A Book of the Seasons: March 28.

March 28.

Smoky maple swamps

now have a reddish tinge from

their expanding buds.

March 28, 1852

Too cold for birds to sing

and for me to hear,

the bluebird’s warble

comes feeble and 

frozen to my ear.

March 28, 1855

It is a stone fruit,

mind-print of the oldest men.

Each one yields a thought.

March 28, 1859

So I help myself

to live worthily, loving

my life as I should.

March 28, 1859

I help myself live

in proper season, loving

my life as I should.

March 28, 1859

10.15 P. M. — The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. They will probably settle in the river. Who knows but they had expected to find the pond open?  March 28, 1852

As for the singing of birds, — the few that have come to us, — it is too cold for them to sing and for me to hear. The bluebird’s warble comes feeble and frozen to my ear. March 28, 1855

Uncle Charles buried. He was born in February, 1780, the winter of the Great Snow, and he dies in the winter of another great snow,—a life bounded by great snows. March 28, 1856

Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that. For a long time you have appeared further and further off to me. I see that you will at length disappear altogether. For a season my path seems lonely without you. The meadows are like barren ground. The memory of me is steadily passing away from you.  My path grows narrower and steeper, and the night is approaching. March 28, 1856

There is consolation in the fact that a particular evil, which perhaps we suffer, is of a venerable antiquity, for it proves its necessity and that it is part of the order, not disorder, of the universe. When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring. Thus they have fallen on fate. And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here. March 28, 1857

On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. March 28, 1858

 I landed on two spots this afternoon and picked up a dozen arrowheads. It is one of the regular pursuits of the spring. As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travellers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads when the proper season comes round again. So I help my self to live worthily, and loving my life as I should . . . Many as I have found, methinks the last one gives me about the same delight that the first did. Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America . . . It is a stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought . . . It was originally winged for but a short flight, but it still, to my mind's eye, wings its way through the ages, bearing a message from the hand that shot it. Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men. March 28, 1859

If you scan the horizon at this season of the year you are very likely to detect a small flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese against the sky. March 28, 1859

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 © 2009-2020