Thoughts as I walk running in my head

March 1

Rain all day. This will apparently take the frost out very much and still further settle the ways. 

March 1, 2019

It was already yesterday pretty good bare-ground walking on the north side the street. Yesterday was a dark, louring, moist day and still. The afternoon before, the wind was east, and I think that a storm (snow or rain) always succeeds. 

To-day is a still, dripping spring rain, but more fell in the night. It makes the walking worse for the time, but if it does not freeze again, will greatly help to settle the ways. 

I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down. The most valuable thoughts which I entertain are anything but what I thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

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

Rain all day. This will apparently take the frost out very much and still further settle the ways. See March 5, 1860("Ways fairly settled generally. "); March 15, 1860 ("Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. ");  March 19, 1860 ("The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street");; See also February 18, 1857 (" The frost out of the ground and the ways settled in many places."); March 17, 1853 ("The ways are mostly settled, frozen dry."); March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain . . .helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways. “)

The afternoon before, the wind was east, and I think that a storm (snow or rain) always succeeds. See March 30, 1852 (“To-day, as frequently for some time past, we have a raw east wind, which is rare in winter.”); September 15, 1858 (“There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.”); September, 16, 1858 ("A southeast storm. . . . The trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter. ") see also March 24, 1860 ("During the year the wind [at Cambridge] was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.”); May 2, 1860 (“Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March.”)

I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down. Compare August 21, 1851 ("A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed.");  February 12, 1860 ("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him."); Walking (“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit . . . But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is. I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” ) with June 14, 1853 (“This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. Life is too grand for supper.")

March 1.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   March 1

I have thoughts as I

walk on some subject that is 

running in my head.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Thoughts as I walk running in my head.

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 ©  2009-2025

The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now.

May 22. 

Sunday.

May 22, 2019

 A warm, drizzling day, the tender yellow leafets now generally conspicuous, and contrasting with the almost black evergreens which they have begun to invest. The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now. This lasts a week from this date, and then begins to be confounded with the older green. 

We have had rain for three or four days, and hence the tender foliage is the more yellow.

Swallows fly low. 

The Ranunculus bulbosus is abundant. 

I see that by the very severe frost of about the 15th, or full of the moon, a great many leaves were killed, as young oaks, cultivated grapes, butternuts, ferns, etc., etc., which now show brown or blackish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 22, 1859

The tender yellow leafets now generally conspicuous, and contrasting with the almost black evergreens which they have begun to invest. See May 22, 1855 ("The deciduous trees leafing begin to clothe or invest the evergreens."). Also May 14, 1852 ("The deciduous trees are rapidly investing the evergreens, making the woods rich and bosky by degrees. ); May 18, 1852 ("They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees."); May 26, 1857 ("The silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist."); May 27, 1855 (" . . . deciduous trees rapidly investing evergreens."); June 9, 1852 (“The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.”)

The foliage is never more conspicuously a tender yellow than now. See May 22, 1854 ("Now the springing foliage is like a sunlight on the woods. . .., the tender yellowish-green and silvery foliage of the deciduous trees lighting up the landscape."); May 18, 1852 (“This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remarkable feature at this date.”); May 18, 1851("The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green.”)


Severe frost of about the 15th. See  May 21, 1855 (“[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”); May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day. The hickory leaves are blackened by blowing in the cold wind.") May 31, 1858 ("There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black");

A warm, muggy, rainy evening

May 19. 

Our Azalea nudiflora flowers. 

It is a warm, muggy, rainy evening, when the nighthawks commonly spark and the whip-poor-will is heard.

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

Our Azalea nudiflora flowers. See note to May 31, 1853 ( It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.’”)

When the nighthawks commonly spark. See May 16, 1859 (“At eve the first spark of a nighthawk.”)

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

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 © 2009-2021

For some reason I now remember the autumn

May 10

This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts. 

The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, — its blades, — and you can almost see it grow.

For some reason I now remember the autumn, — the succory and the goldenrod. We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? 

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. 

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! The leaves are but calyx and escort to the flower. 

Some beds of clover wave. 

Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others — others regard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. It is a theme I must dwell upon. 

There is an aurora borealis to-night, and I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1852

The streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, See April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country."); May 4, 1853 ("Cattle are going up country."); May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country. "); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");

We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. See May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"). Compare July 1, 1856 ("The air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.") July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?"); October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us."); 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? See May 1, 1860 ("The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite."); May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. See May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”) and note to May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather. "); May 10, 1857 ("Cultivated cherry out. "); May 10, 1858 ("The northern wild red cherry by Everett's, apparently to-morrow.")

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms. The blossom in so many cases precedes the leaf; so with poetry? They flash out.") 

I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.”); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog." Also April 3, 1858 (“Sometimes the meadow will be almost still; then they will begin in earnest, and plainly excite one an other into a general snoring or eructation over a quarter of a mile of meadow.”); April 11, 1854 (“Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? ”); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th.."); May 8, 1857 ("It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris)."); May 6, 1858 ("About 9 P. M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. . . . There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, . . . It is a hard, dry, unmusical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion.”)

May 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

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 ©  2009-2021

April rain

April 11

Rain all day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1859

Walden is first clear after to-day.

March 29

March 29, 2019

Driving rain and southeast wind, etc. 

Walden is first clear after to-day. 

Garfield says he saw a woodcock about a fortnight ago. Minott thinks the middle of March is as early as they come and that they do not then begin to lay.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1859

Walden is first clear after to-day. See March 28, 1858 ("Walden is open.");  March 29, 1855 ("Walden is more than half open") and note to March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.")

Garfield says he saw a woodcock about a fortnight ago. See March 28, 1854 ("See this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock; it appears rather small for the last. Pond opening on the northeast."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

March 29. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 29

To-day comes a still, steady rain again, with warm weather which threatens to raise the river still higher,

March 18. 

8 a. m, — To stone bridge. 

The water has fallen three or four inches. It was at its height last night, and was then about five inches below the highest part of the truss. This is quite high water. But it has now begun to rain, and the river will probably rise again. 

Along the shores you see now much coarse wrack of green and black pontederia stems which have been torn up by the ice. The ice and the wrack are also dotted with cranberries here and there. 

What a variety of weather! What a difference in the days! Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind, with a clear interval and a brilliant double rainbow at sunset, — a day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain. In the evening it rained again much harder than before. 

The next day it was clear and cool, with a strong northwest wind, and the flood still higher on the meadows; the dry russet earth and leather-colored oak reflected a flashing light from far; the tossing blue waves with white crests excited the beholder and the sailer. In short, the tables were completely turned; snow and ice were for the most part washed and blown away from both land and water. 

Yesterday it was very warm, without perceptible wind, with a comparatively lifeless [air], yet such as invalids like, with no flashing surfaces, but, as it were, an in visible mist sobering down every surface; and the water, still higher than before, was perfectly smooth all day. This was a weather-breeder. 

To-day comes a still, steady rain again, with warm weather and a southerly wind, which threatens to raise the river still higher, though it had begun to fall. One would say that frost in the ground, though it may be melted for several inches (as now), bred rain, if, indeed, its evaporations do not create it. 

Expect  rain after rain till the frost is completely out. The melted frost, rising in the form of vapor, returns, perhaps, in rain to liberate its kind still imprisoned in the earth. 

Consider how I discovered where the Winthrop family in this town placed their front door some two hundred years ago, without any verbal or written or ocular evidence. I first suspected [?] and then verified it. I, with others, saw by the frame of the old Hunt house that an addition had been made to its west end in 1703. This brought the front door, which was in the middle of the present, near one end of the original or Winthrop house. 

I, sitting at home, said to myself, having an occult sympathy with the Winthrops of that date, "The front door must originally have been in the middle of the old house, for symmetry and convenience required it, and if it was, I shall find traces of it; I shall find there where studs have been set into the frame in a different manner from the rest.” 

I went to the house and looked where the door should have been, and I found precisely the evidence I sought, and, beside, where the timber above had been cut out just the width of the door. Indeed, if I had found no traces of the old door, I should have known that the present door was placed where it is after the house was built, for at this corner of the house the end of the sill chanced to be nearly round, the stick tapering, and the post was fitted upon [it] in a remarkable manner, thus: 


Oak wood had been thus laboriously fitted to it, but within three feet of the corner this sill had been wholly cut away under the door to make room for it, for they certainly had not put in a piece of sill only three feet long and of that form there originally. 

Flood, who is saving rails, etc., at the stone bridge, remarks that old settlers say this stream is highest the third day after a rain. But of course this depends on the amount of the rain, the direction and force of the wind, etc., etc. A southwest wind will take the water out sooner, and any strong wind will evaporate it fast. 

Rice thinks that he has seen two gulls on the Sudbury meadows, — the white and the gray gulls. He has often seen a man shoot the large gull from Cambridge bridge by heading him off, for the gull flies slowly. He would first run this way, and when the gull turned aside, run that, till the gull passed right over his head, when he shot him. 

Rice saw Fair Haven Pond still covered with ice, though open along the shore, yesterday. I frequently see the gulls flying up the course of the stream, or of the river valley, at least. 

R. thinks that the ducks will be seen more numerous, gathering on our waters, just before a storm, like yesterday’s.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1859

Rice saw Fair Haven Pond still covered with ice, though open along the shore, yesterday. See  March 21, 1859 ("Fair Haven Pond is only two thirds open. The east end is frozen still, and the body of the ice has drifted in to shore a rod or two, before the northwest wind, and its edge crumbled against the trees."); March 23, 1859 ("The pond may be said to be open to-day. There is, however, quite a large mass of ice, which has drifted, since the east wind arose yesterday noon, from the east side over to the north of the Island."); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later.");  April 4, 1855 ("I am surprised to find Fair Haven Pond not yet fully open. There is a large mass of ice in the eastern bay, which will hardly melt tomorrow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
Rice thinks that he has seen two gulls on the Sudbury meadows. See March 8, 1853 ("I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks."; March 16, 1860 ("I also see two gulls nearly a mile off. . . . Thus they will stand for an hour, at least. They a. . . look like great wooden images of birds, bluish-slate and white. But when they fly they are quite another creature.")

Two brilliant rainbows at sunset

March 15. 

Rainy day and southerly wind. I come home in the evening through a very heavy rain after two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year.

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

See March 13, 1855 ("Rainbow in east this morning. ") and note to April 9, 1855 ("In the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear,. . .producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning.")

We walk through almost invisible puddles, in which we see the trees reflected.

February 15. 

P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond.

I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath.

I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. 

I see some remarkable overflowed ice. Here is one shield of an oval form, some twenty feet long, very regularly and interestingly mottled with yellowish or dead leaf color, the stain of the mead, which by some law has been regularly distributed through the white, yet so delicately shaded off that it almost makes you dizzy to look at it. 

It reminds me of the beginning of a higher organization, or bony structure in a molluscous fish. The overflow must have been from the centre, where it burst up and flowed each way. 

In the proper light I am surprised to detect very fine and perfectly regular curving rays within the ice, just like the veins of some leaves, only finer and more regular, bilateral, perhaps a trace of the water as it flowed, — say like the lines of a cowry shell. It is but imperfectly suggested in the drawing. 

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. 

• The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.
• A distant white birch, erect on a hill against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede a crawling up to heaven. 
• The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish. 

Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one in my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice. 

So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring like rain begins, and we turn about. 

The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. 

We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. 

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.


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

We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. See January 13, 1854 ("Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees"); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist. ”)

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.  See  February 16, 1860 ("I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it.") Compare October 31, 1858 ("Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under."); November 1, 1858 ("Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season.")

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts. See February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.") and note to February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places")

February 14. February 15. February 16

The wet scent of the umbrella.

March 21. 

Warm rain, April-like, the first of the season, holding up from time to time, though always completely overcast. 

P. M. – To Ministerial Swamp via Little River. 

Standing by the mud-hole in the swamp, I hear the pleasant phebe note of the chickadee. It is, methinks, the most of a wilderness note of any yet. It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome the spring. 

Standing by that pool, it is pleasant to see the dimples made on its smooth surface by the big drops, after the rain has held up a quarter of an hour. 

The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating, according to the condition in which the winter leaves the crust of the meadow. 

This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. It helps take the remaining frost out and settles the ways, but there is yet frost and ice in meadows and swamps.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1858

It is peculiarly interesting that this, which is one of our winter birds also, should have a note with which to welcome the spring. See January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him."); See February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee"); 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. I had at first heard their day-day-day ungratefully,- ah! you but carry my thoughts back to winter, - but anon I find that they too have become spring birds; they have changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring."):   March 11, 1854 (" Air full of birds, — bluebirds, song sparrows, chickadee (phoebe notes), and blackbirds. Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms.”); March 14, 1852 (" I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.”); March 19, 1858 ("Hear the phebe note of a chickadee."); March 22, 1855 ("The jays scream. I hear the downy woodpecker’s rapid tapping and 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

The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating. See February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 2, 1859 (“Under the alders at Well Meadow I see a few skunk- cabbage spathes fairly open on the side, and these may bloom after a day or two of pleasant weather.”): March 6, 1854 ("I see the skunk- cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close'") March 8, 1855 ("As the ice melts in the swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence of the sun, - the most prepared for spring—to look at— of any plant."); March 18, 1860 (The skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell"); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. See April 4, 1853 ("A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.")

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

This first spring rain I 

love to hear the pattering 

on my umbrella.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The wet scent of the umbrella

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

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

May 20. 

Began to rain the latter part of yesterday, and rains all day against all desire and expectation, raising the river and, in low land, rotting the seed. Gardeners wish that their land had not been planted nor plowed. Postpone your journey till the May storm is over.

Starflower
May 20, 2017

It has been confidently asserted and believed that if the cold in the winter exceeded a certain degree it surely killed the peach blossoms. Last winter we had greater cold than has ever been generally observed here, and yet it is a remarkable spring for peach blossoms; thus once for all disproving that assertion. 

Everything in the shape of a peach tree blossoms this season, even a mutilated shrub on the railroad causeway, sprung from a stone which some passenger cast out. Nevertheless the lowest limbs, which were covered by the drifts, have blossomed much the earliest and fullest, as usual, and this after-blow is quite unexpected. Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before. 

The expression in Sophocles' (Edipus at Colonos, "White Colonos," said to refer to the silvery soil, reminded me at first of the tracts now whitened by the pyrus blossoms, which may be mistaken for hoary rocks. Vide this description of Colonos. 

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? 

I find that the corydalis sprig which I brought home five days ago keeps fresh and blossoms remarkably well in water, — its delicate bright flesh-colored or pink flowers and glaucous leaves! 

How suddenly, after all, pines seem to shoot up and fill the pastures! 

I wonder that the farmers do not earlier encourage their growth. To-day, perchance, as I go through some run-out pasture, I observe many young white pines dotting the field, where last year I had noticed only blackberry vines; but I see that many are already destroyed or injured by the cows which have dived into them to scratch their heads or for sport (such is their habit; they break off the leading shoot and bend down the others of different evergreens), or perchance where the farmer has been mowing them down, and I think the owner would rather have a pasture here than a wood-lot. A year or two later, as I pass through the same field, I am surprised to find myself in a flourishing young wood-lot, from which the cows are now carefully fenced out, though there are many open spaces, and I perceive how much further advanced it would have been if the farmer had been more provident and had begun to abet nature a few years earlier. 

It is surprising by what leaps — two or three feet in a season — the pines stretch toward the sky, affording shelter also to various hardwoods which plant themselves in their midst. 

I do not know a white pine in the town which has been set out twenty-five years.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 20, 1857

Postpone your journey till the May storm is over. See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); compare May 13, 1852 (" They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty.”)

Have all the Canada plums that striking pink color at the base of the blossoms at last? See note to May 10, 1856 (“Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather.”)

White pines. See April 29, 1857 (“I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot.”); May 18, 1857 ("Many are now setting out pines and other evergreens, transplanting some wildness into the neighborhood of their houses. I do not know of a white pine that has been set out twenty-five years in the town. It is a new fashion.”); May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

A perfectly warm and pleasant day..

May 4. 

May 4, 2015

May 4, 2019

Rain. 

The barber tells me that the masons of New York tell him that they would prefer human hair to that of cattle to mix with their plastering. 

Balm-of-Gilead pollen in house to-day; outdoors, say to-morrow, if fair. 

Minott tells me of one Matthias Bowers, a native of Chelmsford and cousin of C. Bowers, a very active fellow, who used to sleep with him and when he found the door locked would climb over the roof and come in at the dormer-window. One Sunday, when they were repairing the old Unitarian church and there was a staging just above the belfry, he climbed up the lightning-rod and put his arm round the ball at the top of the spire and swung his hat there. He then threw it down and the crown was knocked out. Minott saw him do it, and Deacon White ordered him to come down. 

M. also told of a crazy fellow who got into the belfry of the Lincoln church with an axe and began to cut the spire down, but was stopped after he had done considerable damage. 

When M. lived at Baker's, B. had a dog Lion, famous for chasing squirrels. The gray squirrels were numerous and used to run over the house sometimes. It was an old-fashioned house, slanting to one story behind, with a ladder from the roof to the ground. One day a gray squirrel ran over the house, and Lion, dashing after him up the ladder, went completely over the house and fell off the front side before he could stop, putting out one of his toes. But the squirrel did not put out any of his toes. 

Wyman told Minott that he used to see black snakes crossing Walden and would wait till they came ashore and then kill them. One day he saw a bull on the northerly side swim across to get at some cows on the south. 

It has rained all day, and I see in the footpath across the Common, where water flows or has flown, a great many worms, apparently drowned. Did they not come out in unusual numbers last night because it was so warm, and so get overtaken by the rain? But how account for the worms said to be found in tubs of water? 

Perhaps the most generally interesting event at present is a perfectly warm and pleasant day. It affects the greatest number, the well out of doors and the sick in chambers. No wonder the weather is the universal theme of conversation. A warm rain; and the ring of the toads is heard all through it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1857

It rains about every other day now

April 17

Rain. It rains about every other day now for a fortnight past.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1857

See ; April 14, 1859 ("The seventh rain storm (as I reckon), beginning with the 18th of March."); April 22, 1856 (“These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.”) Compare April 17, 1856 ("We have had scarcely any rain this spring.”)

Rain – It rains about

every other day now

for a fortnight past.

It is April weather.

March 19. 

Heavy rain in the night and to-day, i.e. A.M. 

This, as usual, rapidly settles the ways, for, taking the frost out, the water that stood on the surface is soaked up, so that it is even drier and better walking before this heavy rain is over than it was yesterday before it began. 

It is April weather. 

I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 19, 1857

It is April weather. See March 10, 1854 (“The weather is almost April-like. We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese.”)



To-day the firat dead sucker.  See March 20, 1857 ("[the phenomenmon I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter."); April 14, 1856 ("I see the first dead sucker"); April 10, 1855("Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating."); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!"); April 18, 1852 ("The sight of the sucker floating on the meadow at this season affects me singularly, as if it were a fabulous or mythological fish, realizing my idea of a fish. It reminds me of pictures of dolphins or of Proteus. I see it for what it is, — not an actual terrene fish, but the fair symbol of a divine idea, the design of an artist")

April rain.

April 20

Rain, rain, rain, — a northeast storm. I see that it is raising the river somewhat again. Some little islets which had appeared on the meadow north west of Dodd’s are now fast being submerged again.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 20, 1856

Rain, rain, rain. See April 22, 1856 (“These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one – characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.”) See also April 20, 1855 ("Rains all day, taking out the frost and imprisoning me.”);  See also April 17, 1857 ("Rain. It rains about every other day now for a fortnight past.”)

April 20, 2026

 

See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 20

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

White maple buds slightly opened

April 3

When I awake this morning I hear the almost forgotten sound of rain on the roof. 

Looking out, I see the air full of fog, and that the snow has gone off wonderfully during the night. The drifts have settled and the patches of bare ground extended themselves, and the river is fast spreading over the meadows. 

The pattering of the rain is a soothing, slumberous sound, which tempts me to lie late, yet there is more fog than rain. 

Here, then, at last, is the end of the sleighing, which began the 25th of December. Not including that date and to-day it has lasted ninety-nine days. I hear that young Demond of the Factory will have come into town one hundred times in his sleigh the past winter, if he comes to-day, having come probably only once in a day. 

P. M. — To Hunt’s Bridge. 

It is surprising how the earth on bare south banks begins to show some greenness in its russet cheeks in this rain and fog, -- a precious emerald-green tinge, almost like a green mildew, the growth of the night, -- a green blush suffusing her cheek, heralded by twittering birds. 

How encouraging to perceive again that faint tinge of green, spreading amid the russet on earth’s cheeks! I revive with Nature; her victory is mine. This is my jewelry. 

It rains very little, but a dense fog, fifteen or twenty feet high, rests on the earth all day, spiriting away the snow, —behind which the cockerels crow and a few birds sing or twitter. 

The osiers look bright and fresh in the rain and fog, like the grass. Close at hand they are seen to be beaded with drops from the fog. There seems to be a little life in the bark now, and it strips somewhat more freely than in winter. What a lusty growth have these yellow osiers! Six feet is common the last year, chiefly from the summit of the pollards, —but also from the sides of the trunk,—filling a quadrant densely with their yellow rays. 

The white maple buds on the south side of some trees have slightly opened, so that I can peep into their cavities and detect the stamens. They will probably come next to the skunk-cabbage this year, if the cowslip does not. 

April 3, 2015

Yet the trees stand in the midst of the old snow. 

I see small flocks of robins running on the bared portions of the meadow. Hear the sprayey tinkle of the song sparrow along the hedges. 

Hear also squeaking notes of an advancing flock of redwings [or grackles, am uncertain which makes that squeak] somewhere high in the sky. At length detect them high overhead, advancing northeast in loose array, with a broad extended front, competing with each other, winging their way to some northern meadow which they remember. 

Coming home along the causeway, a robin sings (though faintly) as in May.

The road is a path, here and there shovelled through drifts which are considerably higher than a man’s head on each side. 

The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up. It is surprising what progress has been made since yesterday. It is now generally open about the town. 

It has gradually worn and melted away at the bends, where it is shallow and swift, and now small pieces are breaking off around the edges and floating down these reaches.  

It is not generally floated off, but dissolved and melted where it is, for the open reaches gradually extend themselves till they meet, and there is no space or escape for floating ice in any quantity, until the ice is all gone from the channel. 

I think that what I have seen floating in former years is commonly such as had risen up afterward from the bottom of flooded meadows. Sometimes, however, you observe great masses of floating ice, consisting of that which is later to break up, the thicker and more lasting ice from broad bays or between bridges.

There is now an open water passage on each side of the broad field of ice in the bay above the railroad.

The water, which is rapidly rising, has overflowed the icy snow on the meadows, which is seen a couple of feet beneath it, for there is no true ice there. It is this rising of the water that breaks up the ice more than anything. 

The Mill Brook has risen much higher comparatively than the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1856

When I awake this morning I hear the almost forgotten sound of rain on the roof.  See April 1, 1855 ("The month comes in true to its reputation. We wake, though late, to hear the sound of a strong, steady, and rather warm rain on the roof, and see the puddles shining in the road.")

The osiers look bright and fresh in the rain and fog . . . What a lusty growth have these yellow osiers! See March 2, 1860 ("Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season.");  March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for.");April 4, 1859 ("The osier bark now, as usual, looks very yellow when wet"); April 27, 1854 (" I am at length convinced of the increased freshness (green or yellow) of the willow bark in the spring. Some a clear yellow, others a delightful liquid green. "); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

I revive with Nature; her victory is mine.  See January 9, 1853 ("May I lead my life the following year as innocently! May it be as fair and smell as sweet! I anticipate nature. It will go forth in April, this vestal now cherishing her fire, to be married to the sun. How innocent are Nature's purposes!")

Hear also squeaking notes of an advancing flock of redwings [or grackles, am uncertain which makes that squeak] See April 2, 1856 ("I hear now, as I stand over the first skunk-cabbage, the notes of the first red-wings, like the squeaking of a sign, over amid the maples yonder.");  April 27, 1856 ("From close by I hear a red-wing’s clear, loud whistle, — not squeak (which I think may be confined to the grackle).");  March 29, 1857 ("I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot . . . on the whole I think them grackles (?) . . . Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring 

The white maple buds . . . will probably come next to the skunk-cabbage this year, if the cowslip does not. See April 2, 1856 ("It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower");  April 2, 1856 ("The cowslip appears to be coming next to [the skunk cabbage]. Its buds are quite yellowish and half an inch, almost, in diameter. "); April 4, 1856  ("I find  many sound cabbages shedding their pollen under Clamshell Hill . . . This is simply the earliest flower such a season as this, i. e. when the ground continues covered with snow till very late in the spring.");  April 8, 1856 ("I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen; and they may have opened two or three days ago; for I saw many conspicuous buds here on the 2d which now I do not see . . . What an arctic voyage was this in which I find cowslips, the pond and river still frozen over for the most part ");  April 9, 1856 ("White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring; and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

Coming home along the causeway, a robin sings (though faintly) as in May. See April 1, 1854 ("The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully.")  April 2, 1856 ("Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain"); April 1, 1857("A true April evening, feeling and looking as if it would rain, and already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 3

White maple trees stand

in the midst of the old snow,

buds slightly opened.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds slightly opened

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-560403

* * *

Relaxing  on a rock in the upper moss trial, looking at the horizon and the trees, i do not see the Red pine in front of me. I notice and am puzzled for a moment then take it to be a deformed White pine -- but do not see it as a Red pine until Jane remarks and i go down to look at the bark. Obvious red pine.

And then suddenly all around are previously unseen signs: needles, cones seedlings that i have walked right by. I remember distinctly seeing White pine when looking at the seedlings in the trail while Jane was inspecting the wintergreen .

 Going back up to the original view of the tree’s crown, it is now obviously and forever a Red pine.

I did not apprehend what I did not expect. I did not have the idea of the red pine, because it did not connect to my experience of these woods.

As HDT says, one never learns something one does not already half-know. One can never know or see — even the obvious--- what one does not somehow expect. January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”; August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it. “)

So the question is, how did Jane see the red pine? 

April 3, 2016

Postscript.  Later we go back up the moss trial and find this is not a lone Red pine, but there are several others nearby on this south facing ridge.