How silent are the footsteps of Spring!

March 30.

March 30, 2016

P. M. — To Walden and Fair Haven. 

Still cold and blustering. I come out to see the sand and subsoil in the Deep Cut, as I would to see a spring flower, some redness in the cheek of Earth.

These cold days have made the ice of Walden dry and pretty hard again at top. It is just twenty-four inches thick in the middle, about eleven inches of snow ice. It has lost but a trifle on the surface. The inside is quite moist, the clear ice very crystalline and leaky, letting the water up from below, so as to hinder my cutting. It seems to be more porous and brittle than the snow ice. 

I go to Fair Haven via the Andromeda Swamps. The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. There is a little bare ground in and next to the swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow, where the springs and little black rills are flowing. I see already one blade, three or four inches long, of that purple or lake grass, lying flat on some water, between snow—clad banks, — the first leaf with a rich bloom on it. 

How silent are the footsteps of Spring! 

There, too, where there is a fraction of the meadow, two rods over, quite bare, under the bank, in this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two); and the Caltha palustris bud, which shows yellowish; and the golden saxifrage, green and abundant; also there are many fresh tender leaves of (apparently) the gold thread in open meadow there, all surrounded and hemmed in by snow, which has covered the ground since Christmas and stretches as far as you can see on every side; and there are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw. 

The spring advances in spite of snow and ice, and cold even. 

The ground under the snow has long since felt the influence of the spring sun, whose rays fall at a more favorable angle. The tufts or tussocks next the edge of the snow were crowned with dense phalanxes of stiff spears of the stiff triangularish sedge-grass, five inches high but quite yellow with a very slight greenness at the tip, showing that they pushed up through the snow, which melting, they had not yet acquired color. This is the greatest growth of any plant I have seen. I had not suspected any. 

I can just see a little greening on our bare and dry south bank. In warm recesses and clefts in meadows and rocks in the midst of ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vegetation commences and steadily advances. 

I find Fair Haven Pond and the river lifted up a foot or more, the result of the long, steady thaw in the sun. The water of the pond and river has run over the meadows, mixing with and partly covering the snow, making it somewhat difficult to get into the river on the east side. On the east side of the pond, the ice next the shore is still frozen to the bottom under water by one edge, while the other slants upward to meet the main body of the ice of the pond. This sort of canal on one or both sides of the river is from a rod to three or four rods wide. This is the most decided step toward breaking up as yet.

But the pond and river are very solid yet. I walk over the pond and down on the middle of the river to the bridge, without seeing an opening. 

See probably a hen-hawk (?) (black tips to wings), sailing low over the low cliff next the river, looking probably for birds. [May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.] 

The south hillsides no sooner begin to be bare, and the striped squirrels and birds resort there, than the hawks come from southward to prey on them. I think that even the hen-hawk is here in winter only as the robin is. 

For twenty-five rods the Corner road is impassable to horses, because of their slumping in the old snow; and a new path has been dug, which a fence shuts off the old. Thus they have served the roads on all sides the town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1856

See probably a hen hawk (?) ... may have been a marsh hawk or harrier. See March 27, 1855 (“See . . . [the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male.] Slate-colored; . . . black tips to wings and white rump.”); March 29, 1854 ("See two marsh hawks (?), white on rump... think I saw a hen-hawk”);  March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter."); March 15, 1860 ("These hawks[hen-hawks], as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters. . . . An easily recognized figure anywhere.”); March 23, 1859 (“. . .we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves.”).  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk. Note What HDT calls the "marsh hawk/hen harrier" is the northern harrier.   The “hen-hawk” is the red-tailed  hawk. ~ zphx

The south hillsides no sooner begin to be bare, and the striped squirrels and birds resort there, than the hawks come from southward to prey on them. See March 30, 1853 ("Hawks are hunting now. You have not to sit long on the Cliffs before you see one.") 

The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. See February 19, 1856 (" seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level."); March 26, 1857 ("Men will hardly believe me when I tell them of the thickness of snow and ice at this time last year.")

Rob and Eldred cut down trees at both views it really has improved things, the view spectacular but it is a sad day for the trees there is of course a jumble at the base. We survey the upper view around sunset. And somehow in the dark coming to the Moss Trail up the trail we go and then made a trail at the top of it I thought towards our land but when we left the marked area we walked and walked and talked and said she frankly didn't know where we were I got out the compass and we were headed east we found the main  Kendall trail and presently she said I think we should cut through here we come out somewhat south of where we usually do to ascend what I call the Saddletrail and go to sit at the view again. 20160330 Zphx