A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: The Woodchuck Ventures Out

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

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

to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, 

or the striped squirrel’s chirp . . .

or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.

  Walden

Man comes out of his

winter quarters this month as

lean as a woodchuck.

March 30, 1855

February 12. In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. February 12, 1860

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

February 28. Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents' care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and round, big enough, you would say, for the boy's father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. As if he put his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear. February 28, 1860

March 5. See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry. March 5, 1857

March 11. See and talk with Rice . . . He combines several qualities and talents rarely combined. Though he owns houses in the city, whose repair he attends to, finds tenants for them, and collects the rent, he also has his Sudbury farm and bean-fiolds. Though he lived in a city, he would still be natural and related to primitive nature around him. Though he owned all Beacon Street, you might find that his mittens were made of the skin of a woodchuck that had ravaged his bean-field, which he had cured. I noticed a woodchuck’s skin tacked up to the inside of his shop. He said it had fatted on his beans, and William had killed and expected to get another to make a pair of mittens of, one not being quite large enough. It was excellent for mittens. You could hardly wear it out. March 11, 185

March 11. I see a woodchuck out on the calm side of Lee's Hill (Nawshawtuct). March 11, 1860

March 13.  I look into many woodchucks’ holes, but as yet they are choked with leaves and there is no sign of their having come abroad. March 13, 1855

March 14. Repairing my boat. High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter. Lowell Fay tells me that he overtook with a boat and killed last July a woodchuck which was crossing the river at Hollowell Place . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. March 14, 1853

March 15. I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand. March 15, 1860

March 16. Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon. P. M. — To Conantum End. At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn, I see several diverging and converging trails of undoubtedly a woodchuck, or several, which must have come out at least as early as the 13th. The track is about one and three quarters inches wide by two long, the five toes very distinct and much spread, and is somewhat hand-like. They had come out and run about directly from hole to hole, six in all, within a dozen rods or more. This appeared to have been all their travelling, as if they had run round a-visiting and waked each other up the first thing. None have travelled beyond these holes, except that one track leads into the swamp. But here are the tracks of foxes bound on longer journeys. March 16, 1855

March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . Skunks are active and frolic; woodchucks and ground squirrels come forth. March 22, 1860

March 25. To speak of the general phenomena of March: When March arrives, a tolerably calm, clear, sunny, spring like day, the snow is so far gone that . . . The boy's sled gets put away in the barn or shed or garret, and there lies dormant all summer, like a wood chuck in the winter. It goes into its burrow just before woodchucks come out, so that you may say a wood chuck never sees a sled, nor a sled a woodchuck, — unless it were a prematurely risen woodchuck or a belated and unseasonable sled . Before the woodchuck comes out the sled goes in . They dwell at the antipodes of each other. Before sleds rise woodchucks have set. The ground squirrel too shares the privileges and misfortunes of the woodchuck. The sun now passes from the constellation of the sled into that of the woodchuck. March 25, 1860

March 29. Looking at the mouth of a woodchuck-hole and at low places, as on the moss, in the meadows, [I see] that those places are sprinkled with little pellets or sometimes salt-shaped masses of frost some inches apart, apparently like snow. This is one kind of frost . . . Dugan tells me . . . he saw a woodchuck yesterday. March 29, 1853

March 30. A very warm and pleasant day (at 2 P.M., 63° and rising) . . . The inhabitants come forth from their burrows such an after-noon as this, as the woodchuck and ground squirrels have, as the toads do.  March 30, 1860

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last.
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring;

The Woodchuck Ventures Out

 

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

A farmer in his field.

September 23

P. M. — Round by Clematis Brook.

The forget-me-not still.

I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard's), more full and bright than any flower.

The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening.

The ash is just beginning to turn.

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day.

I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes.

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon than one would expect!

Some acorns and hickory nuts on the ground, but they have not begun to shell.

Is it the nut of the Carya amara, with raised seams, but not bitter, that I perceive?

I suppose that is the Carya tomentosa, or mockernut hickory, with large rounded nuts on Lee's land.

The bitternuts (?), rubbed together, smell like varnish.

The sarothra in bloom.

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream.

Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared.

September 23, 2018

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red.

The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink.

I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians.

Hamamelis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall.

A woodchuck out.

The waxwork not opened.

The "feathery tails" of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now.

Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes.

Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather-[beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.

In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch-berries.

The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1852

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. See note to September 25, 1852 ("The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.")

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. See September 23, 1860 ("I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark."); See also November 10, 1858 ("In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon. See March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction. . . ., and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses . . and to the mountains in the horizon."); October 20, 1852 ("This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon: they show you fair weather from the midst of foul."); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 ("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.")  

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red. See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red undersides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now."); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

Carya amara, bitternut -- Carya tomentosa, mockernut hickory,( North American hickories include:

·        Carya glabra – pignut hickory

·       Carya laciniosa - shagbark hickory

·     Carya ovata – shagbark hickory

·      Carya texana  black hickory

·      Carya tomentosa  – mockernut hickory

·      Carya cordiformis (amara)  – bitternut hickory)

 

 

All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them.

June 13

Sunday.

3 p. m. — To Conantum.

A warm day.

It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes.

Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom.

The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks.

The Viburnum nudum.

The oblong- leaved sundew, but not its flower.

Do the bulbous arethusas last long? 

What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint.

The Dracama borealis (Bigelow) (Clintonia borealis (Gray)) amid the Solomon's-seals in Hubbard's Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome liliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous.

But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name the flowers after their governors as New York. Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.

Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods.

No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth.

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall.

The woolly aphides on alders whiten one's clothes now.

What is that palmate(?)-leaved water-plant by the Corner causeway? 

The buck-bean grows in Conant's meadow.

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings – All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes.

Saw four cunning little woodchucks nibbling the short grass, about one third grown, that live under Conant's old house. Mistook one for a piece of rusty iron.

The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries.

The Smilax herbaeea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparently attracts flies (I find small gnats on it) like carrion. A very remarkable odor; a single minute flower in an umbel open will scent a whole room.

Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nostrils, etc., etc.

The compound-racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week.

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter.

The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets.

I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them.

Young robins peep.

I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dog wood and bunchberry: 

• one now in bloom, with rather small leaves with a smooth, silky feeling beneath, a greenish-gray spotted stem, in older stocks all gray (Cornus alternifolia? or sericea?); 

• the broad-leaved cornel in Laurel Glen, yet green in the bud (C. circinata?);

• the small-leaved cornel with a small cyme or corymb, as late to be [sic] as the last, in Potter's hedge and on high hills (C. paniculata);

• and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year.

Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights.

Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). C. found it June 12 at Clematis Brook.

Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant.

Captain Jonathan Carver commences his Travels with these words: 

"In June, 1766, I set out from Boston, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara, to Michillimackinac; a Fort situated between the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles. This being the uttermost of our factories towards the northwest, I considered it as the most convenient place from whence I could begin my intended progress, and enter at once into the Regions I designed to explore."

So he gives us no information respecting the intermediate country, nor much, I fear, about the country beyond.

Holbrook says the Emys picta is the first to be seen in the spring.

  

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

Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York . . . If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. See August 31, 1851 (" I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them . . . But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love ")

Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. See June 13, 1854 ("How beautiful the solid cylinders of the lamb-kill now just before sunset, — small ten-sided, rosy-crimson basins, about two inches above the recurved, drooping dry capsules of last year"); June 25, 1852 ("Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latifolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. See July 18, 1851 ("It is a test question affecting the youth of a person , — Have you knowledge of the morning? . . .  Are you abroad early , brushing the dews aside?"); March 17, 1852 ("There is a moment . . .before the exhalations of the day commence to rise, when we see things more truly than at any other time."); Walden (“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”); and note to March 17, 1857 (“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring”)

The Viburnum nudum. . . .The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. See June 10, 1854 ("The Viburnum lentago is just out of bloom now that the V. nudum is fairly begun.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)

Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. See August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields.")

The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. See The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854 ("The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves. May 13, 1854"); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

June 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 13

Sweetness fills the air

reminding me – years ago,

strawberrying times.

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

The simple peep peep of the peetweet.

May 8

A cloudy day. 

The small pewee, how long. 

The night-warbler's note. 

River four and seven eighths inches below summer level. 

Stone-heaps, how long? 

I see a woodchuck in the middle of the field at Assabet Bath. He is a  heavy fellow with a black tip to his tail, poking about almost on his belly, — where there is but little greenness yet, — with a great heavy head. He is very wary, every minute pausing and raising his head, and sometimes sitting erect and looking around. He is evidently nibbling some green thing, maybe clover. He runs at last, with an undulating motion, jerking his lumbering body along, and then stops when near a hole. But on the whole he runs and stops and looks round very much like a cat in the fields. 

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. 

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful, reminding me of the seashore and its wrecks, and when I smell the fresh odor of our marshes the resemblance is increased. 

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow, where, perhaps, it has seen a frog, screaming once or twice, and then alights on a fence-post! How it crosses the causeway between the willows, at a gap in them with which it is familiar, as a hen knows a hole in a fence! I lately saw one flying over the road near our house. 

I see a gray squirrel ascend the dead aspen at the rock, and enter a hole some eighteen feet up it. Just below this, a crack is stuffed with leaves which project. Probably it has a nest within and has filled up this crack. 

Now that the river is so low, the bared bank, often within the button-bushes, is seen to be covered with that fine, short, always green Eleocharis acicularis (?).

C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1860


The small pewee, how long. See May 7, 1852 (" The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the “Small Pewee"

The night-warbler's note. See May 8, 1852 ("The night-warbler while it is yet pretty light.");  May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”);  According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” Probably the flight song of the oven-bird. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird.

Stone-heaps, how long? See May 4, 1858 ("I asked [a fisherman] if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel.”) May 8, 1858 ("Mr. Wright . . ., an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that the stone-heaps are not made by them. "); May 12, 1858 ("George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco in Bartlett, near the White Mountains, like those in the Assabet, and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.”); July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River,")

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. See May 2, 1860 ("The early potentillas are now quite abundant."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful. See May 2, 1859 ("The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back . . ... This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. . . .Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty."); May 4, 1856 (“As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”)

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow. See May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath"); May 2, 1858 (" How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering "); May 14, 1855 (" See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, . . .Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two over the ground")

 C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day. See  May 7, 1852 ("Beginning, I may say, with robins, song sparrows, chip-birds, bluebirds, etc., I walk through larks, pewees, pigeon woodpeckers, chickadees, towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes, brown thrasher, jay, catbird, ");May 8, 1857  ("The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water")

A good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat.

May 2

River three and five sixteenths below summer level. 

I observed on the 29th that the clams had not only been moving much, furrowing the sandy bottom near the shore, but generally, or almost invariably, had moved toward the middle of the river. Perhaps it had something to do with the low stage of the water. 

I saw one making his way — or perhaps it had rested since morning-over that sawdust bar just below Turtle Bar, toward the river, the surface of the bar being an inch or two higher than the water. Probably the water, falling, left it thus on dry (moist) land.

I notice this forenoon (11. 30 A. M. ) remarkably round-topped white clouds just like round-topped hills, on all sides of the sky, often a range of such, such as I do not remember to have seen before. There was considerable wind on the surface, from the northeast, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, -- a generally distributed cumulus.    

What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other.  (The same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.) 

Salix alba apparently yesterday.  

The early potentillas are now quite abundant.

P. M.    – To stone heaps and stone bridge. 

Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March.  (The same is true till 9th of May at least; i. e., in spite of east winds there is no rain.)

I find no stone heaps made yet, the water being very low. (But since — May 8th-I notice them, and perhaps I overlooked them before.) 

I notice on the east bank by the stone-heaps, amid the bushes, what I supposed to be two woodchucks' holes, with a well-worn path from one to the other, and the young trees close about them, aspen and black cherry, had been gnawed for a foot or more upward for a year or two.  There were some fresh wounds, and also old and extensive scars of last year partially healed. 

The naked viburnum is leafing.

The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two.   

A crowd of men seem to generate vermin even of the human kind.  In great towns there is degradation undreamed of elsewhere, — gamblers, dog-killers, rag pickers.  Some live by robbery or by luck.  There was the Concord muster (of last September).  I see still a well dressed man carefully and methodically searching for money on the muster-fields, far off across the river.  I turn my glass upon him and notice how he proceeds.  (I saw them searching there in the fall till the snow came.) He walks regularly and slowly back and forth over the ground where the soldiers had their tents, — still marked by the straw, — with his head prone, and poking in the straw with a stick, now and then turning back or aside to examine something more closely. He is dressed, methinks, better than an average man whom you meet in the streets. How can he pay for his board thus? He dreams of finding a few coppers, or perchance a half-dime, which have fallen from the soldiers' pockets, and no doubt he will find something of the kind, having dreamed of it, --having knocked, this door will be opened to him.  

Walking over the russet interval, I see the first red-winged grasshoppers. They rise from the still brown sod before me, and I see the redness of their wings as they fly. They are quite shy and hardly let me come within ten feet before they rise again, — often before I have seen them fairly on the ground.   

It was 63° at 2 P. M., and yet a good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat. (Yet a week later, with thermometer at 60° and but little wind, it seems much warmer.) We have had cool nights of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1860

Salix alba apparently yesterday. See May 2, 1853 (" Summer yellowbird on the opening Salix alba.?"). See also  April 24, 1855 ("The Salix alba begins to leaf. "); April 29, 1855 ("For two or three days the Salix alba, with its catkins (not yet open) and its young leaves, or bracts (?), has made quite a show, before any other tree, —a pyramid of tender yellowish green in the russet landscape."); April 30, 1859 (Salix alba leafing, or stipules a quarter of an inch wide; probably began a day or two.");    May 10, 1858 (" For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them.")

The naked viburnum is leafing. See April 30, 1859 ("The viburnum buds are so large and long, like a spear-head, that they are conspicuous the moment their two leafets diverge and they are lit up by the sun.");  May 1, 1854 ("The viburnum (Lentago or nudum) leaves unexpectedly forward at the Cliff Brook and about Miles Swamp. ")

The early potentillas are now quite abundant. See May 1, 1854 (“At Lee's Cliff find the early cinquefoil”); May 8, 1860 ("The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

March 15. 

I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. 

Though it is pretty dry and settled travelling on open roads, it is very muddy still in some roads through woods, as the Marlborough road or Second Division road. 

2 P. M. – To Lee's Cliff. Thermometer 50°. 

March 15, 2020

On the whole the finest day yet (the thermometer was equally high the 3d), considering the condition of the earth as well as the temperature of the air. Yet I think I feel the heat as much if not more than I did on the 23d of February, when the thermometer rose to 58º. Is it because there was more snow lying about then? The comparative stillness, as well as the absence of snow, has an effect on our imaginations, I have no doubt. Our cold and blustering days this month, thus far, have averaged about 40°. Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day.

Looking over my Journal, I find that the -

• 1st of March was rainy.
• 2 at 2 P. M.         56°
• 3                         50
• 4                         44
• 5 ( probably as low )
• 6 at 3 P . M .     44
• 7 at 3 P . M       34
• 8 2 P. M.           50
• 9 2 P. M.           41
• 10                     30
• 11                     44
• 12                     40
• 13                     36
• 14                     39
• 15                     50

The temperature has been as high on three days this month, and on the 2nd considerably higher, and yet this has seemed the warmest and most summer-like, evidently owing to the calmness and greater absence of snow. 

How admirable in our memory lies a calm warm day amid a series of cold and blustering ones! The 11th was cold and blustering at 40; to-day delightfully warm and pleasant (being calm) at 50°.

I see those devil's-needle-like larvæ in the warm pool south of Hubbard's Grove (with two tails) swimming about and rising to the top. 

What a difference it makes whether a pool lies open to the sun or is within a wood, — affecting its breaking up. This pool has been open at least a week, while that three or four rods from it in the woods is still completely closed and dead. 

It is very warm under the south edge of the wood there, and the ground, as for some time, — since snow went off, — is seen all strewn with the great white pine cones which have been blown off during the winter, — part of the great crop of last fall, — of which apparently as many, at least, still remain on the trees. 

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. I get a very fair sight of it sailing overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat outline it presents! an easily recognized figure anywhere. Yet I never see it represented in any books. The exact correspondence of the marks on one side to those on the other, as the black or dark tip of one wing to the other, and the dark line mid way the wing. 

I have no idea that one can get as correct an idea of the form and color of the undersides of a hen-hawk's wings by spreading those of a dead specimen in his study as by looking up at a free and living hawk soaring above him in the fields. The penalty for obtaining a petty knowledge thus dishonestly is that it is less interesting to men generally, as it is less significant. 

Some, seeing and admiring the neat figure of the hawk sailing two or three hundred feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and hold it in their hands, not realizing that they can see it best at this distance, better now, perhaps, than ever they will again. What is an eagle in captivity! — screaming in a courtyard! I am not the wiser respecting eagles for having seen one there. I do not wish to know the length of its entrails. 

How neat and all compact this hawk! Its wings and body are all one piece, the wings apparently the greater part, while its body is a mere fullness or protuberance between its wings, an inconspicuous pouch hung there. It suggests no insatiable maw, no corpulence, but looks like a larger moth, with little body in proportion to its wings, its body naturally more etherealized as it soars higher. 

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

I see a little ice still under water on the bottom of the meadows by the Hubbard's Bridge causeway. The frost is by no means out in grass upland. 

I see to-day in two places, in mud and in snow, what I have no doubt is the track of the woodchuck that has lately been out, with peculiarly spread toes like a little hand. 

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. It is all alive with them, and I see them spread out on the surface. Their note is somewhat in harmony with the rustling of the now drier leaves. It is more like the note of the classical frog, as described by Aristophanes, etc. How suddenly they awake! yesterday, as it were, asleep and dormant, to-day as lively as ever they are. The awakening of the leafy woodland pools. They must awake in good condition. 

As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. 

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. 

It is remarkable how little certain knowledge even old and weather-wise men have of the comparative earliness of the year. They will speak of the passing spring as earlier or later than they ever knew, when perchance the third spring before it was equally early or late, as I have known.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 15, 1860


I hear that there was about one acre of ice only at the southwest corner (by the road) of Flint's Pond on the 13th. It will probably, then, open entirely to-day, with Walden. Compare April 1, 1852 (" I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice!")

A hen-hawk sails away from the wood southward. See March 4, 1860 ("A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer.")

Many large fuzzy gnats and other insects in air. See March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air."); March 7, 1860 ("C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fuzzy Gnats

Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier. See March 14, 1860 ("I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open. . . . I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March."); March 30, 1858 ("Later, in a pool behind Lee's Cliff, I hear them, – the waking up of the leafy pools.");/ See also March 23, 1859 ("I hear a single croak from a wood frog. . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak"); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. . . .. Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. "); March 26, 1857 ("I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard"); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”); March 27, 1853 ("Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore."); March 28, 1858 ("Coming home, I hear the croaking frogs in the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove. It is sufficiently warm for them at last."); March 30, 1858 ("I do not remember that I ever hear this frog in the river or ponds. They seem to be an early frog, peculiar to pools and small ponds in the woods and fields.");  March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill.”); April 13, 1856 ("As I go by the Andromeda Ponds, I hear the tut tut of a few croaking frogs,"); See also April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time.")