Though fitted to drain Amazons, we ordinarily live with dry channels.

April 19.

Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, — passing travellers singing. 

My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to! Though, with respect to our channels, our valleys, and the country we are fitted to drain, we are Amazons, we ordinarily live with dry channels. 

The arbor-vita: by riverside behind Monroe’s appears to be just now fairly in blossom. 

I notice acorns sprouted. 

My birch wine now, after a week or more, has become pretty clear and colorless again, the brown part having settled and now coating the glass. 

Helped Mr. Emerson set out in Sleepy Hollow two over-cup oaks, one beech, and two arbor-vitaes. 

As dryness will open the pitch pine cone, so moisture closes it up again. I put one which had been open all winter into water, and in an hour or two it shut up nearly as tight as at first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 19, 1856

I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. . . . See March 17, 1852  ("I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual"); July 16, 1851(" I am astonished. I am daily intoxicated. There comes to me such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion -- . . . I am dealt with by superior powers"); May 24, 1851 ("My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

A pitch pine cone which had been open all winter shut up. Compare January 25, 1856 ("A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine

Suddenly as I go to my boat.

April 12

There is still a little snow ice on the north side of our house, two feet broad, a relic of the 25th of December. This is all there is on our premises.

According to Rees’s Cyclopaedia, the sap of the birches is fermentable in its natural state. Also, “Ratray, the learned Scot, affirms, that he has found by experiment, that the liquor which may be drawn from the birch tree in the springtime is equal to the whole weight of the tree, branches, roots, and all together.” 

I think on the whole that, of the particular trees which I tapped, the yellow and canoe birches flowed the fastest. 

Hazy all day, with wind from the west, threatening rain. Haze gets to be very thick and perhaps smoky in the afternoon, concealing distinct forms of clouds, if there are any. Can it have anything to do with fires in woods west and southwest? Yet it is warm. 

5 P. M.—Sail on the meadow. 

There suddenly flits before me and alights on a small apple tree in Mackay’s field, as I go to my boat, a splendid purple finch. Its glowing redness is revealed when it lifts its wings, as when the ashes is blown from a coal of fire. Just as the oriole displays its gold.

The river is going down and leaving the line of its wrack on the meadow. It was at its height when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday.  

Rains considerably in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1856

There is still a little snow ice on the north side of our house, See April 11, 1860 ("I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in.")

Of the particular trees which I tapped, the yellow and canoe birches flowed the fastest. See April 11, 1856 ("Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. . . .On the whole, I have not observed so much difference in the amount of sap flowing from the six kinds of trees which I have tapped as I have observed between different trees of the same kind,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A splendid purple finch. See  April 12, 1855 ("I hear a purple finch . . . on an elm, steadily warbling and uttering a sharp chip from time to time"); see also  April 3, 1858 ("I am surprised by the rich strain of the purple finch from the elms"); April 10, 1861 ("Purple finch"); April 11, 1853 ("I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's."); April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds");  and see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The river is going down and leaving the line of its wrack on the meadow. It was at its height  when the snow generally was quite melted here, i. e. yesterday. See April 8, 1856 ("River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge "); April 9, 1856 ("River, still rising.");  April 10, 1856 ("We may now say that the ground is bare . . .Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last"); April 11, 1856 ("Yonder graceful tree . . . marks where is the bank of the river, though now it stands in the midst of a flood a quarter of a mile from land ") See also April 1, 1858 ("The river is at summer level. . . . It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”) 

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

Hazy all day with 

wind from the west threatening 

rain in the evening.

Splendid purple finch –

its glowing redness revealed

when it lifts its wings.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Suddenly as I go to my boat.

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

The pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler

April 11

8.30 A. M. — To Tarbell’s to get black and canoe birch sap. 

Going up the railroad, I see a male and female rusty grackle alight on an oak near me, the latter apparently a flaxen brown, with a black tail. She looks like a different species of bird. Wilson had heard only a tchuck from the grackle, but this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst as soon as it came to the surface, it was so aerated: Its air would not be fixed long enough. 

Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water. Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? He is the bright buoy that betrays it!

And hear in the old place, the pitch pine grove on the bank by the river, the pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. Its  a-che, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vet rings through the open pine grove very rapidly. I also heard it at the old place by the railroad, as I came along. It is remarkable that I have so often heard it first in these two localities, i.e. where the railroad skirts the north edge of a small swamp densely filled with tall old white pines and a few white oaks, and in a young grove composed wholly of pitch pines on the otherwise bare, very high and level bank of the Assabet. When the season is advanced enough, I am pretty sure to hear its ringing note in both those places. 

The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. 
The sallow up railroad will, if it is pleasant, to-morrow. 

When I cut or break white pine twigs now, the turpentine exudes copiously from the bark, even from twigs broken off in the fall and now freshly broken, clear as water, or crystal. How early did it? 

Set two spouts in a canoe birch fifteen inches in diameter, and two in a black birch two feet plus in diameter. The canoe birch sap flowed rather the fastest. 

I have now got four kinds of birch sap. That of the white birch is a little tinged brown, apparently by the bark; the others are colorless as water. I am struck by the coolness of the sap, though the weather may be warm. Like wild apples, it must be tasted in the fields, and then it has a very slightly sweetish and acid taste, and cool as iced water. 

I do not think I could distinguish the different kinds of birch with my eyes shut. I drank some of the black birch wine with my dinner for the name of it; but, as a steady drink, it is only to be recommended to outdoor men and foresters. 

Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. I saved a bottleful each of the white, canoe, and black birch sap (the yellow I boiled), and, in twenty-four hours, they had all three acquired a slight brown tinge but the white birch the most brown. They were at first colorless. 

On the whole, I have not observed so much difference in the amount of sap flowing from the six kinds of trees which I have tapped as I have observed between different trees of the same kind, depending on position and size, etc. This flowing of the sap under the dull rinds of the trees is a tide which few suspect. 

Though the snow melted so much sooner on the east side of the railroad causeway than on the west, I notice that it still lies in a broad, deep bank on the east side  of Cheney’s row of arbor-vitae, while the ground is quite bare on the west. Whence this difference?

A few more hylas peep to-day, though it is not so warm as the 9th. These warm pleasant days I see very few ducks about, though the river is high. 

The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another. You perceive the waters heaped on the upper side of rocks and trees, and even twigs that trail in the stream. 

Saw a pickerel washed up, with a wound near its tail, dead a week at least. Was it killed by a fish hawk? Its oil, when disturbed, smoothed the surface of the water with splendid colors. Thus close ever is the fair to the foul. The iridescent, oily surface. The same object is ugly or beautiful, according to the angle from which you view it. 

Here, also, in the river wreck is the never-failing teazle, telling of the factory above, and sawdust from the mill. The teased river! These I do not notice on the South Branch. 

I hear of one field plowed and harrowed, — George Heywood’s. Frost out there earlier than last year. 

You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south, detecting no growth as yet, unless the flower-buds of the amelanchier are somewhat expanded, when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath. 

You take your way along the edge of some swamp that has been cleared at the base of some south hillside, where there is sufficient light and air and warmth, but the cold northerly winds are fended off, and there behold the silvery catkins of the sallows, which have already crept along their lusty osiers, more than an inch in length, till they look like silvery wands, though some are more rounded, like bullets. The lower part of some catkins which have lost their bud-scales emit a tempered crimson blush through their down, from the small scales within. The catkins grow longer and larger as you advance into the warmest localities, till at last you discover one catkin in which the reddish anthers are beginning to push from one side near the end, and you know that a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to-morrow, if the day is fair. 

I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little  hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook, amid the open alders, sheltered under a russet tussock. It is the cowslips’ forward green. Look narrowly, explore the warmest nooks; here are buds larger yet, showing more yellow, and yonder see two full-blown yellow disks, close to the water’s edge. Methinks they dip into it when the frosty nights come. Have not these been mistaken for dandelions?

Or, on the 9th: This still warm morning paddle your boat into yonder smooth cove, close up under the south edge of that wood which the April flood is bathing, and observe the great mulberry-like catkins of yonder aspen curving over and downward, some an inch or more in length, like great reddish caterpillars covered thickly with down, forced out by heat, and already the sides and ends of some are loose and of a pale straw-color, shedding their pollen. These, for their forwardness, are indebted to the warmth of their position. 

Now for the white maple the same day: Paddle under yonder graceful tree which marks where is the bank of the river, though now it stands in the midst of a flood a quarter of a mile from land; hold fast by one of its trailing twigs, for the stream runs swiftly here. See how the tree is covered with great globular clusters of buds. Are there no anthers nor stigmas to be seen? Look upward to the sunniest side. Steady! When the boat 'has ceased its swaying, do you not see two or three stamens glisten like spears advanced on the sunny side of a cluster? Depend on it, the bees will find it out before noon, far over the flood as it is. 

Seek out some young and lusty-growing alder (as on the 9th), with clear, shining, and speckled bark, in the warmest possible position, perchance where the heat is reflected from some bank or hillside and the water bathes its foot. The scales of the catkins generally are loosened, but on the (sunniest cheek of the clump, be hold one or two far more considerably loosened, wholly or partially dangling and showing their golden insides. Give the most forward of these a chuck, and you will get a few grains of its yellow dust in your hand. Some will be in full bloom above, while their extremities are comparatively dead, as if struck with a palsy in the winter. Soon will come a rude wind and shake their pollen copiously over the water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1856

I see a male and female rusty grackle. . . this male, who was courting his mate, broke into incipient warbles, like a bubble burst See March 29, 1853 ("It would be worth the while to attend more to the different notes of the blackbirds."); March 29, 1858 ("I see what I suppose is the female rusty grackle; black body with green reflections and purplish-brown head and neck, but I notice no light iris.");  April 3, 1855 ("The first grackles [rusty grackles, or rusty blackbirds.] I have seen. I detected them first by their more rasping note . . . after a short stuttering, then a fine, clear whistle."); April 9, 1855 ("Wilson says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a chuck, though he is told that at Hudson’s Bay, at the breeding-time, they sing with a fine note. Here they utter not only a chuck, but a fine shrill whistle.");  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The grackle arrives.

Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A stranger frequently cannot tell which way the [main channel] flows.  See April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs.")

The teased river! See April 2, 1853 ("Together with the driftwood on the shore of the Assabet and the sawdust from Heywood's mill, I pick up teasel-heads from the factory with the wool still in them. How many tales the stream tells!”); November 18, 1860 ("I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller’s thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above.")

Saw a kingfisher on a tree over the water.   Does not its arrival mark some new movement in its finny prey? See April 1, 1860 ("A kingfisher seen and heard."); April 10, 1859 ("See a kingfisher flying very low, in the ricochet manner, across the water."); April 15, 1855 ("See and hear a kingfisher—do they not come with the smooth waters of April?”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Kingfisher

The pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. See April 9, 1856 (While I am looking at the hazel, I hear from the old locality, the edge of the great pines and oaks in the swamp by the railroad, the note of the pine warbler . . . cool and inspiring, like a part of the evergreen forest itself, the trickling of the sap."); April 12, 1858 ("The woods are all alive with pine warblers now. Their note is the music to which I survey."); April 15, 1855 ("In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather."); April 15, 1859 ("Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler.  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Pine Warbler.

 The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely. See March 27, 1853 ("The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring"); March 27, 1859 ("Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain."); April 4. 1853("The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now"); April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.  "); April 7, 1855 ("The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out."); April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars");   April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather. "); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

 

The sallow up railroad will [shed pollen], if it is pleasant, to-morrow. . . .  the reddish anthers are beginning to push from one side near the end, and you know that a little yellow flame will have burst out there by to-morrow. See April 13, 1856 ("The sallow will not open till some time to-day ");  April 17, 1855 ("The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom —there are three or four catkins on the twig partly open "); April 18, 1852 (" The most interesting fact, perhaps, at present is these few tender yellow blossoms, these half-expanded sterile aments of the willow, seen through the rain and cold, — signs of the advancing year, pledges of the sun's return."); April  18, 1855 ("A little sallow, about two feet high . . . with reddish anthers not yet burst, will bloom to-morrow in Well Meadow Path. ")

I might have said on the 8th: Behold that little  hemisphere of green in the black and sluggish brook. See  April 8, 1856 ("There, in that slow, muddy brook near the head of Well Meadow, within a few rods of its source, where it winds amid the alders, which shelter the plants some what, while they are open enough now to admit the sun, I find two cowslips in full bloom, shedding pollen. . . if the river had risen as high as frequently, they would have been submerged.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cowslip in Early Spring

Now for the white maple  . . . See how the tree is covered with great globular clusters of buds. . . do you not see two or three stamens glisten like spears advanced on the sunny side of a cluster? See April 10, 1855.(" Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled up the' Assabet looking for the first flowers of the white maple . . . the round clusters of its bursting flower-buds spotting the sky above me, and on a close inspection found a few which . . .blossomed the day before");  April 14, 1855 ("White maples are now generally in bloom."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

Seek out some young and lusty-growing alder (as on the 9th) . . . Soon will come a rude wind and shake their pollen copiously over the water. See April 9, 1856 ( The Alnus incana, especially by the railroad opposite the oaks, sheds pollen. ""); April 10, 1855  ("Early on the morning of the 8th I paddled . . .slowly along the riverside looking closely at the alder catkins and shaking the most loose, till at length I came to a bush which had. . . one looser and more yellowish catkin, which, as I have said, on a close examination showed some effete anthers near the peduncle");  April 11, 1852  (" I was pleased to find the Alnus incana ( ?) in bloom in the water, its long sterile aments, yellowish-brown, hanging in panicles or clusters at the ends of the drooping branchlets, while all the twigs else are bare and the well-cased and handsome leaf-buds are not yet expanded at all. It is a kind of resurrection of the year, these pliant and pendulous blossoms on this apparently dead bush, while all is sere and tawny around, withered and bleached grass. A sort of harbinger of spring, this and the maple blossoms especially, and also the early willow catkins. . . This and the maple and the earliest willow are the most flower-like now.") See also  March 22, 1853 (" The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower."); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

The ringing note of

the pine warbler first heard in

the same two places.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ringing note of the pine warbler

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-560811

This remarkable winter disappears at last.

April 10

Fast-Day. — 

Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up, and also with the uncertainty I always experienced whether the shops would be shut, whether we should have an ordinary dinner, an extraordinary one, or none at all, and whether there would be more than one service at the meeting-house. This last uncertainty old folks share with me. 

This is a windy day, drying up the fields; the first we have had for a long time. 

Therien describes to me the diagonal notch he used to cut in maples and birches (not having heard of boring) and the half-round spout, cut out of chestnut or other straight-grained wood with a half-round chisel, sharped and driven into a new-moon cut made by the same tool partly sidewise to the tree. This evidently injured the trees more than the auger. 

He says they used to boil the birch down to a syrup, and he thought that the black birch would run more than any tree. 

P. M. —I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. The waves dashed over into the boat and with their sprinkling wet me half through in a few moments. Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can.

I reach my port, and go to Trillium Wood to get yellow birch sap. 

The Deep Cut is full of dust. 

This wind, unlike yesterday’s, has a decidedly cold vein in it. The ditch by Trillium Wood is strewn with yellowish hemlock leaves, which are still falling. 

In the still warmer and broader continuation of this ditch, south of the wood, in the southwest recess, I see three or four frogs jump in, some probably large Rana palustris, others quite small. They are in before I see them plainly, and bury themselves in the mud before I can distinguish them clearly. They were evidently sitting in the sun by that leafy ditch in that still and warm nook. Let them beware of marsh hawks. 

I saw also four yellow-spot tortoises paddling about under the leaves on the bottom there. Once they were all together. This ditch is commonly dry in the summer. 

The yellow birch sap runs very fast. I set three spouts in a tree one foot in diameter, and hung on a quart pail; then went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. When I came back, the pail was running over. This was about 3 P. M. 

Each spout dropped about as fast as my pulse, but when I left, at 4 P. M., it was not dropping so fast.

The red maples here do not run at all now, nor did they yesterday. Yet one up the Assabet did yesterday. Apparently the early maples have ceased to run. 

We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. 

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last. 

Here and there its veteran snow-banks spot the russet landscapes. In the shade of walls and north hillsides and cool hollows in the woods, it is panting its life away. I look with more than usual respect, if not with regret, on its last dissolving traces. 

Is not that a jungermannia which so adorns the golden epidermis of the yellow birch with its fine fingers? 

I boil down about two quarts of this yellow birch sap to two teaspoonfuls of a smart-tasting syrup. I stopped there; else should have boiled it all away. A slightly medicinal taste, yet not disagreeable to me. It yields but little sugar, then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 10, 1856

I set out to sail, the wind northwest, but it is so strong, and I so feeble, that I gave it up. . . . See April 10, 1852 ("We lay to in the lee of an island a little north of the bridge, where the surface is quite smooth, and the woods shelter us completely, while we hear the roar of the wind behind them, with an agreeable sense of protection, and see the white caps of the waves on either side.") See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing

Our meadow looks as angry now as it ever can. See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”) March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit."); 

Went to look at the golden saxifrage in Hubbard’s Close. See April 12, 1855 ("Golden saxifrage out at Hubbard’s Close, -- one, at least, effete. It may have been the 10th.”); April 1, 1855 “(One of the earliest-looking plants in water is the golden saxifrage.”) [Golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium americanum), a native wetland and aquatic plant that frequents small streams and seepy areas in swamps and forests. The inconspicuous flowers are noticeable only for their eight brick-red anthers when it blooms in May.]

Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.  See Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

 I look with respect –

this remarkable winter 

disappears at last.

The North Branch — it is all solid.

March 24.

Very pleasant day. Thermometer 48° at noon. 

9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30. One F. hyemalis in yard. Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. 

I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp. So much partly for being out the whole forenoon. Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear. The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. 

Cross the river behind Monroe’s. Go everywhere on the North Branch — it is all solid — and crust bears in the morning. Yet last year I paddled my boat to Fair Haven Pond on the 19th of March!

The snow is so coarse-grained and hard that you can hardly get up a handful to wash your hands with, except the dirty surface.  Before noon I slump two feet in the snow. 

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap. 

The white maple sap does not flow fast generally at first, —or 9 A. M., — not till about ten. You bore a little hole with your knife, and presently the wounded sap—wood begins to glisten with moisture, and anon a clear crystalline tear-like drop flows out and runs down the bark, or drops at once to the snow. This is the sap of which the far-famed maple sugar is made. That’s the sweet liquor which the Indians boiled a thousand years ago. 

My sugar-making was spoiled by putting in much soda instead of saleratus by accident. I suspect it would have made more sugar than the red did. It proved only brittle black candy. This sap flowed just about as fast as that of the red maple. It is said that a great deal of sap will run from the yellow birch. 

Cut a piece of Rhus Toxicodendron resting on rock at Egg Rock, five eighths of an inch in diameter, which had nineteen rings of annual growth. It is quite hard and stiff.

The river begins to open generally at the bends for ten or twenty rods, and I see the dark ice alternating with dark water there, while the rest of the river is still covered with snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1856

 Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time.  Compare February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts."); See  March 9, 1856 ("Thermometer at 2 P. M. 15°, sixteen inches of snow on a level in open fields, hard and dry, ice in Flint’s Pond two feet thick, and the aspect of the earth is that of the middle of January in a severe winter. Yet this is about the date that bluebirds arrive commonly.") ;March 10, 1856 ("A bluebird would look as much out of place now as the 10th of January . . . It is hard to believe the records of previous years."); March 26, 1860 ("The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in '50, '57 and '60 or not till March 24, as in '56.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird 

The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. See March 24, 1854 (“Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note.”); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it.”); March 19, 1858 ("Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note."); ; March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis”); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?),. . . It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 23, 1852 ("Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco; and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds."); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out."); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy"); March 25, 1856 ("The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places.")

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

Sugaring lessons.

March 21.

10 A. M. —To my red maple sugar camp.

Found that, after a pint and a half had run from a single tube after 3 P. M. yesterday, it had frozen about half an inch thick, and this morning a quarter of a pint more had run. Between 10.30 and 11.30 A. M. this forenoon, I caught two and three quarters pints more, from six tubes, at the same tree, though it is completely overcast and threatening rain. Four and one half pints in all. 

This sap is an agreeable drink, like iced water (by chance), with a pleasant but slight sweetish taste. I boiled it down in the afternoon, and it made an ounce and a half of sugar, without any molasses, which appears to be the average amount yielded by the sugar maple in similar situations, viz. south edge of a wood, a tree partly decayed, two feet in diameter. 

March 21, 2015

It is worth the while to know that there is all this sugar in our woods, much of which might be obtained by using the refuse wood lying about, without damage to the proprietors, who use neither the sugar nor the wood. 

I left home at ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected. I put in saleratus and a little milk while boiling, the former to neutralize the acid, and the latter to collect the impurities in a skum. After boiling it till I burned it a little, and my small quantity would not flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was softened and turned to sugar. 

While collecting sap, the little of yesterday’s lodging snow that was left, dropping from the high pines in Trillium Wood and striking the brittle twigs in its descent, makes me think that the squirrels are running there. 

I noticed that my fingers were purpled, evidently from the sap on my auger. 

Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university. 

It dropped from each tube about as fast as my pulse beat, and, as there were three tubes directed to each vessel, it flowed at the rate of about one hundred and eighty drops in a minute into it. 

One maple, standing immediately north of a thick white pine, scarcely flowed at all, while a smaller, farther in the wood, ran pretty well. The south side of a tree bleeds first in spring. 

I hung my pails on the tubes or a nail. Had two tin pails and a pitcher. Had a three-quarters-inch auger. Made a dozen spouts, five or six inches long, hole as large as a pencil, smoothed with a pencil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1856

To my red maple sugar camp. See March 14, 1856 ("[J]ust above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark. Tapping this, I was surprised to find it flow freely . . . "); March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap."); March 24, 1856 ("9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30"). See also February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. It runs freely. The earliest sap I made to flow last year was March 14th "); March 2, 1860 ("The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days."); March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes ."); March 4, 1852 (I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar."); March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”); April 11, 1856 ("Now is apparently the very time to tap birches of all kinds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

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

It is worth the while 

to know that there is all this 

sugar in our woods. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sugaring lessons

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/hdt-560321

The First Spring Sound.

March 20

It snowed three or four inches of damp snow last afternoon and night, now thickly adhering to the twigs and branches. Probably it will soon melt and help carry off the snow. 

P. M. —To Trillium Wood and to Nut Meadow Brook to tap a maple, see paludina, and get elder and sumach spouts, slumping in the deep snow. 

It is now so softened that I slump at every third step. 

The sap of red maples in low and warm positions now generally flows, but not in high and exposed ones.

Where I saw those furrows in the sand in Nut Meadow Brook the other day, I now explore, and find within a square foot or two half a dozen of Paludina decisa with their feet out, within an inch of the surface, so I have scarcely a doubt that they made them. I suppose that they do not furrow the bottom thus under the ice, but as soon as the spring sun has thawed it, they come to the surface, — perhaps at night only, — where there is some little sand, and furrow it thus by their motions. Maybe it is the love season. 

Perhaps these make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs. 

March 29, 2016

Considering how solid and thick the river was a week ago, I am surprised to find how cautious I have grown about crossing it in many places now. The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half.

For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound, after the chickadees and hens, that I think of. 

Set a pail before coming here to catch red maple sap, at Trillium Wood. I am now looking after elder and sumach for spouts.  Got my smooth sumach on the south side of Nawshawtuct. I know of no shrubs hereabout except elders and the sumachs which have a suitable pith and wood for such a purpose.

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

Where I saw those furrows in the sand in Nut Meadow Brook the other day. I now explore, and find . . . half a dozen of Paludina. See March 18, 1856 (“I see many small furrows, freshly made, in the sand at the bottom of the brook, from half an inch to three quarters wide, which I suspect are made by some small shellfish already moving.”);  March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .  small shell snails copulate")

Perhaps these make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. See March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat? "); March 22, 1856 ("Crows . . . visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 4, 1860 ("I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, - snails, or cranberries perhaps.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half. See March 14, 1856 ("I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river."); March 18, 1856 ("It is still quite tight at Hubbard’s Bath Bend and at Clamshell, though I hesitate a little to cross at these places.");  April 2, 1856. ("I returned down the middle of the river to near the Hubbard Bridge without seeing any opening.")Compare March 19, 1855 ("Launch my boat. Paddle to Fair Haven Pond. "); March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound. See.March 19, 1858 ("I hear turkeys gobble. This too, I suppose, is a spring sound"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive (including hawks and crows), and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds, as nuthatch and chickadee, turkeys, and woodpecker tapping.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The gobbling of turkeys.

Set a pail before coming here to catch red maple sap, at Trillium Wood. I am now looking after spouts. See March 15, 1856 ("Put a spout in the red maple of yesterday, and hang a pail beneath to catch the sap"); March 16, 1856 (" Going home, slip on the ice, throwing the pail over my head to save myself, and spill all but a pint."); March 21, 1856 (" It is worth the while to know that there is all this sugar in our woods . . . I left home at ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  Red Maple Sap Flows

For two or three days 

the gobbling of turkeys, 

the first spring sound.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The First Spring Sound

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/hdt0560320