A Book of the Seasons: February 29,

February 29.

From Pine Hill the snow-
crust shines in the sun as far
as the eye can reach.
February 29, 1852

Simplicity is

the law of nature for men

as well as flowers.

February 29, 1852

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 © 2009-2016

When Mill Brook had more water

February 29.

Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once, — before the pond was drawn off, when the brook had four or five times as much water as now, — which weighed four pounds. Says they stayed in it all winter in those days. This was near his land up the brook. He loves to recall his hunting days and adventures, and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 29, 1856

The stories he has told me half a dozen times already. See October 2, 1857 (The chief incidents in Minott's life must be more distinct and interesting to him now than immediately after they occurred, for he has recalled and related them so often that they are stereotyped in his mind.”)

A Book of the Seasons: February 28.

February 28.

The westering sun
reflected from their edges
makes them shine finely.
February 28, 1855

Snows again to-day,
covering the ground, then turns
to a drenching rain.
February 28, 1852

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 © 2009-2016

The month of the crusted snow.

February 28

P. M. —To Nut Meadow. 

How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than a minnow, an other extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. 

February 28, 2021

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. 

The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice, which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken. The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick, which here and there has fallen in, showing the shrunken stream far below. The surface of the snow melts into a regular waved form, like raised scales. 

Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works. 

What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! He calls it the sulphur from the pond. It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill. A powerful smelling-bottle.

How pleasant are the surroundings of a mill! Here are the logs (pail stuff), already drawn to the door from a neighboring hill before the mill is in operation. The dammed-up meadow, the melted snow, and welling springs are the serf he compels to do his work. He is unruly as yet, has lately broken loose, filled up the flume, and flooded the fields below. He uses the dam of an old mill which stood here a hundred years ago, which now nobody knows anything about. The mill is built of slabs, of the worm-eaten sap-wood. The old dam had probably been undermined by muskrats. It would have been most prudent to have built a new one. Rude forces, rude men, and rude appliances.   

That strong gun-wash scent from the mill-pond water was very encouraging. I who never partake of the sacrament make the more of it. 

How simple the machinery of the mill! Miles has dammed a stream, raised a pond or head of water, and placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet of water on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw by a few cog wheels and simple gearing, and, throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. 

A weight of water stored up in a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it. So simple is a sawmill. A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created, in which, at length, fishes of various kinds are found; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.

The pond is like a weight wound up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 28, 1856

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. See April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes."); November 4, 1858 ("You will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it  – if you look for it  . . . The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there.");  Compare August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things"); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”); June 14, 1853 ("You are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th . . . across the fields and brooks.  See February 13, 1856 ("This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields.); February 14, 1856 ("I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp;"); February 25, 1856 ("The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven."); See also February 9, 1851 ("Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust . . . It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); February 9, 1852 ("This is our month of the crusted snow."); February 14, 1852   ("Latterly we have had, i.e. within a week, crusted snow, made by thaw and rain."); February 17, 1854 ("In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well."); 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."); February 29, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach.")_

The carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. See July 9, 1857 ("Am surprised to find how much carburetted hydrogen gas there is in the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream."); July 14, 1857 ("Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash.")

Across fields and brooks

I go on the crust, on the 

solid frozen snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The month of the crusted snow

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560228

A Book of the Seasons: February 27.

February 27.

Bright and immortal
the unfettered stream sparkles
in the clear cool air.
February 27, 1852

I must now walk where 

I can see the most water 

pulsing with new life. 

February 27, 1860

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2020

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 © 2009-2016

Birch scales – falling all winter.

February 27

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. 

It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has overflowed the ice for many rods a few feet in width. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th, and elsewhere on the main stream since January 7th, as it still is. 

That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. 

On the 25th I saw a load of wood drawn by four horses up the middle of the river above Fair Haven Pond.  On that day, the 25th, they were cutting the last of Baker’s the greater part of it last winter, and this was the wood they were hauling off. 

I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter. 

Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1856

The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. See February 12, 1856 ("Forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather.”); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places."); March 12, 1856 ("The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s."); March 14, 1856 ("I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river."); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); March 22, 1856 ("I walk up the middle of the Assabet, and most of the way on middle of South Branch.");  April 3, 1856 ("The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up . . . It is now generally open about the town"); Compare February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least."); February 27, 1852 ("The North Branch, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters."); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Birch scales, freshly blown over the snow . . . falling all winter.  See  December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.”); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it"); March 2, 1856 (" Surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring.. . . The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet . . . and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows.") See also November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare.”); November 4, 1853 ("The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white, and their scales are also shaped like birds, but much larger"); November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.");  December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");  December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth, under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and Cambridge alike! and rarely an eye distinguishes it."); December 6, 1859 ("No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice."); December 18, 1852 ("Very cold, windy day. The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds."); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

February 27.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 27 

See many birch scales

freshly blown over the snow –

falling all winter.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birch scales – falling all winter

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560227

A Book of the Seasons: February 26 (snow cold wind ice and rain . . . the red wing arrives)

February 26

Morning snow turns to

fine freezing rain with a glaze

changing to pure rain.

February 26, 1854

February 26, 2021

This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear. February 26, 1855

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday. February 26, 1860

2 P. M. — Thermometer 30; cold northwest wind.   February 26, 1860

Still clear and cold and windy. No thawing of the ground during the day.  February 26, 1855

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.  February 26, 1855

Cold and windy. The river fast going down. February 26, 1857

In Hubbard’s maple swamp beyond, I see the snow under a dead maple, where a woodpecker has drilled a handsome round hole. Excepting the carrying it downward within, it is ready for a nest. May they not have a view to this use even now?  February 26, 1856

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.  February 26, 1855

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.  February 26, 1855

This shows that this is still a good place for clams, as it was in Indian days.   February 26, 1855

I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs . . . Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice?  February 26, 1856

The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. February 26, 1856

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow.  February 26, 1855

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.  February 26, 1855

Now we begin to see the Cladonia rangiferina ("reindeer moss") in the dry pastures.  February 26, 1852

Observe for the first time on and about Bear Hill in Lincoln the "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen, which every child has admired. February 26, 1852

I love to find it where the rocks will split into their laminae so that I can easily carry away a specimen.  February 26, 1852

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, — the weeds, trees, etc., are covered with the most of a glaze thus far, — but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. February 26, 1854

The wind rises and the rain increases. The rain is fast washing off all the glaze. February 26, 1854

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other. February 26, 1854

The quantity of water which is fallen is by no means remarkable but, the ground being frozen, it is not soaked up. February 26, 1854

There is more water on the surface than before this winter. February 26, 1854

The water is about six inches above Hoar's steps.  That well covers the meadows generally.  February 26, 1860

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. February 26, 1855

When the weather became colder and froze, the new ice only reached part way up these cakes, which lay high and dry. February 26, 1855

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. February 26, 1855

Examined the floating meadow again to-day. It is more than a foot thick, the under part much mixed with ice, — ice and muck.  February 26, 1851

It appeared to me that the meadow surface had been heaved by the frost, and then the water had run down and under it, and finally, when the ice rose, lifted it up, wherever there was ice enough mixed with it to float it.  February 26, 1851

I saw large cakes of ice with other large cakes, the latter as big as a table, on top of them.  February 26, 1851

Probably the former rose while the latter were already floating about.  February 26, 1851

The plants scattered about were bulrushes and lily-pad stems.  February 26, 1851

I saw Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas to-day grown half an inch (!!), whose starting I heard of on the 18th. February 26, 1857

See five red-wings and a song sparrow(?) this afternoon.  February 26, 1851

Paint the bottom of my boat. February 26, 1857

****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring 

 The Red-wing Arrives

The Song Sparrow Sings

****

February 26, 2017

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")
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.")
February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence. ")
February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, - ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly.")
February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees.")
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 9, 1856 ("How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way.")
February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney.")
February 14, 1854 ("I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue.")
February 17, 1860 ("Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. . . .thermometer 14º.")
February 18, 1856 ("Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably!”)
February 23, 1855 ("I see no cracks in the ground this year yet.")
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 24, 1857 (“I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.”)
February 25, 1857 ("I hear of lilac buds expanding, but have not looked at them.")


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.")
March 8, 1860 ("I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while.")
March 9, 1855 (“Painted the bottom of my boat. ”)
March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”)
March 15, 1854 (“Paint my boat.”)
March 16, 1860 (“As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been de barred for three months and a half.”)
March 17, 1857 (“Launch my boat.”)
March 18, 1852 ("There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow.")
March 28, 1852 (' See . . .dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season")
April 15, 1860 ("Strong northwest wind and cold.. . .We are continually expecting warmer weather than we have”)

February 26, 2022

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

  February 24  <<<<<  February 26   >>>>>  February 27 

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   February 26

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/HDT26Feb

A snowy bridge over mill brook

February 26

To Hubbard’s Close. 

I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. The brook has part way yet a snowy bridge over it. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? 

In Hubbard’s maple swamp beyond, I see the snow under a dead maple, where a woodpecker has drilled a handsome round hole. Excepting the carrying it downward within, it is ready for a nest. May they not have a view to this use even now?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1856

Two dead frogs. See March 8, 1860 ("I saw, in Monroe's well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while."); March 28, 1852 ("Dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season.") See also February 18, 1857 (“When I approached the bank of a ditch this after noon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom.”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

Snow bridges the brook

two dead frogs at the bottom

killed by cold and ice.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A snowy bridge over mill brook

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/HDT-560226

A Book of the Seasons: February 25.

February 25

February 25, 2025

Waves on the meadows.
Large cakes of ice blown up-stream
against Hubbard’s Bridge.
February 25, 1851

Well Meadow Brook–

am surprised to see minnows

only an inch long.

February 25, 1856 

Feel your pulse – measure

your health by your sympathy

with morning and spring.

February 25, 1859

First silvery sheen
from needles of the white pine
waving in the wind.
February 25, 1860

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 © 2009-2016

The bee tree felled

February 25

P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven. 

The only bare ground is the railroad track, where the snow is thin. The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven. 

Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. 

As I stand there, see that they have just felled my bee tree, the hemlock. The chopper even now stands at its foot. I go over and see him cut into the cavity by my direction. He breaks a piece out of his axe as big as my nail against a hemlock knot in the meanwhile. There is no comb within. 

They have just been cutting wood at Bittern Cliff. The sweet syrup is out on the ends of the hickory logs there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1856

The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven. See February 8, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now . . . a thin crust over all the snow."); February 12, 1856 ("The snow or crust and cold weather began December 26th, and not till February 7th was there any considerable relenting, when it rained a little . . .and no serious thaw till the 11th, or yesterday."); February 13, 1856 ("Avery firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction."); February 14, 1856 ("I can now walk on the crust in every direction at the Andromeda Swamp;");  February 28, 1856 ("I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th,")

Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long. See March 18, 1856 ("Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long . . . Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun.");  March 19, 1856 ("No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth . . . They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach. ")See also March 9, 1854 ("I detect the trout minnows not an inch long by their quick motions or quirks, soon concealing themselves.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Ripples made by Fishes

Felled my bee tree. See September 30, 1852 ("Custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "); 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. They had evidently come forth from their hive (perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by), and had fallen on the snow chilled to death. Their bodies extended from the tree to about three rods from it toward the pond. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey.");  March 4, 1852 (" I cut my initials on the bee tree")

February 25. See  Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 25

Well Meadow Brook–

am surprised to see minnows

in an open place. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The bee tree felled

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 ©  2009-2026

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