Mouse-ear in blossom.

April 22.

Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. Observed the crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. 

The wind last Wednesday, April 16th, blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill. 

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself. It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I feel, that I obey.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1851

Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week. See April 6, 1858 ("No mouse-ear there yet"); April 11, 1858 ("Mouse-ear, not yet. "); April 15, 1853 ("Mouse-ear"); April 15, 1860 ("Mouse-ear"); April 29, 1854 ("The mouse-ear is now fairly in blossom in many places. It never looks so pretty as now in an April rain, covered with pearly drops."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and the saxifrage. See April 13, 1854 ("One or two crowfoots Lee's Cliff, fully out, surprise me like a flame bursting from the russet ground. The saxifrage is pretty common, ahead of the crowfoot now, and its peduncles have shot up."); April 23, 1854 ("Crowfoot is not yet abundant, though it was earlier than saxifrage, which has now gone ahead "); April 30, 1855 ("Crowfoot and saxifrage are now in prime at Lee’s; they yellow and whiten the ground.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

Mouse-ear in blossom

the crowfoot in abundance

and the saxifrage.

A time to see the character of the tree.

December 17

December 17, 2017

A piercing cold afternoon, wading in the snow.

R. Rice was going to Sudbury to put his bees into the cellar for fear they would freeze. He had a small hive; not enough to keep each other warm.

The pitch pine woods on the right of the Corner road.

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches, their low branches rising at a small angle and meeting each other.

A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a sombre twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade.

The winter morning is the time to see the woods and shrubs in their perfection, wearing their snowy and frosty dress. Even he who visits them half an hour after sunrise will have lost some of their most delicate and fleeting beauties. The trees wear their snowy burden but coarsely after midday, and it no longer expresses the character of the tree.

I observed that early in the morning every pine-needle was covered with a frosty sheath, but soon after sunrise it was all gone.

You walk in the pitch pine wood as under a penthouse. The stems and branches of the trees look black by contrast. You wander zigzag through the aisles of the wood, where stillness and twilight reign.

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last.

I do not know but a pine wood is as substantial and as memorable a fact as a friend. I am more sure to come away from it cheered, than from those who come nearest to being my friends.

It is unfortunate for the chopper and the walker when the cold wind comes from the same side with the sun, for then he cannot find a warm recess in which to sit.

It is pleasant to walk now through open and stately white pine woods. Their plumes do not hold so much snow commonly, unless where their limbs rest or are weighed down on to a neighboring tree.

It is cold but still in their midst, where the snow is untracked by man, and ever and anon you see the snow-dust, shone on by the sun, falling from their tops and, as it strikes the lower limbs, producing innumerable new showers. For, as after a rain there is a second rain in the woods, so after a light snow there is a second snow in the woods, when the wind rises.

The branches of the white pine are more horizontal than those of the pitch, and the white streaks of snow on them look accordingly.

I perceive that the young black oaks and the red oaks, too, methinks, still keep their leaves as well as the white.

This piercing wind is so nearly from the west this afternoon that, to stand at once in a sheltered and a sunny place, you must seek the south-southeast side of the woods.

What slight but important distinctions between one creature and another! What little, but essential, advantages one enjoys over another! I noticed this afternoon a squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends, but many creatures strive in vain to get at him.

The lower branches of the hemlock point down, and even trail on the ground, the whole tree making a perfect canopy.

When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder.

One of the best men I know often offends me by uttering made words — the very best words, of course, or dinner speeches, most smooth and gracious and fluent repartees, a sort of talking to Buncombe, a dash of polite conversation, a graceful bending, as if I were Master Slingsby of promising parts, from the University. O would you but be simple and downright! Would you but cease your palaver! It is the misfortune of being a gentleman and famous. The conversation of gentlemen after dinner! One of the best of men and wisest, to whom this diabolical formality will adhere. Repeating himself, shampooing himself! Passing the time of day, as if he were just introduced! No words are so tedious. Never a natural or simple word or yawn. It produces an appearance of phlegm and stupidity in me the auditor. I am suddenly the closest and most phlegmatic of mortals, and the conversation comes to naught. Such speeches as an ex-Member of Congress might make to an ex-Member of Parliament.

To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not  intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what purpose will you explain?

My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that company, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1851

A squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends. See December 17, 1855 ("A remarkably fine, springlike morning . . . Methinks every squirrel will be out now. "); December 17, 1859 ("I see many tracks of squirrels . . . I see no nests in the trees, but numerous holes through the snow into the earth, whence they have emerged . . . they will dig down through the snow and come right upon a pine cone or a hickory-nut or an acorn, which you and I cannot do")

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches. See  January 30, 1841("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple."); January 31, 1852 ("The value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snow so finely. . . .It makes the most cheerful winter scenery beheld from the window, you know so well the nature of the coverts and the sombre light it makes"); January 19, 1855 ("The snow lay in great continuous masses  . . . On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts.. . . Under one pitch pine, which shut down to the ground on every side, you could not see the sky at all, but sat in a gloomy light as in a tent"); February 16, 1860 ("Snow, lodging on trees, — leaf, bough, and trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry, the side of a high pine wood, well grayed with the snow that has lodged on it, and the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams' heads! The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow..") See also December 19, 1851 (" Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it?")

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last. See July 7, 1851 ("The writer expressing his thought must be . . .well poised upon the facts, the experience, that secures his whole attention! All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that. . . . I express adequately only the thought which I love to express."); August 19, 1851 ("How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought. . . Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); November 12, 1851 ("Write often, write upon a thousand themes . . .");  February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts"); February 10, 1852 ("Write while the heat is in you.")

After a light snow 

a second snow in the woods

when the wind rises.

Ever and anon 

 snow-dust, shone on by the sun, 

falling from pine tops 

A Book of the seasons: December 15 (weeds, winter eve, life)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

December 15.

December 15, 2018

My love is invulnerable. 

Meet me on that ground

and you will find me strong.

December 15, 1841

The bare landscape looks

as if covered with snow on

these bright moonlit nights.

December 15, 1853

A few clean dry weeds

seen against smooth reflecting

water between ice.

December 15, 1854

The low grass and weeds

bent down with crystalline drops

now ready to freeze.

December 15, 1855

The now dark green pines.

The oak leaves and withered weeds

bleached above the snow.

The hushed stillness of

the wood at sundown, aye

all the winter day.

Smooth serenity

and reflections of the pond,

alone free from ice.

Hooting of the owl

with the distant whistle of

a locomotive.

The last strokes of the

woodchopper who presently

bends his steps homeward.

Gilded bar of cloud

conducting my thoughts into

the eternal west.

The horizon glow,

and the hasty walk homeward.

Long winter evening.

December 15, 1856

And the trees have all

come down to the bank to see

the river go by.

December 15, 1841

December 15, 2023

A mild summer sun shines, over forest and lake. December 15, 1841

In the woods there is an inexpressible happiness. December 15, 1841.

The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by. December 15, 1841

The water which so calmly reflects the fleeting clouds and the primeval trees I have never seen before. December 15, 1841

This old, familiar river is renewed each instant; only the channel is the same. December 15, 1841

This morning it has begun to snow apparently in earnest. December 15, 1855

The air is quite thick and the view confined. December 15, 1855

The first kind of snow-storm, or that of yesterday, which ceased in the night after some three inches had fallen, was that kind that makes handsome drifts behind the walls. December 15, 1859

There are no drifts equal to these behind loosely built stone walls, the wind passing between the stones. December 15, 1859

Slight as this snow was, these drifts now extend back four or five feet and as high as the wall, on the north side of the Corner Bridge road. December 15, 1859

It is quite still, yet some flakes come down from one side and some from another, crossing each other like woof and warp apparently, as they are falling in different eddies and currents of air. December 15, 1855

In the midst of it, I hear and see a few little chickadees prying about the twigs of the locusts in the graveyard. December 15, 1855

They have come into town with the snow. December 15, 1855

They now and then break forth into a short sweet strain, and then seem suddenly to check them selves, as if they had done it before they thought. December 15, 1855

The snow turns to rain, and this afternoon I walk in it down the railroad and through the woods. December 15, 1855

The boys have skated a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet. December 15, 1855

I see on the ice, half a dozen rods from shore, a small brown striped grub, and again a black one five eighths of an inch long. The last has apparently melted quite a cavity in the ice. How came they there? December 15, 1854

How interesting a few clean, dry weeds on the shore a dozen rods off, seen distinctly against the smooth, reflecting water between ice! December 15, 1854

The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. December 15, 1855

I seem to see somewhat more of my own kith and kin in the lichens on the rocks than in any books. December 15, 1841

A steady but gentle, warm rain. December 15, 1855

It still blows hard at 2 p. m., but it is not cold. December 15, 1856

8 p.m.. . .The high northwest wind of this morning, with what of cold we have, has made some of those peculiar rake-toothed icicles on the dead twigs, etc., about the edge of the pond at the east end. December 15, 1856

To produce this phenomenon is required only open water, a high wind, and sufficiently cold weather to freeze the spray. December 15, 1856

I still recall to mind that characteristic winter eve of December 9th; the cold, dry, and wholesome diet my mind and senses necessarily fed on, —

• oak leaves, bleached and withered weeds that rose above the snow,
• the now dark green of the pines, and
• perchance the faint metallic chip of a single tree sparrow;
• the hushed stillness of the wood at sundown, aye, all the winter day;
• the short boreal twilight;
• the smooth serenity and the reflections of the pond, still alone free from ice;
• the melodious hooting of the owl, heard at the same time with
• the yet more distant whistle of a locomotive,. . .
• the last strokes of the woodchopper,who presently bends his steps homeward;
• the gilded bar of cloud across the apparent outlet of the pond,
• conducting my thoughts into the eternal west;
• the deepening horizon glow; and
• the hasty walk homeward to enjoy the long winter evening.

December 15, 1856

December 15, 2023

The hooting of the owl! That is a sound which my red predecessors heard here more than a thousand years ago. December 15, 1856

It rings far and wide, occupying the spaces rightfully, — grand, primeval, aboriginal sound. December 15, 1856

Saw a small flock of geese go over. December 15, 1852

Looking from my window these bright moonlight nights, the ground being still bare, the whole landscape — fields, road, and roof — has a wintry aspect, as if covered with snow. It is the frost. December 15, 1853

It does seem as if mine were a peculiarly wild nature, which so yearns toward all wildness. December 15, 1841

One's life, the enterprise he is here upon, should certainly be a grand fact to consider . . . A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one. December 15, 1852

My love is invulnerable. December 15, 1841

December 15, 2019

*****

December 15, 2023

Li Po (There is bright moonlight so that it seems like frost on the ground")
Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”)
Walden ("Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.")

December 15, 2023

April 29, 1852 (“The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.”)
August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, ")
August 30, 1856 (“Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy”)
September 8, 1858 ("It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else.”)
October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”)
November 12, 1853 ("The meadows . . . look as if covered with frost in the moonlight.")
November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight.")
November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of.”)
November 18, 1851(".Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo.. . . It is a sound admirably suited to the swamp and to the twilight woods, suggesting a vast undeveloped nature . . . I rejoice that there are owls. They represent the stark, twilight, unsatisfied thoughts I have. . . This sound faintly suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live.") 

November 28, 1853 ("Boys skating in Cambridgeport, — the first ice to bear.")
December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day.”)
December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.")
December 6, 1855 ("10 P. M. — Hear geese going over.”)
December 9, 1856 ("I hear only the strokes of a lingering woodchopper at a distance, and the melodious hooting of an owl, which is as common and marked a sound as the axe or the locomotive whistle."

)December 9, 1856 ("The sun is near setting, away beyond Fair Haven. A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape. Indeed, the winter day in the woods or fields has commonly the stillness of twilight. The pond is perfectly smooth and full of light. . . .Such is a winter eve")
December 10, 1856 ("the apparently full moon has fairly commenced her reign, and I go home by her light.")
December 10, 1856 ("The nights are light on account of the snow, and, there being a moon, there is no distinct interval between the day and night.")
December 11, 1854 (“The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely.”)
December 12, 1851 ("I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days.")
December 13, 1858 ("And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads")
December 13, 1855 ("The countless flakes, seen against the dark evergreens like a web that is woven in the air, impart a cheerful and busy aspect to nature.")
.December 14, 1851 ("The chickadees remind me of Hudson's Bay for some reason. I look on them as natives of a more northern latitude")
December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.")
December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . .That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side, . . . A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused.”)
December 14, 1854 ("Your eye slides first over a plane surface of smooth ice of one color to a water surface of silvery smoothness, like a gem set in ice, and reflecting the weeds and trees and houses and clouds with singular beauty. The reflections are particularly simple and distinct.")
December 14, 1859 ("This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north")
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.")

December 16, 1852 ("Observe the reflection of the snow on Pine Hill from Walden")
December 16, 1855 ("Steady, gentle, warm rain all the forenoon, and mist and mizzling in the afternoon,")
December 16, 1855 ("As we go over the bridge, admire the reflection of the trees and houses from the smooth open water over the channel, where the ice has been dissolved by the rain.")
December 19, 1854 (" Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before.")
December 20, 1854 ( P. M. — Skate to Fair Haven.”)
December 20, 1854 ("If there is a grub out, you are sure to detect it on the snow or ice.")

December 20, 1856 ("Rain more or less all day.")
December 20, 1855 ("A few chickadees busily inspecting the buds at the willow-row ivy tree, for insects, with a short, clear chink from time to time, as if to warn me of their neighborhood")
December 22, 1855 ("Warm rain and frost coming out and muddy walking.")
December 23, 1851 ("Gradually the sun sinks, the air grows more dusky, and I perceive that if it were not for the light reflected from the snow it would be quite dark. The woodchopper has started for home.")
December 28 1852 ("Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe,")
December 28, 1858 ("I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. ")

December 29, 1841 ("One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.")

Hearing the whistle

of the locomotive takes

me out of body.

I see clearly what

at other times I only

dimly remember.

The earth's extent

the freedom of all nature

and the sky's depth.

December 31, 1853

January 11, 1852 ("Let me not live as if time was short")

December 15, 2014

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

December 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt15dec

Elms bare.

 

October 6 and October 7. 

October 7, 2013

Windy. Elms bare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6 & 7, 1853

See October 7, 1852 ("In the village, the warm brownish-yellow elms") See also  September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon. No such gust since spring."); September 29,1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen");  October 1, 1858 ("The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. "); October 10, 1853 ("Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.”); October 12, 1852 (" The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”); October 13, 1858 ("The elms are at least half bare."); October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”)

I love to hear the wind howl.

April 13.  

April 13, 2012

Tuesday.  A driving snow - storm in the night and still raging; five or six inches deep on a level at 7 A.  M. 

All birds are turned into snowbirds.  

Trees and houses have put on the aspect of winter.  

The traveller’s carriage wheels, the farmer’s wagon, are converted into white disks of snow through which the spokes hardly appear.  

But it is good now to stay in the house and read and write.  We do not now go wandering all abroad and dissipated, but the imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick as not in pleasant weather.  My life is enriched.  

I love to hear the wind howl. 

I have a fancy for sitting with my book or paper in some mean and apparently unfavorable place, in the kitchen, for instance, where the work is going on, rather a little cold than comfortable.  My thoughts are of more worth in such places than they would be in a well furnished and warmed studio.  

Windsor, according to Gilpin, is contracted from wind-shore, the Saxons not sounding the sh.  

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul, carols.  The jingle of the song sparrow, simple and sweet as it is, is not of sufficient volume nor sufficiently continuous to command and hold attention, and the bluebird’s is but a transient warble, from a throat overflowing with azure and serene hopes; but the song of the robin on the elms or oaks, loud and clear and heard afar through the streets of a village, makes a fit conclusion to a spring day.  The larks are not yet in sufficient numbers or sufficiently musical.  The robin is the prime singer as yet. 

The blackbird’s conqueree, when first heard in the spring, is pleasant from the associations it awakens, and is best heard by one boating on the river.  It belongs to the stream.  

The robin is the only bird with whose song the groves can be said to be now vocal morning and evening, for, though many other notes are heard, none fill the air like this bird.  As yet no other thrushes.  

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  

Heard the robin singing as usual last night, though it was raining.  

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms.  

As I came home through the streets at 11 o’clock last night through the snow, it cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows.  I mean the catkins of the earliest willow.  

To think of those little sunny spots in nature, so incredibly contrasting with all this white and cold.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1852

The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick. See  December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources.”)

I love to hear the wind howl. See October 5, 1853 ("The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds like a loon on the pond. ”)

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  See April 6, 1852 ("Last night a snow-storm, and this morning we find the ground covered again six or eight inches deep") See also note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms. See April 13, 1859 ("The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. I hear a purple finch on one"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul. See  April 8, 1855 ("The robins now sing in full blast "); April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

It cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows. See  April 12, 1852 (" See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun")

The duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season.

March 24. 

Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow. 

March 24, 2020

The boatman, when the chain of his boat has been broken with a stone by some scamp, and he cannot easily transport his boat to the blacksmith's to have it mended, gets the latter to bend him a very stout iron wire in the form of an S, then, hooking this to the two broken ends and setting it upright on a rock, he hammers it down till it rests on itself in the form of an 8, which is very difficult to pry open. 

2 P. M. — About 39. To Copan. 

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile, quite below the level of the wall within it. How unlike the hen-hawk in this! 

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences. 

I find on Indian ground, as to-day on the Great Fields, very regular oval stones like large pebbles, sometimes five or six inches long, water-worn, of course, and brought hither by the Indians. They commonly show marks of having been used as hammers. Often in fields where there is not a stone of that kind in place for a mile or more. 

From Holbrook's clearing I see five large dark-colored ducks, probably black ducks, far away on the meadow, with heads erect, necks stretched, on the alert, only one in water. Indeed, there is very little water on the meadows. For length of neck those most wary look much like geese. They appear quite large and heavy. They probably find some sweet grass, etc., where the water has just receded. 

There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow, but I do not detect the sheldrakes around them till I use my glass, for the latter are not only less conspicuously white, but, as they are fishing, sink very low in the water. Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions. 

The sheldrakes appear to be the most native to the river, briskly moving along up and down the side of the stream or the meadow, three-fourths immersed and with heads under water, like cutters collecting the revenue of the river bays, or like pirate crafts peculiar the stream. They come the earliest and seem to be most at home. The water is so low that all these birds are collected near the Holt. 

The inhabitants of the village, poultry fanciers, perchance, though they be, [know not] these active and vigorous wild fowl (the sheldrakes) pursuing their finny prey ceaselessly within a mile of them, in March and April. Probably from the hen-yard fence with a good glass you can see them at it. 

They are as much at home on the water as the pickerel is within it. Their serrated bill reminds me of a pickerel's snout. You see a long row of these schooners, black above with a white stripe beneath, rapidly gliding along, and occasionally one rises erect on the surface and flaps its wings, showing its white lower parts  They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. They appear to get their food wholly within the water. Less like our domestic ducks. 

I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! 

Fox-colored sparrows go flitting past with a faint, sharp chip, amid some oaks. 

According to a table in the "American Almanac" for ’49, page 84, made at Cambridge, from May, '47, to May, '48, the monthly mean force of the wind . . . March, April, and May were equal, and were inferior to July and June; for quantity of clouds March and May were equal, and were preceded by December, November, September, January, June, and August. 

For depth of rain, September stood first, and March ninth, succeeded only by May, October, and April. 

The wind's force was observed at sunrise, 9 A. M., 3 P. M., and 9 P. M., and in March the greatest force was at 3 P. M., the least at 9 P. M. So, for the whole year the greatest force was at 3 P. M., but the least at sunrise and 9 P. M. both alike. 

The clouds were observed at the same time, and in March there was the greatest quantity at 9 P. M. and the least at sunrise, but for the year the greatest quantity at 3 P. M. and the least at sunrise and 9 A. M. alike. 

At Mendon, Mass., for the whole year 1847 alone (i. e. a different January, February, March, and April from the last) it stood, for force of wind,. . . March , July , September , November , and December were equal, and were inferior to April , June , August , and October; and for clouds March was sixth . 

The wind's force for March was greatest at 9 A. M. and 3 P. M., which were equal; but for the year greatest at 9 A. M. and least at sunrise. 

For March there was the greatest quantity of clouds at 9 A. M., but for the year at both sunrise and 9 A. M. 

In the last table eight points of the wind were noticed viz. northwest, north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west. During the year the wind was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.

In March it was northwest 9 days, southwest 8, northeast 5, south 4, west 3, north 2.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1860

They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them. See March 4, 1860 ("Very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds");   March 22, 1858 ("I see those peculiar spring clouds, scattered cumuli with dark level bases. No doubt the season is to be detected by the aspect of the clouds no less than by that of the earth."); March 23, 1860 ("Small dark-based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon.").

I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile. See March 27, 1855 ("See my frog hawk. (C. saw it about a week ago.) It is the hen-harrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump") See Also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. See  February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of."); and note to March 16, 1860  ("Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing. ") See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

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

Cold and blustering

again with flurries of snow--

cold dark slate wind-clouds.

March 24, 1860

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cold and rather blustering again

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

It is the wind of March that makes it seem much colder than it is.

March 12. 

Sleet, turning soon to considerable rain, - a rainy day. 

Thermometer about 40, yet it seems a warm rain to walk in, it being still, while yesterday, of the same temperature, with that raw northwest wind, was cold and blustering. 

It is the wind of March that makes it unpleasant often, and to seem much colder than it is. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1860

Sleet, turning soon to considerable rain. See December 14, 1859 ( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain."); January 27, 1855 ("Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold"); February 27, 1857 (" Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified

The wind of March makes it seems colder than it is. See March 11, 1860 ("It is cold and blustering walking in the wind, though the thermometer is at 40; i. e., though the temperature is thus high, the strong and blustering northwest winds of March make this notorious March weather, which is worse to bear than severe cold without wind."). See also March 4, 1860 ("The last three have been true March days for wind."); March 6, 1855 ("Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This the third day of wind."): March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere."); March 9, 1860 ("You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds."); March 10, 1856 ("A biting northwest wind compels to cover the ears. It is one of the hardest days of the year to bear. Truly a memorable 10th of March. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, March is famous for its winds

That raw northwest wind —

the wind of March makes it seem  

colder than it is.  

To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet.

December 31. 

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water below my boat's place than on the 29th, when it was -15°. 

The wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. This shows that fog over the water is a phenomenon of the morning chiefly, as well in winter as in summer. You will see a fog over the water in a winter morning, though the temperature may be considerably higher than at midday when no fog is seen. 

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. I think that these crystals are particularly large and numerous, and the trees (willows) particularly white, next to the open water spaces, where the vapor even now is abundantly rising. 

Is this fog in the night occasioned by the cold earth condensing the moisture which a warmer wind has brought to us?

At 10 a. m., thermometer 18°.

December 30, 2018

I see no vapor from the water. 

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen, as if men, being further within, were just as far off as usual. This is a phenomenon of both cold weather and snowy. You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn. 

Just saw moved a white oak, Leighton's, some five inches in diameter, with a frozen mass of earth some five or five and a half feet in diameter and two plus thick. It was dug round before the frost, — a trench about a foot wide and filled with stalks, etc., — and now pried up with levers till on a level with the ground, then dragged off. It would not have cost half so much if a sloping path had been dug to it on one side so that the drag could have been placed under it in the hole and another dug at the hole it was removed to, — unless the last were planked over and it was dragged on to it. 

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. Cold work, you would say. Yet some say it is colder in thawing weather, if you have to touch the ice. 

P. M. — To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet. 

I notice that one or more of the terminal leafets remain on the branches of the flowering fern commonly. 

See where probably a shrike (do I ever see a small hawk in winter ?) has torn a small bird in pieces and its slate-colored down and its feathers have been blown far and wide over the snow. 

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees, and the wind has blown them south east, — scales, seeds, and cones, — and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. It may have been done by gold finches. I see a tree sparrow hopping close by, and perhaps they eat them on the snow. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter. 

All the sound witch-hazel nuts that I examine are empty. 

How vain to try to teach youth, or anybody, truths ! They can only learn them after their own fashion, and when they get ready. I do not mean by this to condemn our system of education, but to show what it amounts to. A hundred boys at college are drilled in physics and metaphysics, languages, etc. There may be one or two in each hundred, prematurely old perchance, who approaches the subject from a similar point of view to his teachers, but as for the rest, and the most promising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many Indians. They get a valuable drilling, it may be, but they do not learn what you profess to teach. They at most only learn where the arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use any of its weapons. The young men, being young, necessarily listen to the lec turer in history, just as they do to the singing of a bird.

They expect to be affected by something he may say. It is a kind of poetic pabulum and imagery that they get. Nothing comes quite amiss to their mill. 

I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations. 

The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter. The leaf-buds are comparatively minute. The white edges of their scales and their regular red and black colors make the imbrication of the bud very distinct. The sterile and fertile flowers are not only on distinct plants, but they commonly grow in distinct patches. Sometimes I detect the one only for a quarter of a mile, and then the other begins to prevail, or both may be found together. It grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. 

The mulleins are full of minute brown seeds, which a jar sprinkles over the snow, and [they] look black there; also the primrose, of larger brown seeds, which rattle out in the same manner. 

One of the two large docks, perhaps obtusifolius, commonly holds its seeds now, but they are very ready to fall. (Mainly one-seeded; vide three-ribbed goldenrod meadow.) 

There appears to be not much (compared with the fall) seed left on the common or gray goldenrod, its down being mostly gone, and the seed is attached to that.

Potentilla Norvegica appears to have some sound seed in its closed heads. 

The very gray flattish heads of the calamint are quite full of minute dark-brown seed. 

The conical heads of the cone-flower also are full of long blackish seeds. Both the last drop their seeds on being inverted and shaken. 

I see also the yellow lily (L. Canadense) pods with its three now gray divisions spreading open like the petals of a flower, and more than half the great red flattish triangularish or semicircularish seeds gone. The pod boys throw with a humming sound. 

Even the sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds. 

I see one or more sedges with seeds yet, one apparently the Carex debilis, if it is not flava? 

A man may be old and infirm. What, then, are the thoughts he thinks? what the life he lives? They and it are, like himself, infirm. But a man may be young, athletic, active, beautiful. Then, too, his thoughts will be like his person. They will wander in a living and beautiful world. If you are well, then how brave you are! How you hope! You are conversant with joy! A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. We exaggerate the importance and exclusiveness of the headquarters. Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who in vented Grecian mythology and poetry? The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. I trust we have a good body then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1859

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water . . . wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night . . . This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side.")

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street. See December 15, 1855 ("How like a bird of ill omen the crow behaves!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. See  January 10, 1859 ("At Sam Barrett’s Pond, where Joe Brown is now get ting his ice, I think I see about ten different freezings in ice some fifteen or more inches thick. Perhaps the successive cold nights might be discovered recorded in each cake of ice."); January 30, 1854 (Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers)

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them!") See also November 1. 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.") and note to October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

Sweet-gale grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. See November 29, 1857 (" Going through a partly frozen meadow . . .i, scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit."); December 19, 1850 ("I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also."); December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island."); January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale.");  February 9, 1854 ("I have brought home some alder and sweet-gale and put them in water.") See also April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”) and note to April 30, 1852 ("The sweet gale is in blossom.")

The sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow. Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. See November 9, 1851 ("Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); See also September 2, 1851 ("Expression is the act of the whole man.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

Elegy on Mistress Elizabeth Drury

By John Donne (1572–1631)

SHE, of whose soul, if we may say, ’twas gold, Her body was the Electrum, and did hold Many degrees of that; we understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,         5 That one might almost say, her body thought.