Over cold water silvery willow catkins shine along the shore.

March 22

March 22, 2014

Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold.  

About the piers of the bridges the most splendid show of ice chandeliers that I ever saw or imagined. Perfect, sharp cone-shaped drops hang inches above the water. 

I should have described it then. It would have filled many pages.

Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. 

See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat? 

See a small black duck with glass, — a dipper (?).

Fair Haven still covered and frozen anew in part. Shores of meadow strewn with cranberries. 

The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water, and C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 22, 1854

Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven.  See March 12, 1854 ("Men are eager to launch their boats and paddle over the meadows. ");March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat. "); March 16, 1854 ("See and hear honey-bees about my boat in the yard, attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-wax which was put on it a year ago. "); March 18, 1854 ("Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods.") See also December 5, 1856 ("I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating to be obliged to get my boat in.I shall launch it again in the springwith so much more pleasure.")

Scare up my flock of black ducks and count forty together. See March 21, 1854 ("Look with glass and find more than thirty black ducks asleep with their heads on their backs, motionless, and thin ice formed about them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

See crows along the water's edge. What do they eat? See March 22, 1855 ("I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago.“); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

See a small black duck with glass, — a dipper (?). See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars");  April 19, 1855 ("It has a moderate-sized black head and neck, a white breast, and seems dark-brown above, with a white spot on the side of the head, not reaching to the out side, from base of mandibles, and another, perhaps, on the end of the wing, with some black there . . . Is it not a female of the buffle-headed or spirit duck?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore. See March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .willow catkins become silvery,"); March 21, 1855. ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now . . .This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March, perhaps earlier . . .I t is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow. See March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . osiers, etc., look bright"); See also February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them."); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season."); March 24, 1855 ("I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Over cold water

silvery willow catkins

shine along the shore.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Silvery willow catkins shine along the shore

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/hdt-540322