and the shepherd’s-purse looks even fresher. This must be near the end of the flower season.

Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.

And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. They, then, do not go into winter quarters till the ground is covered with snow.

The partridges go off with a whir, and then sail a long way level and low through the woods with that impetus they have got, displaying their neat forms perfectly.

The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines.

I noticed the other day a great tangled and netted mass of an old white pine root lying upon the surface, nearly a rod across and two feet or more high, too large even to be turned up for a fence. 

It suggested that the roots of trees would be an interesting study. There are the small thickly interwoven roots of the swamp white oaks on the Assabet.

At evening the snow turned to rain, and the sugaring soon disappeared. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1853 

Our first snow. The children greet it with a shout. See November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen")

The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.  See December 3, 1856 ("The sight of the sedgy meadows that are not yet snowed up while the cultivated fields and pastures are a uniform white.") See also November 24, 1858 ("Plowed ground is quite white.); November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”);  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous. See October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring."); October 18, 1858 ("See larks, with their white tail-feathers, fluttering low over the meadows these days"); November 1, 1853  ("I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler's meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly or suppressedly.");  See also June 30, 1851 ("The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening."); August 4, 1852 ("I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate."); October 6, 1851 ("I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell")

Birds generally wear the russet dress of nature at this season. . . and they flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks. The sparrow is a withered leaf. See January 24, 1860 ("These birds, though they have bright brown and buff backs, hop about amid the little inequalities of the pasture almost unnoticed, such is their color and so humble are they.")

Birds in russet dress now flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground

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-531108

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance

October  6.

Monday. 12 m. — To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. 

Carlisle Reach

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. It is of a light sky-blue, alternating with smoother white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently, like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed, more gloriously and heavenly fair and pure than the sky itself.

It is something more celestial than the sky above it. I never saw any water look so celestial. I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln.

We have names for the rivers of hell, but none for the rivers of heaven, unless the Milky Way be one.

It is such a smooth and shining blue, like a panoply of sky-blue plates.

Our dark and muddy river has such a tint in this case as I might expect Walden or White Pond to exhibit, if they could be seen under similar circumstances, but Walden seen from Fair Haven is, if I remember, of a deep blue color tinged with green.

Cerulean?

Such water as that river reach appears to me of quite incalculable value, and the man who would blot that out of his prospect for a sum of money does not otherwise than to sell heaven.

George Thatcher, having searched an hour in vain this morning to find a frog, caught a pickerel with a mullein leaf.

The white ash near our house, which the other day was purple or mulberry-color, is now much more red. 

7.30 P. M. – To Fair Haven Pond by boat, the moon four-fifths full, not a cloud in the sky; paddling all the way.

The water perfectly still, and the air almost, the former gleaming like oil in the moonlight, with the moon's disk reflected in it.

When we started, saw some fishermen kindling their fire for spearing by the riverside.

It was a lurid, reddish blaze, contrasting with the white light of the moon, with dense volumes of black smoke from the burning pitch pine roots rolling upward in the form of an inverted pyramid.The blaze reflected in the water, almost as distinct as the substance. It looked like tarring a ship on the shore of the Styx or Cocytus. For it is still and dark, notwithstanding the moon, and no sound but the crackling of the fire.

The fishermen can be seen only near at hand, though their fire is visible far away; and then they appear as dusky, fuliginous figures, half enveloped in smoke, seen only by their enlightened sides. Like devils they look, clad in old coats to defend themselves from the fogs, one standing up forward holding the spear ready to dart, while the smoke and flames are blown in his face, the other paddling the boat slowly and silently along close to the shore with almost imperceptible motion.

The river appears indefinitely wide; there is a mist rising from the water, which increases the indefiniteness. A high bank or moonlit hill rises at a distance over the meadow on the bank, with its sandy gullies and clamshells exposed where the Indians feasted.

The shore line, though close, is removed by the eye to the side of the hill. It is at high-water mark. It is continued till it meets the hill.

Now the fisherman's fire, left behind, acquires some thick rays in the distance and becomes a star. As surely as sunlight falling through an irregular chink makes a round figure on the opposite wall, so the blaze at a distance appears a star.

Such is the effect of the atmosphere.

The bright sheen of the moon is constantly travelling with us, and is seen at the same angle in front on the surface of the pads; and the reflection of its disk in the rippled water by our boat-side appears like bright gold pieces falling on the river's counter. This coin is incessantly poured forth as from some unseen horn of plenty at our side.

(I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell.)

I do not know but the weirdness of the gleaming oily surface is enhanced by the thin fog.

A few water-bugs are seen glancing in our course.

I shout like a farmer to his oxen, — a short barking shout, — and instantly the woods on the eastern shore take it up, and the western hills a little up the stream; and so it appears to rebound from one side the river valley to the other, till at length I hear a farmer call to his team far up as Fair Haven Bay, whither we are bound.

We pass through reaches where there is no fog, perhaps where a little air is stirring.

Our clothes are almost wet through with the mist, as if we sat in water.

Some portions of the river are much warmer than others.

In one instance it was warmer in the midst of the fog than in a clear reach.

In the middle of the pond we tried the echo again. First the hill to the right took it up; then further up the stream on the left; and then after a long pause, when we had almost given it up, — and the longer expected, the more in one sense unexpected and surprising it was, — we heard a farmer shout to his team in a distant valley, far up on the opposite side of the stream, much louder than the previous echo; and even after this we heard one shout faintly in some neighboring town.
The third echo seemed more loud and distinct than the second.

But why, I asked, do the echoes always travel up the stream?

I turned about and shouted again, and then I found that they all appeared equally to travel down the stream, or perchance I heard only those that did so.

As we rowed to Fair Haven's eastern shore, a moonlit hill covered with shrub oaks, we could form no opinion of our progress toward it, — not seeing the water line where it met the hill, – until we saw the weeds and sandy shore and the tall bulrushes rising above the shallow water ( like ) the masts of large vessels in a haven. The moon was so high that the angle of excidence did not permit of our seeing her reflection in the pond.

As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection of every wood and hill on both sides distinctly. These answering reflections-shadow to substance-impress the voyager with a sense of harmony and symmetry, as when you fold a blotted paper and produce a regular figure, - a dualism which nature loves.

What you commonly see is but half.

Where the shore is very low the actual and reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot, and it is but a line that separates them, and the water and the sky almost flow into one another, and the shore seems to float.

As we paddle up or down, we see the cabins of muskrats faintly rising from amid the weeds, and the strong odor of musk is borne to us from particular parts of the shore.

Also the odor of a skunk is wafted from over the meadows or fields.

The fog appears in some places gathered into a little pyramid or squad by itself, on the surface of the water.

Home at ten.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1851 

To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. See September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line.") See also April 3, 1858 ("we paddle along all day, down to the Bedford line.")

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. See  April 1, 1852 ("Now I see the river - reach , far in the north . The more distant river is ever the most ethereal ,");April 10, 1852 ("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."):August 24, 1858 ("I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water")

The water and sky 

flow into one another –

 the shore seems to float.

The sheen of the moon 

constantly travels with us –

bright gold at out side.

tinyurl.com/HDT511006

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river .

September 26


Dreamed of purity last night. The thoughts seemed not to originate with me, but I was invested, my thought was tinged, by another's thought. It was not I that originated, but I that entertained the thought.

The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. There are comparatively few weeds left in it.

It is not in vain, perhaps, that every winter the forest is brought to our doors, shaggy with lichens. Even in so humble a shape as a wood-pile, it contains sermons for us.

P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp.

The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow, — a little dense web of cotton spun over it, — entangled in it, — as if to restrain it from rising higher.

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, which is of the width of the valleys. It is the flower of autumn, whose expanding bud just begins to blush. As yet, however, in the forest there are very few changes of foliage.

September 26, 2017

The Polygonum articulatum, giving a rosy tinge to Jenny's Desert and elsewhere, is very interesting now, with its slender dense racemes of rose-tinted flowers, apparently without leaves, rising cleanly out of the sand. It looks warm and brave; a foot or more high, and mingled with deciduous blue-curls. It is much divided, into many spreading slender-racemed branches, with inconspicuous linear leaves, reminding me, both by its form and its color, of a peach orchard in blossom, especially when the sunlight falls on it.

Minute rose-tinted flowers that brave the frosts and advance the summer into fall, warming with their color sandy hill sides and deserts, like the glow of evening reflected on the sand. Apparently all flower and no leaf.

A warm blush on the sands, after frosty nights have come. Perhaps it may be called the "evening red." Rising, apparently, with clean bare stems from the sand, it spreads out into this graceful head of slender rosy racemes, wisp-like. This little desert of less than [an] acre blushes with it.

I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark chocolate(?)-colored puffballs. Are then my five-fingers puffballs?
The tree fern is in fruit now, with its delicate, tendril-like fruit climbing three or four feet over the asters, goldenrods, etc., on the edge of the swamp. The large ferns are yellow or brown now.

Larks, like robins, fly in flocks.

Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow.

Succory in bloom at the Tommy Wheeler house. It bears the frost well, though we have not had much. Set out for use.

The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium leaves, green above, downy beneath.

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

The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. See September 26 1854 ("Took my last bath the 24th . Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over”)  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow. See August 29, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture.”); February 25, 1857 (“The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter.”)

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, the flower of autumn. See August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); June 5, 1853 (“The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.”); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx.")

I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark chocolate-colored puffballs. See October 2, 1858 ("A large chocolate-colored puffball “smokes.”")

Larks, like robins, fly in flocks. See August 27, 1858 ("Robins fly in flocks."); September 18, 1852 ("The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener."); September 19, 1854 ("I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping."); September 20, 1855 ("See larks in flocks on meadow."); October 1, 1858 ("See larks in small flocks."); October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring.")

Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow See August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”); See August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”). Note "Apocynum" means "poisonous to dogs".

See July 9, 1851 ("The handsome blue flowers of the succory or endive (Cichorium Intybus)."); October 2, 1856 ("Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there"); October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, . . .etc., etc.")

September 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 26

Increasing scarlet 

and yellow tints around the 

meadows and river.

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

Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March,

March 27. 

7 a. m. — Was that the Alauda, shore lark (?), which flew up from the corn-field beyond Texas house, and dashed off so swiftly with a peculiar note, — a small flock of them? 

P. M. — Sail from Cardinal Shore up Otter Bay, close to Deacon Farrar's. I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? 

The wind is so nearly west to-day that we sail up from Cardinal Shore to the pond, and from the road up what I will call Otter Bay, behind Farrar's, and, returning, sail from the road at Creel (or Pole) Brook to Pond Island and from Hallowell willows to railroad. 

The water is quite high still, and we sail up Otter Bay, I think, more than half a mile, to within a very short distance of Farrar's. This is an interesting and wild place. There is an abundance of low willows whose catkins are now conspicuous, rising four to six or seven feet above the water, thickly placed on long wand-like osiers. They look, when you look from the sun, like dead gray twigs or branches (whose wood is exposed) of bushes in the light, but, nearer, are recognized for the pretty bright buttons of the willow. We sail by masses of these silvery buttons two or three rods long, rising above the water. By their color they have relation to the white clouds and the sky and to the snow and ice still lingering in a few localities. In order to see these silvery buttons in the greatest profusion, you must sail amid them on some flooded meadow or swamp like this. 

Our whole course, as we wind about in this bay, is lined also with the alder, whose pretty tassels, now many of them in full bloom, are hanging straight down, suggesting in a peculiar manner the influence of gravity, or are regularly blown one side. It is remarkable how modest and unobtrusive these early flowers are. The musquash and duck hunter or the farmer might and do commonly pass by them without perceiving them. They steal into the air and light of spring without being noticed for the most part. The sportsman seems to see a mass of weather-stained dead twigs showing their wood and partly covered with gray lichens and moss, and the flowers of the alder, now partly in bloom, maybe half, make the impression at a little distance of a collection of the brown twigs of winter — also are of the same color with many withered leaves. 

Twenty rods off, masses of alder in bloom look like masses of bare brown twigs, last year's twigs, and would be taken for such. 

Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain. 

The browns are the prevailing shades as yet, as in the withered grass and sedge and the surface of the earth, the withered leaves, and these brown flowers. 

I see from a hilltop a few very bright green spots a rod in diameter in the upper part of Farrar's meadow, which the water has left within a day or two. Going there, I find that a very powerful spring is welling up there, which, with water warm from the bowels of the earth, has caused the grass and several weeds, as Cardamine rhomboidca, etc., to grow thus early and luxuriantly, and perhaps it has been helped by the flood standing over it for some days. These are bright liquid green in the midst of brown and withered grass and leaves. Such are the spots where the grass is greenest now. 

C. says that he saw a turtle dove on the 25th. 

It is remarkable how long many things may be preserved by excluding the air and light and dust, moisture, etc. Those chalk-marks on the chamber-floor joists and timbers of the Hunt house, one of which was read by many "Feb. 1666," and all of which were in an ancient style of writing and expression, — "ye" for " the," etc., "enfine Brown," — were as fresh when exposed (having been plastered and cased over) as if made the day before. Yet a single day's rain completely obliterated some of them. 

Cousin Charles says that, on the timbers of a very old house recently taken down in Haverhill, the chalk-marks made by the framers, numbering the sticks, [were] as fresh as if just made. 

I saw a large timber over the middle of the best room of the Hunt house which had been cased, according to all accounts, at least a hundred years ago, the casing having just been taken off. I saw that the timber appeared to have been freshly hewn on the under side, and I asked the carpenter who was taking down the house what he had been hewing that timber for, — for it had evidently been done since it was put up and in a very inconvenient position, and I had no doubt that he had just done it, for the surface was as fresh and distinct from the other parts as a fresh whittling, — but he answered to my surprise that he had not touched it, it was so when he took the casing off. When the casing was put on, it had been roughly hewn by one standing beneath it, in order to reduce its thickness or perhaps to make it more level than it was. So distinct and peculiar is the weather-stain, and so indefinitely it may be kept off if you do not allow this painter to come [?] to your wood. 

Cousin Charles says that he took out of the old Haverhill house a very broad panel from over the fire place, which had a picture of Haverhill at some old period on it. The panel had been there perfectly sheltered in an inhabited house for more than a hundred years. It was placed in his shop and no moisture allowed to come near it, and yet it shrunk a quarter of an inch in width when the air came to both sides of it. 

He says that his men, who were digging a cellar last week on a southwest slope, found fifty-one snakes of various kinds and sizes — green, black, brown, etc. — about a foot underground, within two feet square (or cube ?). The frost was out just there, but not in many parts of the cellar. They could not run, they were so stiff, but they ran their tongues out. They did [not] take notice of any hole or cavity.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1859


Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March:

• two alders.  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.")
• the aspen. See March 21, 1855 ("aspen catkins are very conspicuous now.")
• the hazel. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs of life in the bush.")
• the maple.  See March 27, 1857 ("Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge. The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th.")

See also March 21, 1858("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating"); March 26, 1857 ("The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it")

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed

March 13.

The Hunt House

7 a. m. — F. hyemalis in yard. 

Going down railroad, listening intentionally, I hear, far through the notes of song sparrows (which are very numerous), the song of one or two larks. 

Also hearing a coarse chuck, I look up and see four blackbirds, whose size and long tails betray them crow blackbirds.  

Also I hear, I am pretty sure, the cackle of a pigeon woodpecker. 

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. 

P. M. — To Great Fields. 

Water rising still. Winter-freshet ice on meadows still more lifted up and partly broken in some places. The broad light artery of the river (and some meadows, too) very fair in the distance from Peter's. 

Talking with Garfield to-day about his trapping, he said that mink brought three dollars and a quarter, a remarkably high price, and asked if I had seen any. 

I said that I commonly saw two or three in a year. 

He said that he had not seen one alive for eight or ten years. 

"But you trap them?"

 "O yes," he said. "I catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter." 

This suggests how little a trapper may see of his game. 

Garfield caught a skunk lately.

In some meadows I see a great many dead spiders on the ice, where apparently it has been overflowed — or rather it was the heavy rain, methinks — when they had no retreat. 

Hear a ground squirrel's sharp chirrup, which makes you start, it is so sudden; but he is probably earthed again, for I do not see him. 

On the northeast part of the Great Fields, I find the broken shell of a Cistudo Blandingii, on very dry soil. This is the fifth, then, I have seen in the town. All the rest were three in the Great Meadows (one of them in a ditch) and one within a rod or two of Beck Stow's Swamp. 

It is remarkable that the spots where I find most arrowheads, etc., being light, dry soil, — as the Great Fields, Clamshell Hill, etc., — are among the first to be bare of snow, and the frost gets out there first. It is very curiously and particularly true, for the only parts of the northeast section of the Great Fields which are so dry that I do not slump there are those small in area, where perfectly bare patches of sand occur, and there, singularly enough, the arrowheads are particularly common. 

Indeed, in some cases I find them only on such bare spots a rod or two in extent where a single wigwam might have stood, and not half a dozen rods off in any direction. Yet the difference of level may not be more than a foot, — if there is any. It is as if the Indians had selected precisely the driest spots on the whole plain, with a view to their advantage at this season. If you were going to pitch a tent to-night on the Great Fields, you would inevitably pitch on one of these spots, or else lie down in water or mud or on ice. It is as if they had chosen the site of their wigwams at this very season of the year. 

I see a small flock of blackbirds flying over, some rising, others falling, yet all advancing together, one flock but many birds, some silent, others tchucking, — incessant alternation. This harmonious movement as in a dance, this agreeing to differ, makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread or ravelling from the web to which it belongs. Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and hell ! Here again in the flight of a bird, its ricochet motion, is that undulation observed in so many materials, as in the mackerel sky. 

If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written [were to] be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow? 

I cannot easily forget the beauty of those terrestrial browns in the rain yesterday. The withered grass was not of that very pale hoary brown that it is to-day, now that it is dry and lifeless, but, being perfectly saturated and dripping with the rain, the whole hillside seemed to reflect a certain yellowish light, so that you looked around for the sun in the midst of the storm. All the yellow and red and leather-color in the fawn-colored weeds was more intense than at any other season. The withered ferns which fell last fall — pin weeds, sarothra, etc. — were actually a glowing brown for the same reason, being all dripping wet. 

The cladonias crowning the knolls had visibly expanded and erected themselves, though seen twenty rods off, and the knolls appeared swelling and bursting as with yeast. 

All these hues of brown were most beautifully blended, so that the earth appeared covered with the softest and most harmoniously spotted and tinted tawny fur coat of any animal. The very bare sand slopes, with only here and there a thin crusting of mosses, was [sic] a richer color than ever it is. 

In short, in these early spring rains, the withered herbage, thus saturated, and reflecting its brightest withered tint, seems in a certain degree to have revived, and sympathizes with the fresh greenish or yellowish or brownish lichens in its midst, which also seem to have withered. It seemed to me — and I think it may be the truth — that the abundant moisture, bringing out the highest color in the brown surface of the earth, generated a certain degree of light, which, when the rain held up a little, reminded you of the sun shining through a thick mist.

Oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice now are seen to be handsomely spotted with black (of fungi or lichens?), which spots are rarely perceived in dry weather. 

All that vegetable life which loves a superfluity of moisture is now rampant, cold though it is, compared with summer. 

Radical leaves are as bright as ever they are. 

The barrenest surfaces, perhaps, are the most interesting in such weather as yesterday, when the most terrene colors are seen. 

The wet earth and sand, and especially subsoil, are very invigorating sights. 

The Hunt house, to draw from memory, — though I have given its measures within two years in my Journal, — looked like this : 

This is only generally correct, without a scale.

Probably grackles have been seen some days. I think I saw them on the 11th? Garfield says he saw black ducks yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 13, 1859

The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed. See March 2, 1859 ("Go and measure to what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' the year it is by Nature's clock"); March 10, 1853 (“Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins"); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”) March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)

Garfield to-day said that mink brought three dollars and a quarter, See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”)


The Hunt house, to draw from memory. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house. . . .The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine."); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form."); March 11, 1859 ("To Hunt house. I go to get one more sight of the old house which Hosmer is pulling down, but I am too late to see much of it.")