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

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