Going to another Boston

March 23

March 23, 2014

Snows and rains a little. The birds in yard active now, — hyemalis, tree sparrow, and song sparrow. The hyemalis jingle easily distinguished. Hear all together on apple trees these days. 

Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. Aunt said that he had not been ten miles from home since; that he has not been to Acton since Miss Powers lived there; but he declared that he had been there to cornwallis and musters. When I asked if he would like to go to Boston, he answered he was going to another Boston.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  March 23, 1854

The birds in yard active now. .See March 23, 1852 ("I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward.") March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

Going to another Boston. See March 5, 1854 ("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 be ginning to rise, and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows"); January 8, 1857 ("Miss Minott tells me that she does not think her brother George has ever been to Boston more than once. . . and certainly not since 1812 . . . Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism."); September 30, 1857 ("Minott says he is seventy-five years old."); January 28, 1858 ("He thought that the back of the winter was broken, but he feared such a winter would kill him too."); October 2, 1858 ("Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once, and that was Noddle’s Island in the War of 1812") 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."); 

See also August 6, 1851 ("It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village"); September 7, 1851 ("The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.")

Birds active in yard

now all heard together on

apple trees these days.

Minott, when i asked

answered he was going to

another Boston.

March 23, 1854

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Going to another Boston

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt18540323