Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains.

March 8.

Steady rain on the roof in the night, suggesting April-like warmth. This will help melt the snow and ice and take the frost out of the ground. 

What pretty wreaths the mountain cranberry makes, curving upward at the extremity! The leaves are now a dark, glossy red, and wreath and all are of such a shape as might fitly be copied in wood or stone or architectural foliages. 

I wrote a letter for an Irishman night before last, sending for his wife in Ireland to come to this country. One sentence which he dictated was, "Don't mind the rocking of the vessel, but take care of the children that they be not lost overboard." 

Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1854

Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains. See February 15, 1861("A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon"); February 23, 1860 ("About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow "); March 16, 1854 (“ It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.”); March 25, 1860 ("The 9th, it is quite warm, with a southwest wind. The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening")

The first bluebird - true to season.

March 7.

Most of the snow left on bare, dry level ground consists of the remains of drifts, particularly along fences, — most on the south side.  

It is remarkable how true each plant is to its season. Why should not the fringed gentian put forth early in the spring, instead of holding in till the latter part of September? How short a time it is with us!

Hear the first bluebird, — something like pe-a-wor, — and then other slight warblings, as if farther off. Am surprised to see the bird within seven or eight rods on the top of an oak by the orchard's edge under the hill. But he appears silent, while I hear others faintly warbling and twittering far in the orchard. When he flies I hear no more, and I suspect that he has been ventriloquizing; as if he hardly dare open his mouth yet, while there is so much winter left. 

He revisits the apple trees, and appears to find some worms. Probably not till now is his food to be found abundantly. See some fuzzy gnats in the air.

It is an overcast and moist but rather warm afternoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1854

The fringed gentian. See October 19, 1852 ("It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom.")


Ventriloquist blue bird. See February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes.")

The drying of the earth goes on in the cold night as well as the warm day.

March 6.

A cool morning. The bare water here and there on the meadow begins to look smooth, and I look to see it rippled by a muskrat. The earth has to some extent frozen dry, for the drying of the earth goes on in the cold night as well as the warm day.

P. M. — To Goose Pond. I see the skunk- cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close, amid the green grass, and what looks like the first probing of the skunk. The snow is now all off on meadow ground, in thick evergreen woods, and on the south sides of hills, but it is still deep in sprout-lands, on the north sides of hills, and generally in deciduous woods. The ponds are hard enough for skating again.

Hear and see the first blackbird, flying east over the Deep Cut, with a tchuck, tchuck, and finally a split whistle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1854

I see the skunk- cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close See March 8, 1855 ("As the ice melts in the swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence of the sun, - the most prepared for spring—to look at— of any plant.")

See also: A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:

• the Skunk Cabbage
• The Red-wing Arrives

I see the water looking blue on the meadows.

March 5.

Channing, talking with Minott the other day about his health, said, 

"I suppose you'd like to die now."

"No," said Minott, "I've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more."

The patches of bare ground grow larger and larger, of snow less and less; even after a night you see a difference. It is a clear morning with some wind beginning to rise, and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows.

See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? 

And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1854

Said Minott,  "I've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more." See March 23, 1854 ("When I asked if he would like to go to Boston, he answered he was going to another Boston."); January 28, 1858 (""He thought that the back of the winter was broken, — if it had any this year, — but he feared such a winter would kill him too.); and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.")

And for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows. See March 2, 1860 (“he great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. ”); April 5, 1856 ("The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating."); April 9, 1856 ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bright Blue Water

 
See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? See March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”)

And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks . . . Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.  See March 5, 1859 (" I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement."); March 7, 1855 ("Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? "); October 6, 1860 (The crow . . . hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.”); October 20, 1859 ("I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

March 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 5

"And for the first time

I see the water looking

blue on the meadows."

Migrating crows come 

in loose straggling flocks about 

half a mile apart.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Water looking blue on the meadows.

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-540305

I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground.

March 4. 

A dull, cloudy day. P. M. — To Walden via Hubbard's Wood and foot of Cliff Hill. 

The snow has melted very rapidly the past week. There is much bare ground.

The checkerberries are revealed, — somewhat shrivelled many of them.  In Hubbard's maple swamp I see the evergreen leaves of the gold-thread as well as the mitchella and large pyrola. I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground.

In the meadow beyond I see  everywhere the green and reddish radical leaves of the golden senecio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me back or forward to an incredible season. Who would believe that under the snow and ice lie still — or in midwinter — some green leaves which, bruised, yield the same odor that they do when their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June? Nothing so realizes the summer to me now.

In the dry pasture under the Cliff Hill, the radical leaves of the johnswort are now revealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on the ground, with leaves recurved, reddish above, green beneath, and covered with dewy drops.

I can no longer get on to the river ice. 

The ice of Walden has melted or softened so much that I sink an inch or more at every step. The upper side is white and rotten and saturated with water for four or five inches. It is now fifteen and a half inches thick, having lost about an inch and a half.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1854

The checkerberries are revealed, — somewhat shrivelled many of them. See 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. ”)

I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground. See 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.")

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Suddenly a different sky

March 2.

What produces the peculiar softness of the air yesterday and to-day, as if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed amid our wintry hills? 

We have suddenly a different sky, — a different atmosphere. It is as if the subtlest possible soft vapor were diffused through the atmosphere. Warm air has come to us from the south, but charged with moisture, which will yet distill in rain or congeal into snow and hail.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1854


What produces the peculiar softness of the air? See  February 9, 1854 ("There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 21, 1855 ("I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow."); February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.") March 5, 1855 ("This blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come."); March 12, 1854 (“That peculiar scenery of March . . . is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”); March 21, 1853 ("It is a genial and reassuring day; the mere warmth of the west wind amounts almost to balminess. The softness of the air mollifies our own dry and congealed substance."). See also See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring: A Change in the Air

Our first spring morning

March 1. 

Here is our first spring morning according to the almanac. It is remarkable that the spring of the almanac and of nature should correspond so closely.  The morning of the 26th was good winter, but there came a plentiful rain in the afternoon, and yesterday and to-day are quite springlike.


This morning the air is still, and, though clear enough, a yellowish light is widely diffused throughout the east, now just after sunrise. The sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood. 

For some days past the surface of the earth, covered with water, or with ice where the snow is washed off, has shone in the sun as it does only at the approach of spring, methinks. 

And are not the frosts in the morning more like the early frosts in the fall, — common white frosts?

As for the birds of the past winter: 

• I have seen but three hawks, — one early in the winter and two lately; have heard the hooting owl pretty often late in the afternoon. 

• Crows have not been numerous, but their cawing was heard chiefly in pleasanter mornings.

• Blue jays have blown the trumpet of winter as usual, but they, as all birds, are most lively in springlike days. 

• The chickadees have been the prevailing bird.

• The partridge common enough. 

• One ditcher tells me that he saw two robins in Moore's Swamp a month ago. 

• I have not seen a quail, though a few have been killed in the thaws. 

• Four or five downy woodpeckers. 

• The white-breasted nuthatch four or five times. 

• Tree sparrows one or more at a time, oftener than any bird that comes to us from the north. 

• Two pigeon wood peckers, I think, lately. 

• One dead shrike, and perhaps one or two live ones. 

• Have heard of two white owls, — one about Thanksgiving time and one in midwinter. 

• One short-eared owl in December. 

• Several flocks of snow buntings for a week in the severest storm, and in December, last part. 

• One grebe in Walden just before it froze completely.

• And two brown creepers once in middle of February.

• Channing says he saw a little olivaceous-green bird lately. 

• I have not seen an F. linaria, nor a pine grosbeak, nor an F. hyemalis this winter, though the first was the prevailing bird last winter.

In correcting my manuscripts, which I do with sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn out much that is good along with the bad, which it is then impossible for me to distinguish — so much for keeping bad company; but after the lapse of time, having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard for comparison, I can review the rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 1, 1854

Here is our first spring morning according to the almanac. See March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee. . .Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

For some days past the surface of the earth, covered with water, or with ice where the snow is washed off, has shone in the sun as it does only at the approach of spring. See March 1, 1855 ("This more dazzling white must be due to the higher sun.")

As for the birds of the past winter. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

Blue jays have blown the trumpet of winter as usual, but they, as all birds, are most lively in springlike days..  February 12, 1854 ("You hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Blue Jay

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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