It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.

February 28. 

February 28

Nearly two inches of snow in the night. 

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow. It was following up this rill, often not more than thrice as wide as itself, and sometimes its precise locality concealed under ice and snow, yet he kept exactly above it on the snow through all its windings, where it was open occasionally taking to the water and sometimes swimming under the ice a rod or two. 

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? 

At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. 

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. 

It is a singular infatuation that leads men to become clergymen in regular, or even irregular, standing. I pray to be introduced to new men, at whom I may stop short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I seem to see some in distinct scheme hovering about, to which he has lent himself, to which he belongs. It is a very fine cob web in the lower stratum of the air, which stronger wings do not even discover. Whatever he may say, he does not know that one day is as good as another. Whatever he may say, he does not know that a man's creed can never be written, that there are no particular expressions of belief that deserve to be prominent. He dreams of a certain sphere to be filled by him, something less in diameter than a great circle, maybe not greater than a hogshead. All the staves are got out, and his sphere is already hooped. What's the use of talking to him? When you spoke of sphere-music he thought only of a thumping on his cask. If he doesn't know something that nobody else does, that nobody told him, then he 's a telltale. What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of? In course of time they will abolish the one form of servitude, and, not long after, the other. I do not see the necessity for a man's getting into a hogshead and so narrowing his sphere, nor for his putting his head into a halter. Here 's a man who can't butter his own bread, and he has just combined with a thousand like him to make a dipped toast for all eternity! 

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. The snow lies on the ice in large but very shallow drifts, shaped, methinks, much like the holes in ice, broad crescents (apparently) convex to the northwest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1857

The track, apparently of a muskrat (?) , — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail . . . Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? See February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. “); January 3, 1860 (“Melvin . . . speaks of the mark of the [muskrat] tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow, — as if made by a case-knife.”); January 31, 1856 ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.") See also January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . .similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. See February 28, 1856 ("A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created. . .; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.")

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. See January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”); April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”); April 8, 1855 (“As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Earliest Flower

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. See March 30, 1852  ("From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed,. . . I never knew before exactly where the channel was.");  March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open.");  March 29, 1855 ("Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.");