Thus gradually and moderately the year begins.

April 5. 

P. M. – Row to Clamshell and walk beyond. Fair but windy and cool. 

When I stand more out of the wind, under the shelter of the hill beyond Clamshell, where there is not wind enough to make a noise on my person, I hear, or think that I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. It is hard to tell if it is not a ringing in my ears; yet I think it is a solitary and distant toad called to life by some warm and sheltered pool or hill, its note having as it were, a chemical affinity with the air of the spring. 

It merely gives a slightly more ringing or sonorous sound to the general rustling of inanimate nature. A sound more ringing and articulate my ear detects, under and below the noise of the rippling wind. 

Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general. 

It is to be observed that we heard of fires in the woods in various towns, and more or less distant, on the same days that they occurred here, — the last of March and first of April. The newspapers reported many. The same cause everywhere produced the same effect.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1860

Distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to. See April 5, 1857 ("Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. "). See also April 13, 1853 (" First hear toads (and take off coat), a loud, ringing sound filling the air, which yet few notice."); April 13, 1858 ("Hear the first toad in the rather cool rain, 10 A. M."); April 15, 1856 (" I hear a clear, shrill, prolonged ringing note from a toad, the first toad of the year"); April 25, 1856 ("The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday"); April 25, 1859 (Methinks I hear through the wind to-day — and it was the same yesterday — a very faint, low ringing of toads, as if distant and just begun. It is an indistinct undertone, and I am far from sure that I hear anything. It may be all imagination.""); May 1, 1857 ("There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Ring of Toads

We heard of fires in the woods on the same days that they occurred here. See March 30, 1860 ("I hear of the first fire in the woods this afternoon."); March 31, 1860 ("I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees . . . These fires are a perfectly regular phenomenon of this season.); April 1, 1860 ("There is another fire in the woods this afternoon.");  April 27, 1860 ("There is a large fire in the woods northwest of Concord, just before night. . . .One who had just come down in the cars thought it must be in Groton, . . . So hard is it to tell how far off a great fire is")