A wild and arctic scene

February 28.

February 28, 2014 

Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.  

Just south of Derby’s Bridge lie many great cakes, some one upon another, which were stopped by the  bridge and causeway, and a great many have a crust of the meadow of equal thickness — six inches to one foot — frozen to their under surfaces. Some of these are a rod in diameter, and when the ice melts, the meadow where they are landed will present a singular appearance. 

I see many also freshly deposited on the Elfin Burial-Ground, showing how that was formed. The greater part of those hummocks there are probably, if not certainly, carried by the ice.  

Many great cakes have lodged on a ridge of the meadow west of the river here, and suggest how such a ridge may be growing from year to year. 

This is a powerful agent at work. 

The westering sun reflected from their edges makes them shine finely.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1855

Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. See  February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more —arctic enough to look at.”); February 26, 1855 ("Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.);   See also 

February 3, 1852:

                    The landscape covered with snow –

                              is this the habitable globe?
                                     The scenery is arctic.
                                     A glacier crept southward.
                              Who can think his summer thoughts now?

February 2, 1860 ("A very wild and arctic scene. Indeed, no part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now. . .It was a very arctic scene this cold day, "); February 21, 1855 (“There can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.”); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

February 28.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 28 

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-550228

The weather gradually moderating.

February 27.

February 27, 2015

Another cold, clear day, but the weather gradually moderating.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1855

Another cold, clear day, but the weather gradually moderating. See February 28, 1855 ("Still cold and clear. Ever since the 23d inclusive a succession of clear but very cold days. . . . Since the 25th it has been very slowly moderating.") See also January 31, 1855 ("A clear, cold, beautiful day.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Late winter

February 26

February 26, 2022

Still clear and cold and windy. 

No thawing of the ground during the day. This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear.

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before. 

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice. You are surprised to see them lying with perpendicular edges a foot thick on bare, grassy upland where there is no other sign of water, sometimes wholly isolated by bare grass there.

When the weather became colder and froze, the new ice only reached part way up these cakes, which lay high and dry. It is therefore pretty good skating on the river itself and on a greater part of the meadows next the river, but it is interrupted by great cakes of ice rising above the general level near the shore.

Directly off Clamshell Hill, within four rods of it, where the water is three or four feet deep, I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams before the last freezing. Their open shells are strewn along close to the edge of the ice, and close together. They lie thickly around the edge of each small circle of thinner black ice in the midst of the white, showing where was open water a day or two ago. This shows that this is still a good place for clams, as it was in Indian days.

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. It appears to be composed two thirds of clay, and the rest a slate-colored fur and coarser white hairs, black-tipped, -too coarse for the deer mouse. Is it that of the rabbit? This mingled with small bones. A mass as long as one’s finger.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1855

Still clear and cold and windy. No thawing . . . very blustering and unpleasant. See February 26, 1857 ("Cold and windy."); February 26, 1860 ("Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before.  See  February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up"); February 23, 1855 ("I see no cracks in the ground this year yet."); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 ("It would appear then that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather.")

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up . . . See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more . . .”); February 28, 1855 ("Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.")

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. See February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence. "); September 23, 1860 ("I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Clear, cold, and windy

February 25.

Clear, cold, and windy. Thermometer at 7° at 7.30 A.M. Air filled with dust blowing over the fields. Feel the cold about as much as when it was below zero a month ago.

Pretty good skating.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1855

Pretty good skating. See February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.”)

The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring

February 24.

February 24, 2018

Clear, but very cold and windy for the season. 

P. M. -To young willow-row near Hunt’s Pond road. 

The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more,—arctic enough to look at. 

The willow-row does not begin to look bright yet. The top two or three feet are red as usual at a distance, the lower parts a rather dull green. 

The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring, showing that the dormant sap is awakened. I now remember a few osiers which I have seen early in past springs, thus brilliantly green and red (or yellow), and it is as if all the landscape and all nature shone. Though the twigs were few which I saw, I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. 

You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them.

Thermometer at 10° at 10 P. M.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1855

Clear, but very cold and windy for the season . . .Thermometer at 10° at 10 P. M. See February 26, 1855 ("Still clear and cold and windy . . .This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more,—arctic enough to look at. See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”)

The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring. See  February 24, 1852 ("The brightness of the willow's bark. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality.");  See also  November 18, 1858 ("Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway"); December 5, 1858 (" On the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice."); March 2, 1860 ('Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. ");  March 20, 1859 ("A rich yellow or orange yellow in the upper three or four feet. This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness"); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them. See 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")

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The brightening of the willows or of osiers

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-550224

Rose-colored ice

February 23. 

Clear, but a very cold north wind. 

I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).

See at Walden this afternoon that the grayish ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge. 

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1855

Ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.  See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...") Also January 27, 1854 (" Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”)

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. See  February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”); February 26, 1855 ("I see some cracks in a plowed field”);  December 19, 1856 (“In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front.”); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 (“The ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before, this winter. It was so when I went to Amherst a winter or two ago.”)

Snowshoeing up Mt. Pritchard

February 22. 

The strong black dogs lope

weightlessly in the deep snow.

Their ears are flying.

zphx 20150222

How does the partridge drum?

February 22.

February 22, 2015

— To J. Farmer’s. 

Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird. I see a seething in the air over clean russet fields. The westerly wind is rather raw, but in sheltered places it is deliciously warm. 

The water has so far gone down that I get over the Hunt Bridge causeway by going half a dozen rods on the wall in one place. This water must have moved two or three hundred cartloads of sand to the side of the road. This damage would be avoided by raising the road. 

J. Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago. They are not very common about his barns. All white but the tip of the tail; two conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw. He says their track is like that of the mink: as if they had only two legs. They go on the jump. Sometimes make a third mark. 

He had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall. Said it stood very upright and produced the sound by striking its wings together behind its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike the wall nor its body. This he is sure of, and declares that he is mistaken who affirms the contrary, though it were Audubon himself. 

Wilson says he “begins to strike with his stiffened wings” while standing on a log, but does not say what he strikes, though one would infer it was either the log or his body. Peabody says he beats his body with his wings.

You see fresh upright green radical leaves of some plants —the dock, probably water dock, for one — in and about water now the snow is gone there, as if they had grown all winter. 

The sun goes down to-night under clouds, - a round red orb, - and I am surprised to see that its light, falling on my book and the wall, is a beautiful purple, like the poke stem or perhaps some kinds of wine.

Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber. I have one which was gnawed off by squirrels, apparently of full size, but which does not open. Why should they thus open in the chamber or else where? I suppose that under the influence of heat or dryness the upper side of each scale expands while the lower contracts, or perhaps only the one expands or the other contracts. I notice that the upper side is a lighter, almost cinnamon, color, the lower a dark (pitchy ?) red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1855

Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season. See February 27, 1853 ("The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.")

...listen for the first bluebird. See February 9, 1854 ("It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in"); February 18, 1857 ("I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird . . .”); February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird"); March 7, 1854 ("Heard the first bluebird"); March 10, 1852 ("I see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together"); March 19, 1855 (“ I hear my first bluebird”).

A new life in Nature beginning to awake.

February 21.

To Fair Haven Hill via Cut. 

A clear air, with a northwesterly, March-like wind, as yesterday. What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? The wind is rapidly drying up earth, and elevated sands already begin to look whitish. 

How much light there is in the sky and on the surface of the russet earth! It is reflected in a flood from all cleansed surfaces which rain and snow have washed, - from the railroad rails and the mica in the rocks and the silvery latebrae of insects there, - and I never saw the white houses of the village more brightly white. 

Now look for an early crop of arrowheads, for they will shine. 

When I enter the wooded hollow on the east of the Deep Cut, it is novel and pleasant to hear the sound of the dry leaves and twigs, which have so long been damp and silent, more worn and lighter than ever, crackling again under my feet, - though there is still considerable snow about, along wall-sides. etc., - and to see the holes and galleries recently made by the mice in the fine withered grass of such places, the upper aralia hollow there. 

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. A warmth begins to be reflected from the partially dried ground here and there in the sun in sheltered places, very cheering to invalids who have weak lungs, who think they may weather it till summer now. Nature is more genial to them. 

When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these, the news is told to how many myriads of grubs that underlie them! When I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. 

It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along.

We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests, with perhaps a house on some remote, bare ridge seen against them. A silver edging, or ear-like handle, to this basin of the world. They look like great loaves incrusted with pure white sugar; and I think that this must have been the origin of the name “sugar-loaf” some times given to mountains, and not on account of their form. 

We look thus from russet fields into a landscape above it and where a promontory casts a shadow along the mountains’ side. I see what looks like a large lake of misty bluish water on the side of the further Peterboro mountain, its edges or shore very distinctly defined. This I conclude was the shadow of another part of the mountain. And it suggests that, in like manner, what on the surface of the moon is taken for water may be, shadows. Could not distinguish Monadnock till the sun shone on it. 

I see a train go by, which has in front a dozen dirt cars from somewhere up country, laden apparently with some kind of earth (or clay); and these, with their loads, were thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow, a part of that sugary crust I had viewed with my glass, which contrasted singularly with the bare tops of the other cars, which it had hitched on this side, and the twenty miles at least of bare ground over which they had rolled. It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.

How plain, wholesome, and earthy are the colors of quadrupeds generally! The commonest I should say is the tawny or various shades of brown, answering to the russet which is the prevailing color of the earth’s surface, perhaps, and to the yellow of the sands beneath. The darker brown mingled with this answers to the darker-colored soil of the surface. The white of the polar bear, ermine weasel, etc., answers to the snow; the spots of the pards, perchance, to the earth spotted with flowers or tinted leaves of autumn; the black, perhaps, to night, and muddy bottoms and dark waters. There are few or no bluish animals. 

Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 21, 1855

We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. . . .See April 4, 1855 (". . . in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun. . . . "); April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon


I see a train go by, which has in front a dozen dirt cars thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow, a part of that sugary crust I had viewed with my glass, It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing. See November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat. So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”)

Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? See February 18, 1857 ("I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night.")

I see from my window the bright-blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow

February 20.

A strong wind drying the earth which has been so very wet. The sand begins to be dry in spots on the railroad causeway. The northerly wind blows me along, and when I get to the cut I hear it roaring in the woods, all reminding me of March, March. 

The sides of the cut are all bare of snow, and the sand foliage is dried up. It is decided March weather, and I see from my window the bright- blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow.

I know that we have here in Concord are at least twenty-one and perhaps twenty-six quadrupeds,—five and possibly six families of the Order Carnivora, and three families of the Order Rodentia; none of the Order Ruminantia. Nearly half of our quadrupeds belong to the Muridoe, or Rat Family, and a quarter of them to the Mustelidoe, or Weasel Family. 

Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. Others are very rare, like the otter and raccoon.

The striped squirrel is the smallest quadruped that we commonly notice in our walks in the woods, and we do not realize, especially in summer, when their tracks are not visible, that the aisles of the wood are threaded by countless wild mice, and no more that the meadows are swarming in many places with meadow mice and moles. 

The cat brings in a mole from time to time, and we see where they have heaved up the soil in the meadow. 

We see the tracks of mice on the snow in the woods, or once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1855

The sides of the cut are all bare of snow, and the sand foliage is dried up. See  December 31, 1851 ("I am too late, perhaps, to see the sand foliage in the Deep Cut; should have been there day before yesterday; it is now too wet and soft. Yet in some places it is perfect."); February 24, 1852 ("I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut"); February 24, 1857 (" The best of the sand foliage is already gone")

I see from my window the bright- lue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow. See

And for the first time

I see the water looking

blue on the meadows.

March 5, 1854

The first sight of the

blue water in the spring is

exhilarating.

April 5, 1856

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

We have here in Concord are at least twenty-one and perhaps twenty-six quadrupeds. See March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”); Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly..”); September 9, 1856) ("The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther . . .It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here."); September 29, 1856 (Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago.”); September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . ."); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past."); October 17, 1860 ("[I]t belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.")

The striped squirrel is the smallest quadruped that we commonly notice in our walks in the woods See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the striped squirrel comes out

Others are very rare, like the otter. See February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday.") April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); see January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.”).

Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals [moles], though their tracks are so common. ")

Once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet. See May 27, 1856 ("Saw probably a deer mouse jumping off by the side of the swamp; short leaps of apparently ten inches. "); August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long . . .Its nose is not sharp.”);December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath . . . I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse"); May 31, 1858 ("I see . . . a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see . . .but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

February 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 20

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. I see from my window

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-550220

Midwinter travel; missing lives and landmarks

February 19.

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. Sam Potter’s father, moving into town, turned off into the fields with a four-horse team as soon as he had crossed Wood’s Bridge and went directly across to Deacon Hubbard’s.

When Wood’s Bridge was carried off up stream, it was landed against Hubbard’s land. Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice from town, just below the bridge since built.

The water is about a foot deep on the Jimmy Miles road. E. Conant thinks that the Joe Miles causeway is rather worse than Hubbard’s in respect to water. Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing, and a mulberry tree whose stump remains, were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by. 

The only way for Conant to come to town when the water is highest is by Tarbell’s and Wood’s on the stone bridge, about a mile and a half round. 

It is true when there is no snow we cannot so easily see the birds, nor they the weeds.

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. “Can’t understand them.” “Would you have us return to the savage state?” etc., etc. A criticism true enough, it may be, from their point of view. 

But the fact is, the earnest lecturer can speak only to his like, and the adapting of himself to his audience is a mere compliment which he pays them. 

If you wish to know how I think, you must endeavor to put yourself in my place. If you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is another affair. 

I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1855

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. See December 29, 1855 ("Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls. . .")

Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice. See February 12, 1860 ("Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow.")


I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust.")

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. See February 13, 1860 ("Read to them a lecture on "Education," naming that subject, and they will think that they have heard some thing important, but call it "Transcendentalism," and they will think it moonshine.")

Expecting Spring

February 18.

Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. 

Though not particularly warm, the light of the sun (now travelling so much higher) on the russet fields, —the ground being nearly all bare, —and on the sand and the pines, is suddenly yellower.

It is the earliest day-breaking of the year. 

We now begin to look decidedly forward and put the winter behind us. We begin to form definite plans for the approaching spring and summer. 

The winter darkness will not recover the ground it has lost. 

I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1855

I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.See February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:Listening for the Bluebird

The town clock is out of order

February 17.

The river very high, one inch higher than the evening of January 31st. The bridge at Sam Barrett’s caved in; also the Swamp Bridge on back road. Muskrats driven out. 

Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). 

The jays are uttering their unusual notes, and this makes me think of a woodpecker. It reminds me of the pine warbler, vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, except that it is much louder, and I should say has the sound of l rather than t, — veller, etc., perhaps. Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? 

Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? In the damp misty air. 

Was waked up last night by the tolling of a bell about 11 o’clock, as if a child had hold of the rope. Dressed and went abroad in the wet to see if it was a fire. It seems the town clock was out of order, and the striking part ran down and struck steadily for fifteen minutes. If it had not been so near the end of the week, it might have struck a good part of the night..

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1855


That singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time. See March 13, 1853 (“But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter,”); February 14, 1854 ("This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring"); February 18, 1857 (“When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”);  March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

Was waked up last night by the tolling of a bell . . .See May 3, 1852 ("There is a grand, rich, musical echo trembling on the air long after the clock has ceased to strike, like a vast organ, filling the air with a trembling music like a flower of sound. Nature adopts it. Beautiful is sound.”)

A fog so thick.

February 16. 

A thick fog without rain. Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. 

In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak.  

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond. 

Rattlesnake plantain. January 22, 2017

The ground is more than half bare, especially in open fields and level evergreen woods. It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor, undimmed by the snow, — the Wintergreen, the great leaved pyrola, the shin-leaf, the rattlesnake-plantain, and the lycopodiums. I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen. 

It is pleasant to see elsewhere, in fields and on banks, so many green radical leaves only half killed by the winter.

I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs. They are white with them, some half an inch long and stout in proportion. Perhaps they are apple twigs. 

February 17, 2013

The bark ( and bud, if there was any ) has been entirely digested, leaving the bare, white, hard wood of the twig. Some of the ends of apple twigs looked as if they had been bitten off. It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. 

What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs! Where apple buds are just freshly bitten off they do not seem to have taken so much twig with them. 

The drooping oak leaves show more red amid the pines this wet day, - agreeably so, — and I feel as if I stood a little nearer to the heart of nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1855

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. See February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical."); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”); April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, . . . echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. See August 17, 1852 ("Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods.")

The leavings of the partridges. See February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow. . .and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.");  January 31, 1854 ("Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and between the stems of trees. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 15, 1855 <<<<<                                                                          >>>>> February 17, 1855

The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.

February 15.

Commenced a fine half snow half rain yesterday afternoon. 

All rain and harder in the night, and now quite a thaw, still raining finely, with great dark puddles amid the snow, and the cars detained by wet rails. 

Does not a thaw succeed that blue atmosphere observed on the 11th? — a thaw, as well as warmer nights and hoar frosts? 

All day a steady, warm, imprisoning rain carrying off the snow.  not unmusical on my roof. 

It is a rare time for the student and reader who cannot go abroad in the afternoon, provided he can keep awake, for we are wont to be drowsy as cats in such weather. Without, it is not walking but wading. 

It is so long since I have heard it that the steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. 

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. 

It is because I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. The sound soaks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed and drink up the rain as fast as it falls.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1855

February 14. February 15. February 16

The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. See February 8, 1857 ("Youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the wind and rain and running water . . . I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.")

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. See February 18, 1854 ("I begin to think that my wood will last."); February 18, 1857 (“Thermometer at 1 P.M., 65. . . I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open.”); Compare February 3, 1856 (“The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”) See also Walden ("One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in . . . the days have grown sensibly longer and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood pile for large fires are no longer necessary I am on the alert for the first signs of spring.")