A sound reminds me – a robin in misty rain. April days, past years.

March 8

March 8, 2015

Another fair day with easterly wind. This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it. The blue river, now almost completely open, admonishes me to be swift.

Am surprised to see a cluster of those large leek buds on a rock in Clark’s meadow between the oak and my house that was.

I cross through the swamp south of Boulder Field toward the old dam. Stopping in a sunny and sheltered place on a hillock in the woods, — for it is raw in the wind, — I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, —— a sort of tche tche tche tche tche. Then probably it dashed through the birches. 

And so they fetch the year about. Just from the South Shore, perchance, it alighted not in the village street, but in this remote birch wood. This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years. 

I still see the bluish bloom on thimble-berry vines quite fresh. 

I walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc. They are full of a rust-colored water, as if they flowed out of an iron mine. 

As the ice melts in the swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence of the sun, - the most prepared for spring—to look at— of any plant. 

I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1855

This morning I got my boat out of the cellar. ... The blue river, now almost completely open, admonishes me to be swift. See March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. Men are eager to launch their boats and paddle over the meadows.");  February 24, 1857 ("Get my boat out the cellar."); March 3, 1860 ("I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

Stopping in a sunny and sheltered place on a hillock in the woods.  See note to March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Sunny Nook in Spring

This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years. See April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs."); October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin

I walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: ripples made by fishes and Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

I see the horn-shaped buds of the skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom. See March 8, 1860 ("You cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter . . ..There is something of spring in all seasons."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Skunk Cabbage Blooms

I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown. See January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

A sound reminds me –

a robin in misty rain.

April days, past years.

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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