A load of hay in the winter revives the memory of past summers!

January 5. 

January 5, 2020

P. M. – I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. 

Mr. Hosmer is loading hay in his barn. It is meadow hay, and I am interested in it chiefly as a botanist. If meadow-hay is of less worth in the market, it is more interesting to the poet. In this there is a large proportion of Osmunda regalis. But I fear that in the long run it is not so interesting to the cattle to contemplate and chew this as English hay and clover. 

How completely a load of hay in the winter revives the memory of past summers! Summer in us is only a little dried like it. The rowen in Hosmer's barn has a finer and greener look than the first crop. 

And so the ferns in coal remind us of summer still longer past.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1858


I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. See  March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? "); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”); 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”);  November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter.") 

How completely a load of hay in the winter revives the memory of past summers! See October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

And so the ferns in coal remind us of summer still longer past. See June 5, 1857 ("Those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal."); July 23, 1856 ("That fern leaf on my coal ")