A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: Walking without Gloves

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, 

to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, 

or the striped squirrel’s chirp . . .

or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.

 ~ Walden

Dreaming of summer

this warm and pleasant day – I

take off my mittens.

February 12, 1854

January 15

A bright day, not cold.

Celestial blue shadow,

walking without gloves.

January 15, 1856

January 23. A fine afternoon. There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March. Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on the south side, I see several small water-bugs (Gyrinus) swimming about, as in the spring. January 23, 1858

January 25. A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens. But this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. January 25, 1854

January 25. It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves. January 25, 1855

February 12. I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. There is very little wind, here under Fair Haven especially. I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens. February 12, 1854

February 23. I have seen signs of the spring. February 23, 1857

March 7. At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon. It is rather mild to-night. I can walk without gloves. There is no snow on the trees. The ground is thinly covered with a crusted snow, through which the dead grass and weeds appear, telling the nearness of spring. March 7, 1852

The first pleasant days

of spring come out like a squirrel

and go in again.

March 7, 1855

March 19. A fine clear and warm day for the season. Launch my boat. P. M. — Paddled to Fair Haven Pond. Very pleasant and warm, when the wind lulls and the water is perfectly smooth. I make the voyage without gloves. March 19, 1855

March 20. It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on. March 20, 1855

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

April 3. About 8.30 P. M. I walked to the Clamshell Hill. It is very cold and windy, and I miss my gloves, left at home.  Colder than the last moon. April 3, 1852

April 3. It is somewhat warmer, but still windy, and I go to sail down to the Island and up to Hubbard’s Causeway.  Most would call it cold to-day. I paddle without gloves. April 3, 1855

April 9. 5.15 A. M. —To Red Bridge just before sunrise. Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. April 9, 1855

April 10. The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. April 10, 1855

April 22. Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or ten days. April 22, 1855

May 6. To-day it has spit a little snow and is very windy (northwest) and cold enough for gloves. Is not that the true spring when the F. hyemalis and tree sparrows are with us singing in the cold mornings with the song sparrows, and ducks and gulls are about? May 6, 1854

*****

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also Signs of the Spring:

• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring 
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• The spring note of the chickadee
• Buzzing Flies
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Insects and worms come forth and are active
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The gobbling of turkeys
• The Red-wing Arrives
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• Ducks afar, sailing on the meadow
• Listening for the bluebird
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• A Change in the Air
• Bright blue water
• Greening grasses and sedges
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Skunks Active
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Hawks of March
• March is famous for its winds
• The anxious peep of the early robin
• Ripples made by fishes
• The note of the dark-eyed junco going northward
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The grackle arrives
• Woodpeckers tapping

<<<<< Signs of Spring     Early Spring >>>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Walking without Gloves

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

http://tinyurl.com/hdtgloves

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later.

October 26. 

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. 

October 26, 2018

Minott remembers how he used to chop beech wood. He says that when frozen it is hard and brittle just like glass, and you must look out for the chips, for, if they strike you in the face, they will cut like a knife.

He says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot. ” 

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. I found the sap was flowing fast in it. White birches, elms, chestnuts, Salix alba (small willows), and white maple are a long time falling. The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later. 

I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late. One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens by his door, foreseeing what his customers will want as soon as it is finger-cold, and determined to get the start of his fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1858

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. See October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape"); October 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ");October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.") October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare"); October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.")

I used to call them “pump-er-gor’.See April 24, 1854 (" I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later."); October 21, 1855 ("Up Assabet. . . . [T]he scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! "); October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. "); October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed. ")

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. See December 11, 1858 ("The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now."); January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by."); March 22, 1859 ("The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them.")

I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late. See October 25, 1858 ("This is the coolest day thus far, reminding me that I have only a half-thick coat on. ")

One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens See October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”); November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); November 11, 1853 ("I wear mittens now.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

The sounds of a glorious winter afternoon (the scream of a jay–cold, hard, tense, frozen music –like the winter sky)

February 12. 

February 12, 2023

I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. 

It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. There is very little wind, here under Fair Haven especially. I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.

This is a glorious winter afternoon. The clearness of a winter day is not impaired, while the air is still and you feel a direct heat from the sun. It is not like the relenting of a thaw with a southerly wind. There is a bright sheen from the snow, and the ice booms a little from time to time. 

To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. 

It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare.

You hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay's scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. 

There is no cushion for sounds now. They tear our ears. 

The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering, for it feels scarcely perceptible changes in the weather. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the buds expand in the spring. 

For the earth is all alive and covered with feelers of sensation, papillae. The hardest and largest rock, the broadest ocean, is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. 

Though you may perceive no difference in the weather, the pond does.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1854

I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens. See January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . .You dispense with gloves. "); March 18, 1853 ("This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer”) Compare February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer."); February 3, 1852 ("See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Walking without Gloves

This is a glorious winter afternoon. See December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day."); December 20, 1854 (“It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice.”)

The unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay. See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The pond does not thunder every night. See January 1, 1853 ("I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature"); January 6, 1853 ("There are thirty or forty of these [ bubbles], at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop.");. January 8, 1853 ("I inferred, therefore, that all those infinite minute bubbles I had seen first on the under side of the ice were now frozen in with it, and . . . probably it is the expanding and shrinking of the air in them, as well as in the water, which cracks the ice and makes the whooping sound."); January 29, 1853 ("Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel."); December 25, 1853 ('About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. "); December 27, 1853 ("I went to hear the pond whoop, but did not hear much. "); March 1,1856 ("At Flint’s I find half a dozen fishing. The pond cracks a very little while I am there, say at half past ten. I think I never saw the ice so thick. It measures just two feet thick"); December 7, 1856 ("I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before . . . I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. "); January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side, which is first in the shade, for I hear it cracking there, though it is still in the sun around me. It is not so sonorous and like the dumping of frogs as I have heard it, but more like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. Most shivering, splintery, screeching cracks these are, as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. Methinks my weight sinks it and helps to crack sometimes."); January 23, 1858 ("I go near enough to Flint's Pond, about 4 P. M., to hear it thundering. In summer I should not have suspected its presence an eighth of a mile off through the woods, but in such a winter day as this it speaks and betrays itself. "); January 28, 1858 ("The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated"); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”); December 23, 1859 ("You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset . . . Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy ligh, . . . These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. ")  See also Walden (“The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should”)

February 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 12

Dreaming of summer

this warm and pleasant day – I

take off my mittens.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sounds of a glorious winter afternoon

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt540212

Clear and cold and windy.

January 25.

A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens . Drives in the morning. Said he succeeded by keeping his arm and wrist well covered. He had a large hand, one of his fingers as big as three of mine. 

But  this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1854

A very cold day . . . the coldest spell of weather this winter. See January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°"); Compare January 25, 1853("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees."); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also January 25, 1860 (""The finest winter day is a cold but clear and glittering one . . . Also warm and melting days in winter are inspiring, though less characteristic.)

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight

Veronica srpyllifolia

November 11.

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which perchance is the steam of the melting frost.  Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.   I wear mittens now.

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

November 11, 1853 updated.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side")

A Wintry Prospect

October 1.

Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white at 7 A.M.

I hear it was 21° this morning early. I do not remember such cold at this season.

This is about the full of the moon (it fulled at 9 P.M the 29th) in clear, bright moonlight nights. We have fine and bright but cold days after it.

One man tells me that he regretted that he had not taken his mittens with him when he went to his morning's work, - mowing in a meadow, - and when he went to a spring at 11 A. M., found the dipper with two inches of ice in it frozen solid.

Water was prepared for ice, and C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1860 

Remarkable frost and ice this morning. See October 1, 1852 ("A severer frost last night.")

Water was prepared for ice . See November 11, 1858 (“Here, in the sun in the shelter of the wood, the smooth shallow water, with the stubble standing in it, is waiting for ice. Indeed, ice that formed last night must have recently melted in it. The sight of such water now reminds me of ice as much as water.”); November 29, 1853 ("It would be worth the while to watch some water while freezing. ")

C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring. See note to July 5, 1857 (" The caterpillars of the Vanessa Antiopa.”); October 3, 1860 ("See Vanessa Antiopa”); November 1,1860 (" The butterflies are out again, — probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa,”) and A Book of the Seasons : The Buff-edged Butterfly by Henry Thoreau