A spring sheen on the snow – signs of the morrow

March 8

10 A. M. Rode to Saxonville with F. Brown to look at a small place for sale, via Wayland. Return by Sudbury. On wheels in snow.

A spring sheen on the snow. The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. The snow pure white, but full of water and dissolving through the heat of the sun.

Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a large black weasel, to appearance, worming its supple way over the snow. Where it ran, its tracks were thus: 

the intervals between the fore and hind feet sixteen or eighteen inches by two and a half. 

The distant view of the open flooded Sudbury meadows, all dark blue, surrounded by a landscape of white snow, gave an impulse to the dormant sap in my veins. Dark-blue and angry waves, contrasting with the white but melting winter landscape. Ponds, of course, do not yet afford this water prospect; only the flooded meadows.

There is no ice over or near the stream, and the flood has covered or broken up much of the ice on the meadows. The aspect of these waters at sunset, when the air is still, begins to be unspeakably soothing and promising. Waters are at length, and begin to reflect, and, instead of looking into the sky, I look into the placid reflecting water for the signs and promise of the morrow.

These meadows are the most of ocean that I have fairly learned.

Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, overflows and bursts its icy fetters. This is the sap of which I make my sugar after the frosty nights, boiling it down and crystallizing it.

I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks.

That dark-blue meadowy revelation.

It is as when the sap of the maple bursts forth early and runs down the trunk to the snow.

Saw two or three hawks sailing.

Saw the remains of four cows and a horse that were burned in a barn a month ago. Where the paunch was, a large bag of coarse hay and stalks was seen in the midst of an indistinct circumference of ribs.

Saw some very large willow buds expanded (their silk) to thrice the length of their scales, indistinctly carved or waved with darker lines around them. They look more like, are more of, spring than anything I have seen.

Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, now, before any spring bird has arrived.

I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms with a view to purchasing if not paying for them.

Heard the first flies buzz in the sun on the south side of the house.


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

The heat of the sun. See March 8, 1860 (" Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places. "); see also February 23, 1856 ("t is inspiriting to feel the increased heat of the sun reflected from the snow. "); March 4, 1852 (" The sun has got a new power in his rays after all, cold as the weather is. He could not have warmed me so much a month ago.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun 

The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. See February 16, 1856 ("The melting snow shines in the ruts."); February 21, 1860 ("When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring"); March 9, 1859 (" The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring: Braided ripples of melting snow

Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a large black weasel, to appearance, worming its supple way over the snow.  See  December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge . . . we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form");  November 9, 1853 ("We saw a mink swimming in the agitated water close to the shore, east side, above Nut Meadow Brook. It showed the whole top of the back and part of the tail, unlike the muskrat, and did not dive. Stopped a moment when we headed toward it, and held up its head at the end of its long neck toward us, reminding me of pictures of the otter, then turned and swam and ran the other way; dark-brown."); March 26, 1855 ("At the Hubbard Bath, a mink comes teetering along the ice by the side of the river. I am between him and the sun, and he does not notice me. He runs daintily, lifting his feet with a jerk as if his toes were sore. They seem to go a-hunting at night along the edge of the river r; perhaps I notice them more at this season, when the shallow water freezes at night and there is no vegetation along the shore to conceal them."); November 13, 1855 (“Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . It was a rich brown fur . . . not black as it sometimes appears, especially on ice.”); April 28, 1857 (“It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink”); April 15, 1858 ("Having stood quite still on the edge of the ditch close to the north edge of the maple swamp some time, and heard a slight rustling near me from time to time, I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet, in a semicircle, snuffing the air, and pausing to look at me several times.");  April 29, 1860 ("I now actually see one small-looking rusty or brown black mink scramble along the muddy shore and enter a hole in the bank.") See also March 13, 1859 ("Garfield . . . asked if I had seen any mink. 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] catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter.")

Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, overflows and bursts its icy fetters . . . That dark-blue meadowy revelation. See  February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water . . .  is it not the first sign of spring?"; )February 27, 1852 (" If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope ?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

Saw two or three hawks sailing. See March 8, 1857 ("Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season.") See also March 6, 1858 (" I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter, Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March

 Saw some very large willow buds expanded . . . look more like, are more of, spring than anything I have seen. See  March 7, 1855 ("Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago.");  March 8, 1860 ("Willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter.");  March 10, 1853 ("Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, now, before any spring bird has arrived. See Walden ("On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. "); February 24, 1857 ("A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. "); March 1, 1854 ("I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee"); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day."); March 10, 1852 ("Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time.."): March 22, 1855 ("My first distinct spring note (phe-be) of the chickadee.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Chickadee

Heard the first flies buzz in the sun on the south side of the house.  See March 4, 1855 (" It is very warm in the sun. . . The rustle of the dry leaves . . . reminds me of fires in the woods . . . I see a fly on the rock."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Buzzing flies

The distant view of

now dark blue open meadows –

sign of the morrow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A spring sheen on the snow. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530308

Pickerel of at least three different forms and color.

January 29.

To Walden.

Melvin calls the ducks which I saw yesterday sheldrakes; being small, then wood sheldrakes. [I judge from the plate they were velvet ducks, or white-winged coots.] He never shot any at this season.

Saw a woodcock last month; never before.

Killed a goshawk (which was eating a rabbit) and a cat owl lately.

Says I hear the cat owl.

Has got only three or four minks this year.

Never saw an otter track.

I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen. Headed downward, it was.

The ice is eight inches thick. It is full of short, faint, flake-like perpendicular cleavages, an inch or two broad, or varying somewhat from the perpendicular.

Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel.

Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon:

• first, a long and shallow kind most like those caught in the river, steel-colored with greenish or brownish lines, darker on the back and white beneath;

• second, a bright-golden fish with greenish reflections, remarkably deep, with a shorter head; both of these are mottled on the sides with an irregular network of dark-brown lines, often extending over the back, the meshes three fourths of an inch long, more or less, producing longitudinal stripes more or less distinct and continuous, very pure white beneath;

• third, shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark-brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific name of reticulatus would not describe this.

These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises.

The perch also, and indeed all the fishes which in habit this pond, are as much handsomer than ordinary, as the water is purer than that of other ponds.

Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties, at least, of most of them..

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1853

 Melvin calls the ducks which I saw yesterday sheldrakes. January 28, 1853 ("See three ducks sailing in the river behind Prichard's this afternoon, black with white on wings, though these two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed."); See also March 6, 1853 ("Stedman Buttrick calls the ducks which we see in the winter, widgeons and wood sheldrakes.")

Melvin has got only three or four minks this year. See December 19, 1859 ("Farmer . . . saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year."); March 13, 1859 ("Garfield . . . asked if I had seen any mink]. 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] "I catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter.")

I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden.  See January 7, 1860 ("I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and. .. on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse.")

Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel. See Walden ("The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.")

Mevin never saw an otter track. See January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along.”);December 31, 1854 (“ On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning.”);December 6, 1856 (“The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks.”);  February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”) See also  April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.");March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!")  

Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon. See January 25, 1853 ("The pickerel of Walden!. . .I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, . . . handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty. . . they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stones. It is surprising that . . . in this deep and capacious spring, . . . this great gold and emerald fish swims") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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

No wonder that they are never made dizzy by high climbing, that were born in the top of a tree.

April 25.

April 25, 2020

A cold day, so that the people you meet remark upon it, yet the thermometer is 47° at 2 P. M. We should not have remarked upon it in March. It is cold for April, being windy withal. 

I fix a stake on the west side the willows at my boat‘s place, the top of which is at summer level and is about ten and a half inches below the stone wharf there. The river is one and one fourth inches above summer level to-day. That rock northwest of the boat‘s place is about fifteen inches (the top of it) below summer level. Heron Rock top (just above the junction of the rivers) is thirteen inches above summer level. I judge by my eye that the rock on the north side, where the first bridge crossed the river, is about four inches lower than the last.

Mr. Stewart tells me that he has found a gray squirrel‘s nest up the Assabet, in a maple tree. I resolve that I too will find it. 

I do not know within less than a quarter of a mile where to look, nor whether it is in a hollow tree, or in a nest of leaves. I examine the shore first and find where he landed. I then examine the maples in that neighborhood to see what one has been climbed. I soon find one the bark of which has been lately rubbed by the boots of a climber, and, looking up, see a nest. 

It was a large nest made of maple twigs, with a centre of leaves, lined with finer, about twenty feet from the ground, against the leading stem of a large red maple. I noticed no particular entrance. 

When I put in my hand from above and felt the young, they uttered a dull croak-like squeak, and one clung fast to my hand when I took it out through the leaves and twigs with which it was covered. It was yet blind, and could not have been many days old, yet it instinctively clung to my hand with its little claws, as if it knew that there was danger of its falling from a height to the ground which it never saw. The idea of clinging was strongly planted in it.

There was quite a depth of loose sticks, maple twigs, piled on the top of the nest. No wonder that they become skillful climbers who are born high above the ground and begin their lives in a tree, having first of all to descend to reach the earth. They are cradled in a tree-top, in but a loose basket, in helpless infancy, and there slumber when their mother is away. No wonder that they are never made dizzy by high climbing, that were born in the top of a tree, and learn to cling fast to the tree before their eyes are open.

On my way to the Great Meadows I see boys a-fishing, with perch and bream on their string, apparently having good luck, the river is so low. 

The river appears the lower, because now, before the weeds and grass have grown, we can see by the bare shore of mud or sand and the rocks how low it is. At midsummer we might imagine water at the base of the grass where there was none.

I hear the greatest concerts of blackbirds, – red wings and crow blackbirds nowadays, especially of the former (also the 22d and 29th). The maples and willows along the river, and the button-bushes, are all alive with them. They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances.

It is worthwhile to see how slyly they hide at the base of the thick and shaggy button-bushes at this stage of the water. They will suddenly cease their strains and flit away and secrete themselves low amid these bushes till you are past; or you scare up an unexpectedly large flock from such a place, where you had seen none. 

I pass a large quire in full blast on the oaks, etc., on the island in the meadow northwest of Peter‘s. Suddenly they are hushed, and I hear the loud rippling rush made by their wings as they dash away, and, looking up, I see what I take to be a sharp-shinned hawk just alighting on the trees where they were, having failed to catch one. They retreat some forty rods off, to another tree, and renew their concert there. 

The hawk plumes himself, and then flies off, rising gradually and beginning to circle, and soon it joins its mate, and soars with it high in the sky and out of sight, as if the thought of so terrestrial a thing as a blackbird had never entered its head. 

It appeared to have a plain reddish-fawn breast. The size more than anything made me think it a sharp-shin.

When looking into holes in trees to find the squirrel‘s nest, I found a pout partly dried, with its tail gone, in one maple, about a foot above the ground. This was probably left there by a mink. 

Minott says that, being at work in his garden once, he saw a mink coming up from the brook with a pout in her mouth, half-way across his land. The mink, observing him, dropped her pout and stretched up her head, looking warily around, then, taking up the pout again, went onward and went under a rock in the wall by the roadside. He looked there and found the young in their nest, — so young that they were all “red” yet.

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

Mr. Stewart tells me that he has found a gray squirrel‘s nest up the Assabet, in a maple tree. See note to June 1, 1860 ("Young Stewart tells me that when he visited again that gray squirrel's nest which I described about one month ago up the Assabet, the squirrels were gone, and he thought that the old ones had moved them, for he saw the old about another nest. . . .This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees. ")

They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances. See March 16, 1860 ("They cover the apple trees like a black fruit."); April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? ”)


Looking up, I see what I take to be a sharp-shinned hawk. See  April 27, 1860 ("I saw yesterday, and see to-day, a small hawk which I take to be a pigeon hawk. This one skims low along over Grindstone Meadow, close to the edge of the water, and I see the blackbirds rise hurriedly from the buttonbushes and willows before him.") and note to July 21, 1858 ("It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Minott says that, being at work in his garden once, he saw a mink coming up from the brook with a pout in her mouth. See note to April 15, 1858 ("I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet.")

The age of poetry.

December 19. 

December 19, 2019

Yarrow too is full of seed now, and the common johnswort has some seed in it still.

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs, — mink, musquash, and fox. Says that Stow is as good a town for mink as any, but none of them have more musquash than Concord. He, however, saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year.

When a man is young and his constitution and body have not acquired firmness, i. e., before he has arrived at middle age, he is not an assured inhabitant of the earth, and his compensation is that he is not quite earthy, there is something peculiarly tender and divine about him. His sentiments and his weakness, nay, his very sickness and the greater uncertainty of his fate, seem to ally him to a noble race of beings, to whom he in part belongs, or with whom he is in communication. 

The young man is a demigod; the grown man, alas! is commonly a mere mortal. He is but half here, he knows not the men of this world, the powers that be. They know him not. 

Prompted by the reminiscence of that other sphere from which he so lately arrived, his actions are unintelligible to his seniors. He bathes in light. He is interesting as a stranger from another sphere. 

He really thinks and talks about a larger sphere of existence than this world. It takes him forty years to accommodate himself to the carapax of this world. This is the age of poetry. 

Afterward he may be the president of a bank, and go the way of all flesh. But a man of settled views, whose thoughts are few and hardened like his bones, is truly mortal, and his only resource is to say his prayers.

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

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs. 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!”); November 27, 1855 ("I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit")

 Yarrow too is full of seed now. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."

The philosophy of firewood.

December 15.

 The first kind of snow-storm, or that of yesterday, which ceased in the night after some three inches had fallen, was that kind that makes handsome drifts behind the walls. There are no drifts equal to these behind loosely built stone walls, the wind passing between the stones. Slight as this snow was, these drifts now extend back four or five feet and as high as the wall, on the north side of the Corner Bridge road. The snow is scooped out in the form of easy-chairs, or of shells or plinths, if that is the name for them. The backs of the chairs often inclining to fall off.

A man killed a wild goose a day or two since in Spencer Brook, near Legross's. I hear from J. [?] Moore that one man in Bedford has got eighteen minks the last fall.

Philosophy is a Greek word by good rights, and it stands almost for a Greek thing. Yet some rumor of it has reached the commonest mind.

 M. Miles, who came to collect his wood bill to-day, said, when I objected to the small size of his wood, that it was necessary to split wood fine in order to cure it well, that he had found that wood that was more than four inches in diameter would not dry, and moreover a good deal depended on the manner in which it was corded up in the woods. He piled his high and tightly. If this were not well done the stakes would spread and the wood lie loosely, and so the rain and snow find their way into it. And he added, "I have handled a good deal of wood, and I think that I understand the philosophy of it."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 15, 1859

The first kind of snow-storm. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face,") See   February 9, 1855 ("A very fine and dry snow . . . so dry that but little lodges on the trees. Though I go through drifts up to my middle, it falls off at once and does not adhere to and damp my clothes at all. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The first kind of snow-storm. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

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.")

The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience

April 15. 

P. M. — To sedge-path Salix humilis. I see many planting now. 

See a pair of woodpeckers on a rail and on the ground a-courting. One keeps hopping near the other, and the latter hops away a few feet, and so they accompany one another a long distance, uttering sometimes a faint or short a-week. 

I go to find hylodes spawn. I hear some now peeping at mid-afternoon in Potter's meadow, just north of his swamp. It is hard to tell how far off they are. At a distance they often appear to be nearer than they are; when I get nearer I think them further off than they are; and not till I get their parallax with my eyes by going to one side do I discover their locality. From time to time one utters that peculiar quavering sound, I suspect of alarm, like that which a hen makes when she sees a hawk. They peep but thinly at this hour of a bright day. 

Wading about in the meadow there, barelegged, I find the water from time to time, though no deeper than before, exceedingly cold, evidently because there is ice in the meadow there still. Having stood quite still on the edge of the ditch close to the north edge of the maple swamp some time, and heard a slight rustling near me from time to time, I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. 

It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet, in a semicircle, snuffing the air, and pausing to look at me several times. Part of its course when nearest me was in the water of the ditch. It then crawled slowly away, and I saw by the ripple where it had taken to the ditch again. 

Perhaps it was after a frog, like myself. It may have been attracted by the peeping. But how much blacker was the creature I saw April 28th, 1857: A very different color, though the tail the same form. 

The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience, more perhaps than by activity. He must take his position, and then wait and watch. It is equally true of quadrupeds and reptiles. Sit still in the midst of their haunts. 

Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes, much like, at least, the Turdus Wilsonii; a light ring about eyes, and whitish side of throat (?); rather fox-colored or cinnamon tail, with ashy reflections from edges of primaries; flesh-colored legs. Did not see the breast. Could it have been what I have called T. solitarius? Soon after methought I heard one faint wood thrush note (??).

Catch a peeper at Hayden’s Pool. I suspect it may have been a female, for, though I kept it a  day at home, it did not peep. It was a pale fawn-color out of water, nine tenths of an inch long, marked with dusky like this  

though not so distinctly. It could easily climb up the side of a tumbler, and jumped eighteen inches at once. 

Equisetum arvense out by railroad, and probably I saw it out on the 12th, near the factory.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1858


See a pair of woodpeckers on a rail and on the ground a-courting . . ., uttering sometimes a faint or short a-week. See April 15, 1855 ("Pigeon woodpecker’s cackle is heard");See also April 22, 1856 ("See a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. . . . Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc "); April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet. See December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge on the road from Chelmsford to Bedford we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form. He alternately runs along on the ice and swims in the water, now and then holding up his head and long neck looking at us. Not so shy as a muskrat."); March 26, 1855 ("At the Hubbard Bath, a mink comes teetering along the ice by the side of the river. I am between him and the sun, and he does not notice me. He runs daintily, lifting his feet with a jerk as if his toes were sore. They seem to go a-hunting at night along the edge of the river "); November 13, 1855 (“Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . It was a rich brown fur . . . not black as it sometimes appears, especially on ice.”). April 28, 1857 (“It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink”); March 13, 1859 ("I commonly saw two or three in a year. "); April 29, 1860 ("I now actually see one small-looking rusty or brown black mink scramble along the muddy shore and enter a hole in the bank.")


The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience. See January 21, 1853 (“I must stand still and listen with open ears, far from the noises of the village, that the night may make its impression on me.”); March 27, 1853 ("Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself. . . and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound”); July 17, 1854: "I watch them [white lillies] for an hour and a half.”

Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes. See note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.") and April 15, 1859 (" Not being prepared to hear it, I thought it a boy whistling at first.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Catch a peeper at Hayden’s Pool. See April 3, 1853 ("At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one.");

A January Thaw.

December 28

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. A January thaw. 

December 28, 2023

The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond forming; unfathomable water beneath the snow. 

Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here. 

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. 

Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1851

Tommy Wheeler house. See February 22, 1857 ("The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside.")

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them. See November 29, 1850 ("The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. "); December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. A steady but gentle, warm rain."); See also December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist . . . They eclipse the trees they cover.");  May 13, 1852 ("A May storm, yesterday and to-day;. . . The fields are green now, and all the expanding leaves and flower-buds are much more beautiful in the rain, - covered with clear drops.") And A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

 

White pines look greener, 

a drop on every needle

in this gentle rain.

tinyurl.com/hdt511228

A black creature crossing the road.

April 28. 

A. M. — Surveying for Willard Farrar by Walden.

April 28, 2017

While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound beyond Wyman's, Farrar having just gone along northeast on the town line, I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road, reminding me of a black cat two thirds grown. Turning, I saw it plainly for half a minute. It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink; yet it appeared larger and with a shorter body. It had a straight, low, bushy tail about two inches thick, short legs, and carried its tail and legs about on the same level. It was nearly, if not quite, as large as a muskrat. Has the mink such a tail?





Looking for an "old pine stump" mentioned in a deed and digging into a hillock with our hands to discover it, we turned up, amid the red dish virgin mould, — quite turned to soil, — a large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants, say five twelfths (?) of an inch long, with their white larvae (?). I perceived at more than a foot distant a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy. It reminded me at first of the cherry pectoral; but it was not that; it was very strong lemon-peel. 

The "Library of Entertaining Knowledge" says that the odor of the wood ant will suffocate a frog dropped among them. Are not these the American "wood ant"?

Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1857


A large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants, say five twelfths (?) of an inch long, with their white larvae (?). I perceived at more than a foot distant a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy. See May 19, 1857 (“Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor . . .”)

Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains. See April 28, 1858 ("Blustering northwest wind and wintry aspect. "); April 28, 1855 ("The wind is strong from the northwest"); See also  April 26, 1860 ("the cold weather of yesterday; the chilling wind came from a snow-clad country.")