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.")