First snow of any consequence.

December 26. 

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. 

At the double-chair December 26, 2017

Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1857

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. See December 26, 1853 ("The first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)

The little dipper must be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?  See November 27, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says . . .that the little dipper is not a coot. . - but he appears not to know a coot”); April 24, 1856 ("Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) . . .”) See also December 26, 1853  ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”)

***

The day after Christmas in the late afternoon we walk to the double-chair via the view, stopping there only briefly because of the strong northwest wind and cold.

Near the junction we hear a raven, turn and see it fly overhead. On the walk we also hear chickadees and downy or hairy woodpecker

Deep in winter woods

we turn to see the raven

soaring overhead.

At the view low clouds are illuminated by the westering sun–- brighter than the landscape below.

I  bushwhack up the mountain  and come across an area that has been trampled down by deer. There are deer bed is all around and she is calling me from above with the same news. As we hike up there are dozens and dozens of deer beds —More than I’ve ever seen in one place.

I use their tracks to find the easiest way up.

When we get to the double-chair, clear the chairs of ice and sit -- there is the first quarter moon in a clear sky. It is 16°.

As we come down the mountain trail, cross the ice on  middle pond and skid  down over the cliff trail, I am thinking what a gift to have this land and these walks together all these years.

What a gift to have 

this land our dogs and these walks--

these years together.

zphz 20171226

Sailing with an umbrella: It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms.

April 22

It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over. In a few minutes the air is full of mizzling rain again. 

April 22, 2016

8 A. M. —Go to my boat opposite Bittern Cliff. 

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. 

There is snow still (of the winter) in the hollows where sand has been dug on the hillside east of Clamshell. 

Going through Hubbard’s root-fence field, see a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. He shows his lighter back between his wings cassock-like and like the smaller woodpeckers. Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc. 

The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,_and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che |  ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard. 

The huckleberry buds are much swollen. 

I see the tracks of some animal which has passed over Potter’s sand, perhaps a skunk. They are quite distinct, the ground being smoothed and softened by rain. The tracks of all animals are much more distinct at such a time. 

By the path, and in the sandy field beyond, are many of those star-fingered puffballs. I think they must be those which are so white, like pigeons’ eggs, in the fall, the thick, leathery rind bursting into eight to eleven segments, like those of a boy’s batting ball, and curving back. They are very pretty and remarkable now, sprinkled over the sand, smooth and plump on account of the rain. (I find some beyond at Mountain Sumach Knoll, smaller with a very thin rind and more turned back, a different species plainly.) The inside of the rind, which is uppermost, approaches a chocolate-color; the puffball is a rough dirty or brownish white; the dust which does not fly now at any rate is chocolate-colored. Seeing these thus open, I should know there had been wet weather. 

The mountain sumach berries have no redness now, though the smooth sumach berries have. Its twigs are slender and so have a small pith. Its heart-wood is not yellow, like the smooth and the dogwood, but green. Its bark is more gray than that of the smooth, which last, when wet, is slightly reddish. Its bark sap or juice is not yellow like that of the smooth, and is slower to harden. 

Some hellebore leaves are opened in the Cliff Brook Swamp. 

My boat is half full of water. 

There are myriads of snow-fleas in the water amid the bushes, apparently washed out of the bark by the rain and rise of river. I push up-stream to Lee’s Cliff, behind Goodwin, who is after musquash. 

Many suckers and one perch have washed up on the Conantum shore, the wind being southeasterly. I do not detect any wound. Their eyes are white, -- it would be worth while to see how long before this happens, —and they appear to have been dead some time; their fins are worn, and they are are slimy. I cut open a sucker, and it looked rather yellow within. I also see sometimes their bladders washed up. They float on their backs. When cut open they sink, but the double bladder is uppermost and protruded as far as possible. Saw some pieces of a sucker recently dropped by some bird or beast, eight or ten rods from the shore. 

Much root and leaf-bud washed up. 

A gull. 

Very perfect and handsome clamshells, recently opened by the musquash, i. e. during the storm, lie on the meadow and the hillside just above water-mark. They are especially handsome because wet by the rain. 

I buy a male muskrat of Goodwin, just killed. He sometimes baits his mink-traps with muskrat; always with some animal food. The musquash does not eat this, though he sometimes treads on the trap and is caught. 

It rains hard and steadily again, and I sail before it.

Now I see many more ducks than in all that fair weather, — sheldrakes, etc. 

A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, and, though not more than thirty rods, I repeatedly lose sight of it, it is so nearly the color of the hillside beyond. It is looking for frogs. 

The small slate-colored hawk which I have called pigeon hawk darts away from a bushy island in the meadow. 

The muskrat, which I bought for twelve cents, weighs three pounds, six ounces. Goodwin thought that some would weigh a half to three quarters of a pound more than this; I think a pound more. Thought this was a young one of last year, — judged by the tail, —and that they hardly came to their growth in one year. Extreme length, twenty—three inches; length of bare tail, nine inches; breadth of tail, seven eighths of an inch; breadth of body, etc., as it lies, six and a half. An oval body, dark-brown above (black in some lights, the coarse wind hairs aft), reddish-brown beneath. Thus far the color of the hair. The fur within slate-color. Tail black; feet a delicate glossy dark slate (?), with white nails. The hind feet half webbed, and their sides and toes fringed thickly with stiff hair, apparently to catch water; ears (the head is wet and bruised), partly concealed in the fur, short and round; long black mustachial bristles; fore legs, quite short, more like hands; hind ones, about three inches without the line of the body’s fur and hair. Tail, on the skin, is a little curved downwards. 

The star fungi, as they dried in my chamber in the course of two or three hours, drew in the fingers. The different segments curled back tightly upon the central puff, the points being strongly curled downward into the middle dimple-wise. It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers. 

Their coat seems to be composed of two thicknesses of different material and quality, and I should guess that the inside chocolate-colored had a great affinity for moisture and, being saturated with it, swelled, and so necessarily burst off and turned back, and perchance the outside dirty-white or pale-brown one expands with dryness. 

A single male sheldrake rose from amid the alders against Holden Swamp Woods, as I was sailing down in angles across my course, only four or five rods from me and a foot or two above the water, finally circling round into my rear. 

Soon after I turned about in Fair Haven Pond, it began to rain hard. The wind was but little south of east and therefore not very favorable for my voyage. I raised my sail and, cowering under my umbrella in the stern, wearing the umbrella like a cap and holding the handle between my knees, I steered and paddled, almost perfectly sheltered from the heavy rain. Yet my legs and arms were a little exposed sometimes, in my endeavors to keep well to windward so as to double certain capes ahead. For the wind occasionally drove me on to the western shore. 

From time to time, from under my umbrella, I could see the ducks spinning away before me, like great bees. For when they are flying low directly from you, you see hardly anything but their vanishing dark bodies, while the rapidly moving wings or paddles, seen edgewise, are almost invisible. 

At length, when the river turned more easterly, I was obliged to take down my sail and paddle slowly in the face of the rain, for the most part not seeing my course, with the umbrella slanted before me. But, though my progress was slow and laborious, and at length I began to get a little wet, I enjoyed the adventure because it combined to some extent the advantages of being at home in my chamber and abroad in the storm at the same time. 

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. We cannot be said to have fully invented clothing yet. In the meanwhile the rain-water collects in the boat, and you must sit with your feet curled up on a paddle, and you expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges. 

These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer. Flowers delay their blossoming, birds tarry in their migrations, etc., etc. It is surprising how so many tender organizations of flowers and insects survive them uninjured. 

The muskrat must do its swimming chiefly with its hind feet. They are similar in form and position to those of the sheldrake. Its broad oval and flattish body, too, must help keep it up. 

Those star puffballs which had closed up in my chamber, put into water, opened again in a few hours. 

What is that little bodkin-shaped bulb which I found washed up on the edge of the meadow, white with a few  small greenish rounded leafets? 

On the 19th, when setting out one of those over cup oaks in Sleepy Hollow, digging at the decayed stump of an apple tree, we disturbed, dug up, a toad, which probably had buried itself there last fall and had not yet come out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1856

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. See April 26, 1856 (“ Monroe’s larch will [shed pollen], apparently, by day after to-morrow.”); April 27, 1856 (" I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow.”); April 29, 1855 ( A few of the cones within reach on F. Monroe’s larches shed pollen; say, then, yesterday. The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small. “);April 29, 1856 ("Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday.”)

You expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges.  See April 17, 1856 ("I make haste to take down my sail at the bridges, but at the stone arches forgot my umbrella, which was un avoidably crushed in part. ")

A marsh hawk . . . looking for frogs . See April 8, 1856  ("marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out.”); April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last.”);  April 19, 1858 ("He skims along exactly over the edge of the water, on the meadowy side, not more than three or four feet from the ground and winding with the shore, looking for frogs, for in such a tortuous line do the frogs sit.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. See February 15, 1857 (“Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass. . .”); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); November 6, 1851 ("I had on my  bad-weather clothes” at Quebec like Olaf Trygvesson, the Northman, when he went to Thing in England.")

I buy a male muskrat of Goodwin . . .The hind feet half webbed, and their sides and toes fringed thickly with stiff hair. See  April 7, 1856 ("We see Goodwin skinning the muskrats he killed this forenoon . . .Their hind legs are half-webbed, the fore legs not at all.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

It has rained two days and nights . . . the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms . . . characterize 'the season. See April 22, 1852 ("It still rains . . . This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday"); April 4, 1853 ("Rain, rain . . . A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof . . .We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm."); April 1, 1854 ("This rainy and truly April day  . . . April has begun like itself. It is warm and showery”);.April 1, 1855 ("The month comes in true to its reputation . . . a strong, steady, and rather warm rain. ");April 20, 1856 ("Rain, rain, rain, — a northeast storm. "); April 17, 1857 (" It rains about every other day now for a fortnight past.”);  April 20, 1858 ("Rain-storm begins, with hail.");April 22, 1859 ("This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind.");  April 26, 1859 ("This is the last of the rains (spring rains !) which invariably followed an east wind."); April 16, 1860 ("April rain, dripping and soaking into the earth and heard on the roof.)

April 22. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 22

Days-long rain-storms now

characterize the season –

this, the third storm day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Sailing with an 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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560422

* * * 

Tonight, April 22, we leave the dogs behind around 6 o'clock and climb straight up behind the house to the logging road that connects to the red trail over the ridge down the red trail towards the wetland turn right at the big tree and there is that pile of scat still there. 

She says she wishes she had something to take it home and I reach in my back pocket ( I'm wearing shorts) and serendipity have a blue latex glove and  a plastic bag from an old Subway sandwich. (She collects the scat I put it in the cargo pocket of my shorts and hand it to her when we got home a little before 9:30.)

We detour into the wetland she gets very excited there is lots of Sphagum moss and a pit of mud where some animal has been digging. 

I discover part of the shell and skeleton of a snapping turtle. 

Surprisingly we are able to walk on the tufts of grass and mossy fallen logs without getting wet although there is a great deal of water all around.

Discover part of 

the shell and skeleton of 

a snapping turtle.

zphx April 22, 2016

A Book of the Seasons: March 4.

March 4. 

We have this morning

the clear cold continent 

sky of January.

March 4, 1852

Now I take that walk

along the river highway

level wide and smooth.

March 4, 1852

And for the first time

I see the water looking

blue on the meadows.

March 4, 1854

A cold and strong wind

yet very warm in the sun

sheltered on these rocks.

March 4, 1855 

A cold and strong wind

yet very warm in the sun –

a fly on this rock.

March 4, 1855

The striped squirrel spring:

We listen for the bluebird

but we hear him not.

March 4, 1855

The distant cawing –

aboriginal nature

this voice of the crow.

March 4, 1859

A hen-hawk rises 

and sails over Holden Wood 

as in the summer.

March 4, 1860

March 4, 2018

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens.

 See March 30, 1852 (" From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker's Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was.") See also February 28, 1857 ("Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. ");. 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"); March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.").


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 March 22, 1854 ("See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat?"): March 22, 1855 (" I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago ");  March 22, 1856("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?"); March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] 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 5, 1859 (" I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet .")


A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. See March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. 

These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.").

 Aspen down a quarter of an inch out. 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.")

  February 18, 1855 ("I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes."); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds.");  March 1, 1855 ( "We go listening for bluebirds, but only hear crows and chickadees."); December 11, 1854 ("I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.”)

March 15. 1857 ("As usual at this date and earlier, there are a few square rods of green grass tufts at Brister’s springs, like a green fire under the pines and alders, and in one place an apparent growth of golden saxifrage"); March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even,. . .These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development.")
.
I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up. See  February 18, 1852 ("The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes.");  March 3, 1859 ("The mossy bank along the south side of Hosmer's second spring ditch is very interesting. There are many coarse, hair-like masses of that green and brown moss on its edge, hanging over the ditch, alternating with withered-looking cream-colored sphagnum tinged with rose-color, in protuberances, or mammae, a foot across on the perpendicular side of the ditch");  March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact.");  April 2, 1853 (" See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season."); April 2, 1856 (" There are beds of fresh green moss in the midst of the shallow water."):; April 18, 1856 ("That pretty, now brown-stemmed moss with green oval fruit");  April 25, 1857 ("The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.")

See February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); March 1, 1855 ("We go listening for bluebirds, but only hear crows and chickadees.”) March 2, 1855 (" I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of a bluebird from the old orchard across the river. “); March 11, 1855 ("A bluebird day before yesterday in Stow.”); March 12, 1855 ("Elbridge Hayden saw a bluebird yesterday."); March 19, 1855 ("And when I reach my landing I hear my first bluebird, somewhere about Cheney’s trees by the river. I hear him out of the blue deeps, but do not yet see his blue body. He comes with a warble.”)

 March 10, 1855 ("Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off.”) Also note to May 21, 1857 (“I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. ”)

February 18, 1857 (“I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it”); March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”); April 2, 1856 ("I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves.”);  May 4, 1859 ("I draw near to the land; I begin to lie down and stretch myself on it. After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land.”); May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.”)

See  March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter, Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird");. March 8, 1857 ("Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season"); March 15, 1856 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind"); March 15, 1860 ("A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

 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 6, 1853 ("Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room. In about four days the aspens began to show their red anthers and feathery scales, being an inch in length and still extending.")  

It snowed geometry – I go to see the tracks of animals.

December 14

It began to snow again last evening, but soon ceased, and now it has turned out a fine winter morning, with half an inch of snow on the ground, the air full of mist, through which the smokes rise up perfectly straight; and the mist is frozen in minute leafets on the fences and trees and the needles of the pines, silvering them. 

I notice this morning successive banks of frost on the windows, marked by their irregular waving edges, like the successive five, ten, and fifteen fathom lines which mark the depth of the shores on charts.

P. M. — To Pink Azalea Woods. 

The warm sun has quite melted the thin snow on the south sides of the hills, but I go to see the tracks of animals that have been out on the north sides. 

First, getting over the wall under the walnut trees on the south brow of the hill, I see the broad tracks of squirrels, probably red, where they have ascended and descended the trees, and the empty shells of walnuts which they have gnawed left on the snow.

The snow is so very shallow that the impression of their toes is the more distinctly seen. It imparts life to the landscape to see merely the squirrels’ track in the snow at the base of the walnut tree. You almost realize a squirrel at every tree. 

The attractions of nature are thus condensed or multiplied. You see not merely bare trees and ground which you might suspect that a squirrel had left, but you have this unquestionable and significant evidence that a squirrel has been there since the snow fell, -- as conclusive as if you had seen him. 

A little further I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem. He flitted from pine to pine before me. Frequently, when I pause to listen, I hear this sound in the orchards or streets. This was in one of these dense groves of young pitch pines. 

Suddenly I heard the screwing mew and then the whir of a partridge on or beneath an old decaying apple tree which the pines had surrounded. There were several such, and another partridge burst away from one. They shoot off swift and steady, showing their dark-edged tails, almost like a cannon-ball. I saw one’s track under an apple tree and where it had pecked a frozen-thawed apple. 

Then I came upon a fox-track made last night, leading toward a farmhouse, — Wheeler’s, where there are many hens, — running over the side of the hill parallel with Wheeler’s new wall. He was dainty in the choice of his ground, for I observed that for a mile he had adhered to a narrow cow-path, in which the snow lay level, for smoothness. Sometimes he had cantered, and struck the snow with his foot between his tracks. Little does the farmer think of the danger which threatens his hens. 

In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow, which, snuffed, reminds me of garrets full of herbs. 

Now I hear, half a mile off, the hollow sound of woodchopping, the work of short winter days begun, which is gradually laying bare and impoverishing our landscape. In two or three thicker woods which I have visited this season, I was driven away by this ominous sound. 

Further over toward the river, I see the tracks of a deer mouse on a rock, which suddenly come to an end where apparently it had ascended a small pine by a twig which hung over it. Sometimes the mark of its tail was very distinct. 

Afterwards I saw in the pasture westward where many had run about in the night. In one place many had crossed the cow-path in which I was walking, in one trail, or the same one had come and gone many times. 

In the large hollows where rocks have been blasted, and on the sides of the river, I see irregular spaces of dark ice bare of snow, which was frozen after the snow ceased to fall. But this ice is rotten and mixed with snow. 

I am surprised to see the river frozen over for the most part with this thin and rotten snow ice, and the drooping or bent alders are already frozen into this slush, giving to the stream a very wintry aspect. 

I see some squirrel-tracks about a hole in a stump.

At the azalea meadow or swamp, the red tops of the osiers, which are very dense and of a uniform height, are quite attractive, in the absence of color at this season. Any brighter and warmer color catches our eye at this season. 

I see an elm there whose bark is worn quite smooth and white and bare of lichens, showing exactly the height at which the ice stood last winter. 

Looking more closely at the light snow there near the swamp, I found that it was sprinkled all over (as with pellets of cotton) with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry. 

December 14, 2021

How snug and warm a hemlock looks in the winter! There is a tendency in the limbs to arrange themselves ray-wise about a point one third from the base to the  top. What singular regularity in the outline of a tree! 

Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell. 

Also I saw this afternoon the track of one sparrow, probably a tree sparrow, which had run among the weeds in the road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1855

Looking more closely at the light snow... I found that it was sprinkled all over ... with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . . I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm."); See also January 14, 1853 (" Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals. . . about a tenth of an inch in diameter, perfect little wheels with six spokes without a tire, or rather with six perfect little leaflets, fern-like, with a distinct straight and slender midrib, raying from the centre. On each side of each midrib there is a transparent thin blade with a crenate edge.")  January 12, 1860 ("When I look closely it seems to be chiefly composed of crystals in which the six rays or leafets are more or less perfect, . . . and, going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over its surface, — little mirror-like facets, which on examination I find to be one of those star wheels (more or less entire) from an eighth to a third of an inch in diameter, which has fallen in the proper position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun, “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified. 

A downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem. See February 2, 1854 (“I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking . . .They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps.”) See also December 10, 1854 ("Hear the small woodpecker’s whistle; not much else"); December 14, 1851 ("I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Downy Woodpecker

Then I came upon a fox-track made last night. See  December 8, 1854 ("Go over the fields on the crust to Walden, over side of Bear Garden. Already foxes have left their tracks. How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting!"); December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice."); January 21, 1857 ("It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years."); and note to December 13, 1859 (“I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

I see the tracks of a deer mouse on a rock, which suddenly come to an end where apparently it had ascended a small pine by a twig. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow. See August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.”); October 23, 1852 ("The pennyroyal stands brown and sere, though fragrant still, on the shelves of the Cliff.”); December 7, 1856 (“That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. As I sit under Lee's Cliff, where the snow is melted, amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene.”); December 8, 1850  (”The pennyroyal there also retains its fragrance under the ice and snow.) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell. See December 8, 1855 ("Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); December 22, 1852 ("The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.");  December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals . . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

Looking closely at 

star-shaped cottony flakes – it

snowed geometry.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  It snowed geometry. 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551214

A cold drizzling May storm.

May 8

5 A. M. —To Gilead. (Began to leaf yesterday.) 

Still finger-cold. Think I saw bank swallows. (Not at all certain.) 

At noon begins a cold, drizzling rain, which continues at intervals through the next day. A cold May storm, wind easterly. 

Grackle here still. Cultivated cherry opened flower yesterday. 

The rock maples (such sized as we generally have) come on faster and show more now than the red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1855


At the view after sunset the sound (apparently) of a robin clucking, then a red breasted grosbeak bursts into song, at length. The hermit thrush nasal note to the right. Sound of peepers down in the wetland drifts up. A robin for certain. Loud tree frog. (hyla something* Jane says, not rana sylvaticus - that is the tiny wood frog.) Barred owl noises. A quick gobble i suppose of a turkey. The serviceberry in the clearing is in bloom. Down via the middle pond. Just before home another owl closer.

The sound of peepers

drifting up from the wetland,

then a loud tree frog.

May 8, 2015

* Gray Treefrog   (Hyla versicolor)

 

A gray lichen-like pattern on their skin with a light patch under the eyes, and no dorsolateral ridges (no folds of skin on either side of its back), The Gray Treefrog has larger adhesive toe pads than the Spring Peeper and is an excellent climber. Gray Treefrogs have a loud short trill and often call from the trees where they feed. They generally call on warm, humid nights from April through July