Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Looking for tortoises, see the first water-bugs out circling.

March 10.

Snowed in the night, a mere whitening. In the morning somewhat overcast still, cold and quite windy. The first clear snow to whiten the ground since February 9th. 

I am not aware of growth in any plant yet, unless it be the further peeping out of willow catkins. They have crept out further from under their scales, and, looking closely into them, I detect a little redness along the twigs even now. 

You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede. 

Thus, when on the 6th I saw the gyrinus at Second Division Brook, I saw no peculiarity in the water or the air to remind me of them, but to-day they are here and yesterday they were not. 

I go looking deeper for tortoises, when suddenly my eye rests on these black circling apple seeds in some smoother bay. 

Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off. 

No more snow since last night, but a strong, cold northerly wind all day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1855


Surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; . . .But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.  See March 23, 1856 ("How many springs I have had this same experience! I am encouraged, for I recognize this steady persistency and recovery of Nature as a quality of myself.”)

I go looking deeper for tortoises, when suddenly my eye rests on these black circling apple seeds in some smoother bay. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

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