When the surface of the earth generally begins to be dry.

March 31. 

The frost is out of our garden, and I see one or two plowing early land. You walk dry now over this sandy land where the frost is melted, even after heavy rain, and there is no slumping in it, for there is no hard-pan and ice to hold the water and make a batter of the surface soil. This is a new condition of things when the surface of the earth generally begins to be dry. 

But there is still much frost in cold ground, and I often feel the crust which was heaved by it sink under me, and for some time have noticed the chinks where the frozen ground has gaped and erected itself from and over stones and sleepers. 

P. M. — To Holbrook's improvements. 

Many painted turtles out along a ditch in Moore's Swamp. These the first I have seen, the water is so high in the meadows. One drops into the water from some dead brush which lies in it, and leaves on the brush two of its scales. Perhaps the sun causes the loosened scales to curl up, and so helps the turtle to get rid of them. 

Humphrey Buttrick says that he has shot two kinds of little dippers, — the one black, the other with some white. 

I see, on a large ant-hill, largish ants at work, front half reddish, back half black, but on another, very large ant-hill near by (a rod to left of Holbrook's road, perhaps fifty rods this side of his clearing on the north side), five feet through, there none out. 

It will show how our prejudices interfere with our perception of color, to state that yesterday morning, after making a fire in the kitchen cooking-stove, as I sat over it I thought I saw a little bit of red or scarlet flannel on a chink near a bolt-head on the stove, and I tried to pick it out, — while I was a little surprised that I did not smell it burning. It was merely the reflection of the flame of the fire through a chink, on the dark stove. This showed me what the true color of the flame was, but when I knew what this was, it was not very easy to perceive it again. It appeared now more yellowish. I think that my senses made the truest report the first time. 

The wood frogs lie spread out on the surface of the sheltered pools in the woods, cool and windy as it is, dimpling the water by their motions, and as you approach you hear their lively wurk wurrk wur-r-k, but, seeing you, they suddenly hist and perhaps dive to the bottom. 

It is a very windy afternoon, wind northwest, and at length a dark cloud rises on that side, evidently of a windy structure, a dusky mass with lighter intervals, like a parcel of brushes lying side by side, — a parcel of "mare's-tails " perhaps. It winds up with a flurry of rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1859

Many painted turtles out along a ditch in Moore's Swamp. These the first I have seen,  See March 31, 1857 ("The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge...”); March 31, 1858 ("Ordinarily at this season, the meadows being flooded,. . . I first noticed them underwater on the meadow. But this year it is but a step for them to the sunny bank, and the shores of the Assabet and of ditches are lined with them “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Humphrey Buttrick says that he has shot two kinds of little dippers, — the one black, the other with some white. See March 27, 1858 ("At length I detect two little dippers . . . They are male and female close together . . . The female is apparently uniformly black, or rather dark brown, but the male has a conspicuous crest, with, apparently, white on the hindhead, a white breast, and white line on the lower side of the neck; i. e., the head and breast are black and white conspicuously.”);  December 26, 1857 ("Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot.”) . “Little dipper” is  Thoreau's name for various small diving birds, perhaps the buffle-head (Fuligulaalbeola), sometimes the pied billed or horned grebe (Podiceps auritus). See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

The wood frogs lie spread out on the surface of the sheltered pools in the woods, cool and windy as it is, dimpling the water by their motions, and as you approach you hear their lively wurk wurrk wur-r-k. See March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill. . . .  The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking . . .) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.”); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking . . . Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun."); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”). Compare March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes.. . .I listen in vain to hear a frog”). And see note to May 6, 1858 (the frogs of Massachusetts) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

Singing and whistling at the same time.

March 30. 

March 30, 2016

6 a.m. — To Hill (across water). 

Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit; not that he is excited by fear, I think, but so full is he of animal spirits that he makes a great ado about the least event. 

At first he scratches on the bark very rapidly with his hind feet without moving the fore feet. He makes so many queer sounds, and so different from one another, that you would think they came from half a dozen creatures. I hear now two sounds from him of a very distinct character, — a low or base inward, worming, screwing, or brewing, kind of sound (very like that, by the way, which an anxious partridge mother makes) and at the same time a very sharp and shrill bark, and clear, on a very high key, totally distinct from the last, — while his tail is flashing incessantly. 

You might say that he successfully accomplished the difficult feat of singing and whistling at the same time. 

P. M. — To Walden via Hubbard's Close. 

The green-bodied flies out on sheds, and probably nearly as long as the other; the same size as the house-fly. 

I see numerous large skaters on a ditch. This may be the Gerris lacustris, but its belly is not white, only whitish in certain lights. It has six legs, two feelers (the two foremost legs being directed forward), a stout-ish body, and brown above. The belly looks whitish when you look at it edgewise, but turned quite over (on its back), it is brown. 

A very small brown grasshopper hops into the water. 

I notice again (in the spring-holes in Hubbard's Close) that water purslane, being covered with water, is an evergreen, — though it is reddish. 

Little pollywogs two inches long are lively there. 

See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and female, as is common. So they have for some time paired. They are a hundred rods off. The male the larger, with his black head and white breast, the female with a red head. With my glass I see the long red bills of both. They swim at first one way near together, then tack and swim the other, looking around incessantly, never quite at their ease, wary and watchful for foes. A man cannot walk down to the shore or stand out on a hill overlooking the pond without disturbing them. They will have an eye upon him. 

The locomotive-whistle makes every wild duck start that is floating within the limits of the town. I see that these ducks are not here for protection alone, for at last they both dive, and remain beneath about forty pulse-beats, — and again, and again. I think they are looking for fishes. Perhaps, therefore, these divers are more likely to alight in Walden than the black ducks are. 

Hear the hovering note of a snipe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1859

Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit; not that he is excited by fear, I think, but so full is he of animal spirits that he makes a great ado about the least event. See October 5, 1857 (“I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel. . . .  It is evident that all this ado does not proceed from fear. There is at the bottom, no doubt, an excess of inquisitiveness and caution, but the greater part is make-believe and a love of the marvellous.) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

I see numerous large skaters on a ditch. See March 29, 1853 ("Tried several times to catch a skater. Got my hand close to him; grasped at him as quick as possible; was sure I had got him this time; let the water run out between my fingers; hoped I had not crushed him; opened my hand; and lo! he was not there. I never succeeded in catching one.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and female, as is common. . .  They swim at first one way near together, then tack and swim the other, looking around incessantly, never quite at their ease, wary and watchful for foes. See March 30, 1858 ("The full plumaged males, conspicuously black and white and often swimming in pairs, appeared to be the most wary, keeping furthest out. ").See also March 27, 1858 ("They are now pairing. . . .At first we see only a male and female quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, tacking back and forth and looking every way."); April 7, 1855 ("But they will let you come only within some sixty rods ordinarily. I observe that they are uneasy at sight of me and begin to sail away in different directions."). Also see A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

Hear the hovering note of a snipe. See March 29, 1858 ("At the first pool I also scared up a snipe. It rises with a single cra-a-ckand goes off with its zigzag flight, with its bill presented to the earth, ready to charge bayonets against the inhabitants of the mud.”); April 1, 1853 ("Now, at early starlight, I hear the Snipe’s hovering note as he circles over Nawshawtuct Meadow. . . . It sounds very much like a winnowing-machine increasing rapidly in intensity for a few seconds.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snipe

A pair of ravens 

now crossing in front of us

in erratic flight.

March 30, 2019

Walden is first clear after to-day.

March 29. 

March 29, 2019

Driving rain and southeast wind, etc. 

Walden is first clear after to-day. 

Garfield says he saw a woodcock about a fortnight ago. Minott thinks the middle of March is as early as they come and that they do not then begin to lay.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1859


Walden is first clear after to-day. See March 28, 1858 ("Walden is open.");  March 29, 1855 ("Walden is more than half open") and note to March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.")

Garfield says he saw a woodcock about a fortnight ago. See March 28, 1854 ("See this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock; it appears rather small for the last. Pond opening on the northeast."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock

Stone fruit II

March 28. 

P. M. — Paddle to the Bedford line. 

It is now high time to look for arrowheads, etc. I spend many hours every spring gathering the crop which the melting snow and rain have washed bare. When, at length, some island in the meadow or some sandy field elsewhere has been plowed, perhaps for rye, in the fall, I take note of it, and do not fail to repair thither as soon as the earth begins to be dry in the spring. If the spot chances never to have been cultivated before, I am the first to gather a crop from it. 

The farmer little thinks that another reaps a harvest which is the fruit of his toil. As much ground is turned up in a day by the plow as Indian implements could not have turned over in a month, and my eyes rest on the evidences of an aboriginal life which passed here a thousand years ago perchance. 

Especially if the knolls in the meadows are washed by a freshet where they have been plowed the previous fall, the soil will be taken away lower down and the stones left, — the arrow heads, etc., and soapstone pottery amid them, — some what as gold is washed in a dish or torn. 

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. 

It is a good collyrium to look on the bare earth, — to pore over it so much, getting strength to all your senses, like Antaeus. If I did not find arrowheads, I might, per chance, begin to pick up crockery and fragments of pipes, — the relics of a more recent man. Indeed, you can hardly name a more innocent or wholesome entertainment. As I am thus engaged, I hear the rumble of the bowling-alley's thunder, which has be gun again in the village. It comes before the earliest natural thunder. But what its lightning is, and what atmospheres it purifies, I do not know. Or I might collect the various bones which I come across. They would make a museum that would delight some Owen at last, and what a text they might furnish me for a course of lectures on human life or the like! I might spend my days collecting the fragments of pipes until I found enough, after all my search, to compose one perfect pipe when laid together. 

I have not decided whether I had better publish my experience in searching for arrowheads in three volumes, with plates and an index, or try to compress it into one. These durable implements seem to have been suggested to the Indian mechanic with a view to my entertainment in a succeeding period. After all the labor expended on it, the bolt may have been shot but once perchance, and the shaft which was devoted to it decayed, and there lay the arrowhead, sinking into the ground, awaiting me.

They lie all over the hills with like expectation, and in due time the husbandman is sent, and, tempted by the promise of corn or rye, he plows the land and turns them up to my view. 

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. 

You may have your peculiar tastes. Certain localities in your town may seem from association unattractive and uninhabitable to you. You may wonder that the land bears any money value there, and pity some poor fellow who is said to survive in that neighborhood. 

But plow up a new field there, and you will find the omnipresent arrow-points strewn over it, and it will appear that the red man, with other tastes and associations, lived there too. 

No matter how far from the modern road or meeting-house, no matter how near. 

They lie in the meeting-house cellar, and they lie in the distant cow-pasture. 

And some collections which were made a century ago by the curious like myself have been dispersed again, and they are still as good as new. 

You cannot tell the third-hand ones (for they are all second-hand) from the others, such is their persistent out-of-door durability; for they were chiefly made to be lost. 

They are sown, like a grain that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the earth. 

Like the dragon's teeth which bore a crop of soldiers, these bear crops of philosophers and poets, and the same seed is just as good to plant again. 

It is a stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought. I come nearer to the maker of it than if I found his bones. 

His bones would not prove any wit that wielded them, such as this work of his bones does. It is humanity inscribed on the face of the earth, patent to my eyes as soon as the snow goes off, not hidden away in some crypt or grave or under a pyramid. No disgusting mummy, but a clean stone, the best symbol or letter that could have been transmitted to me. 

The Red Man, his mark 

At every step I see it, and I can easily supply the "Tahatawan" or 'Mantatuket " that might have been written if he had had a clerk. 

It is no single inscription on a particular rock, but a footprint — rather a mind-print — left everywhere, and altogether illegible. No vandals, however vandalic in their disposition, can be so industrious as to destroy them. 

Time will soon destroy the works of famous painters and sculptors, but the Indian arrowhead will balk his efforts and Eternity will have to come to his aid.

They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them.

 I would fain know that I am treading in the tracks of human game, — that I am on the trail of mind, — and these little reminders never fail to set me right. When I see these signs I know that the subtle spirits that made them are not far off, into whatever form transmuted. What if you do plow and hoe amid them, and swear that not one stone shall be left upon another ? They are only the less like to break in that case. When you turn up one layer you bury another so much the more securely. They are at peace with rust. This arrow-headed character promises to outlast all others. The larger pestles and axes may, perchance, grow scarce and be broken, but the arrowhead shall, perhaps, never cease to wing its way through the ages to eternity. 

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. 

When some Vandal chieftain has razed to the earth the British Museum, and, perchance, the winged bulls from Nineveh shall have lost most if not all of their features, the arrowheads which the museum contains will, perhaps, find themselves at home again in familiar dust, and resume their shining in new springs upon the bared surface of the earth then, to be picked up for the thousandth time by the shepherd or savage that may be wandering there, and once more suggest their story to him. Indifferent they to British Museums, and, no doubt, Nineveh bulls are old acquaintances of theirs, for they have camped on the plains of Mesopotamia, too, and were buried with the winged bulls. 

They cannot be said to be lost nor found. Surely their use was not so much to bear its fate to some bird or quadruped, or man, as it was to lie here near the surface of the earth for a perpetual reminder to the generations that come after. As for museums, I think  it is better to let Nature take care of our antiquities. These are our antiquities, and they are cleaner to think of than the rubbish of the Tower of London, and they are a more ancient armor than is there. It is a re commendation that they are so inobvious, — that they occur only to the eye and thought that chances to be directed toward them. When you pick up an arrowhead and put it in your pocket, it may say : 

"Eh, you think you have got me, do you ? But I shall wear a hole in your pocket at last, or if you put me in your cabinet, your heir or great-grandson will forget me or throw me out the window directly, or when the house falls I shall drop into the cellar, and there I shall lie quite at home again. Ready to be found again, eh ? Perhaps some new red man that is to come will fit me to a shaft and make me do his bidding for a bow-shot. What reck I ?" 

As we were paddling over the Great Meadows, I saw at a distance, high in the air above the middle of the meadow, a very compact flock of blackbirds advancing against the sun. Though there were more than a hundred, they did not appear to occupy more than six feet in breadth, but the whole flock was dashing first to the right and then to the left. When advancing straight toward me and the sun, they made but little impression on the eye, — so many fine dark points merely, seen against the sky, — but as often as they wheeled to the right or left, displaying their wings flat wise and the whole length of their bodies, they were a very conspicuous black mass. This fluctuation in the amount of dark surface was a very pleasing phenomenon. It reminded me [of] those blinds whose sashes [sic] ting nearly all the light and now entirely excluding it; so the flock of blackbirds opened and shut. But at length they suddenly spread out and dispersed, some flying off this way, and others that, as, when a wave strikes against a cliff, it is dashed upward and lost in fine spray. So they lost their compactness and impetus and broke up suddenly in mid-air. 

We see eight geese floating afar in the middle of the meadow, at least half a mile off, plainly (with glass) much larger than the ducks in their neighborhood and the white on their heads very distinct. When at length they arise and fly off northward, their peculiar heavy undulating wings, blue-heron-like and unlike any duck, are very noticeable. 

The black, sheldrake, etc., move their wings rapidly, and remind you of paddle-wheel steamers. Methinks the wings of the black duck appear to be set very far back when it is flying. The meadows, which are still covered far and wide, are quite alive with black ducks. 

When walking about on the low east shore at the Bedford bound, I heard a faint honk, and looked around over the water with my glass, thinking it came from that side or perhaps from a farmyard in that direction. I soon heard it again, and at last we detected a great flock passing over, quite on the other side of us and pretty high up. From time to time one of the company uttered a short note, that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. These were in a single undulating line, and, as usual, one or two were from time to time crowded out of the line, apparently by the crowding of those in the rear, and were flying on one side and trying to recover their places, but at last a second short line was formed, meeting the long one at the usual angle and making a figure somewhat like a hay-hook. I suspect it will be found that there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, — that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, — and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides. 

The great gulls fly generally up or down the river valley, cutting off the bends of the river, and so do these geese. These fly sympathizing with the river, — a stream in the air, soon lost in the distant sky. 

We see these geese swimming and flying at midday and when it is perfectly fair. 

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. 

Perhaps it is this easterly wind which brings geese, as it did on the 24th. 

Ball's Hill, with its withered oak leaves and its pines, looks very fair to-day, a mile and a half off across the water, through a very thin varnish or haze. It reminds me of the isle which was called up from the bottom of the sea, which was given to Apollo. 

How charming the contrast of land and water, especially a temporary island in the flood, with its new and tender shores of waving outline, so withdrawn yet habitable, above all if it rises into a hill high above the water and contrasting with it the more, and if that hill is wooded, suggesting wildness ! 

Our vernal lakes have a beauty to my mind which they would not possess if they were more permanent. Everything is in rapid flux here, suggesting that Nature is alive to her extremities and superficies. To-day we sail swiftly on dark rolling waves or paddle over a sea as smooth as a mirror, unable to touch the bottom, where mowers work and hide their jugs in August; coasting the edge of maple swamps, where alder tassels and white maple flowers are kissing the tide that has risen to meet them. 

But this particular phase of beauty is fleeting. Nature has so many shows for us she cannot afford to give much time to this. In a few days, perchance, these lakes will have all run away to the sea. 

Such are the pictures which she paints. When we look at our masterpieces we see only dead paint and its vehicle, which suggests no liquid life rapidly flowing off from beneath. In the former case — in Nature — it is constant surprise and novelty. In many arrangements there is a wearisome monotony. We know too well what [we] shall have for our Saturday's dinner, but each day's feast in Nature's year is a surprise to us and adapted to our appetite and spirits. She has arranged such an order of feasts as never tires. Her motive is not economy but satisfaction. 

As we sweep past the north end of Poplar Hill, with a sand-hole in it, its now dryish, pale-brown mottled sward clothing its rounded slope, which was lately saturated with moisture, presents very agreeable hues. In this light, in fair weather, the patches of now dull- greenish mosses contrast just regularly enough with the pale-brown grass. It is like some rich but modest- colored Kidderminster carpet, or rather the skin of a monster python tacked to the hillside and stuffed with earth. 


These earth colors, methinks, are never so fair as in the spring. Now the green mosses and lichens contrast with the brown grass, but ere long the surface will be uniformly green. I suspect that we are more amused by the effects of color in the skin of the earth now than in summer. Like the skin of a python, greenish and brown, a fit coat for it to creep over the earth and be concealed in. Or like the skin of a pard, the great leopard mother that Nature is, where she lies at length, exposing her flanks to the sun. I feel as if I could land to stroke and kiss the very sward, it is so fair. It is homely and domestic to my eyes like the rug that lies before my hearth-side. Such ottomans and divans are spread for us to recline on. Nor are these colors mere thin superficial figures, vehicles for paint, but wonderful living growths, — these lichens, to the study of which learned men have devoted their lives, — and libraries have been written about them. The earth lies out now like a leopard, drying her lichen and moss spotted skin in the sun, her sleek and variegated hide. I know that the few raw spots will heal over. Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the color of the poor man's loaf.  The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only for October feasts, which would make us sick if eaten every day. 

One side of each wave and ripple is dark and the other light blue, reflecting the sky, — as I look down on them from my boat, — and these colors (?) combined produce a dark blue at a distance. These blue spaces ever remind me of the blue in the iridescence produced by oily matter on the surface, for you are slow to regard it as a reflection of the sky. The rippling undulating surface over which you glide is like a changeable blue silk garment. 

Here, where in August the bittern booms in the grass, and mowers march en echelon and whet their scythes and crunch  the ripe wool-grass, raised now a  few feet, you scud before the wind in your tight bark and listen to the surge (or sough ?) of the great waves sporting around you, while you hold the steering-oar and your mast bends to the gale and you stow all your ballast to windward. The crisped sound of surging waves that rock you, that ceaseless roll and gambol, and ever and anon break into your boat. 

Deep lie the seeds of the rhexia now, absorbing wet from the flood, but in a few months this mile-wide lake will have gone to the other side of the globe; and the tender rhexia will lift its head on the drifted hum mocks in dense patches, bright and scarlet as a flame, — such succession have we here, — where the wild goose and countless wild ducks have floated and dived above them. So Nature condenses her matter. She is a thousand thick. So many crops the same surface bears. 

Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly, — are more at home with the water under them. Each flock runs the gantlet of a thousand gunners, and when you see them steer off from you and your boat you may remember how great their experience in such matters may be, how many such boats and gunners they have seen and avoided between here and Mexico, and even now, perchance (though you, low plodding, little dream it), they see one or two more lying in wait ahead. They have an experienced ranger of the air for their guide. The echo of one gun hardly dies away before they see another pointed at them. How many bullets or smaller shot have sped in vain toward their ranks! Ducks fly more irregularly and shorter distances at a time. The geese rest in fair weather by day only in the midst of our broadest meadow or pond. So they go, anxious and earnest to hide their nests under the pole. 

The gulls seem used to boats and sails and will often fly quite near without manifesting alarm.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1859

See November 2, 1852 (“The pond, dark before, was now a glorious and indescribable blue, mixed with dark, perhaps the opposite side of the wave, a sort of changeable or watered-silk blue, more cerulean if possible than the sky itself, which was now seen overhead. It required a certain division of the sight, however, to discern this. Like the colors on a steel sword-blade.”); April 9, 1859 (“ You could sit there and watch these blue shadows playing over the surface like the light and shade on changeable silk, for hours. Looking down from a hillside partly from the sun, these points and dashes look dark-blue, almost black. Standing low and more opposite to the sun, then all these dark-blue ripples are all sparkles too bright to look at. Water agitated by the wind is both far brighter and far darker than smooth water.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring

Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March,

March 27. 

7 a. m. — Was that the Alauda, shore lark (?), which flew up from the corn-field beyond Texas house, and dashed off so swiftly with a peculiar note, — a small flock of them? 

P. M. — Sail from Cardinal Shore up Otter Bay, close to Deacon Farrar's. I see a gull flying over Fair Haven Pond which appears to have a much duskier body beneath than the common near by, though about the same size. Can it be another species? 

The wind is so nearly west to-day that we sail up from Cardinal Shore to the pond, and from the road up what I will call Otter Bay, behind Farrar's, and, returning, sail from the road at Creel (or Pole) Brook to Pond Island and from Hallowell willows to railroad. 

The water is quite high still, and we sail up Otter Bay, I think, more than half a mile, to within a very short distance of Farrar's. This is an interesting and wild place. There is an abundance of low willows whose catkins are now conspicuous, rising four to six or seven feet above the water, thickly placed on long wand-like osiers. They look, when you look from the sun, like dead gray twigs or branches (whose wood is exposed) of bushes in the light, but, nearer, are recognized for the pretty bright buttons of the willow. We sail by masses of these silvery buttons two or three rods long, rising above the water. By their color they have relation to the white clouds and the sky and to the snow and ice still lingering in a few localities. In order to see these silvery buttons in the greatest profusion, you must sail amid them on some flooded meadow or swamp like this. 

Our whole course, as we wind about in this bay, is lined also with the alder, whose pretty tassels, now many of them in full bloom, are hanging straight down, suggesting in a peculiar manner the influence of gravity, or are regularly blown one side. It is remarkable how modest and unobtrusive these early flowers are. The musquash and duck hunter or the farmer might and do commonly pass by them without perceiving them. They steal into the air and light of spring without being noticed for the most part. The sportsman seems to see a mass of weather-stained dead twigs showing their wood and partly covered with gray lichens and moss, and the flowers of the alder, now partly in bloom, maybe half, make the impression at a little distance of a collection of the brown twigs of winter — also are of the same color with many withered leaves. 

Twenty rods off, masses of alder in bloom look like masses of bare brown twigs, last year's twigs, and would be taken for such. 

Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain. 

The browns are the prevailing shades as yet, as in the withered grass and sedge and the surface of the earth, the withered leaves, and these brown flowers. 

I see from a hilltop a few very bright green spots a rod in diameter in the upper part of Farrar's meadow, which the water has left within a day or two. Going there, I find that a very powerful spring is welling up there, which, with water warm from the bowels of the earth, has caused the grass and several weeds, as Cardamine rhomboidca, etc., to grow thus early and luxuriantly, and perhaps it has been helped by the flood standing over it for some days. These are bright liquid green in the midst of brown and withered grass and leaves. Such are the spots where the grass is greenest now. 

C. says that he saw a turtle dove on the 25th. 

It is remarkable how long many things may be preserved by excluding the air and light and dust, moisture, etc. Those chalk-marks on the chamber-floor joists and timbers of the Hunt house, one of which was read by many "Feb. 1666," and all of which were in an ancient style of writing and expression, — "ye" for " the," etc., "enfine Brown," — were as fresh when exposed (having been plastered and cased over) as if made the day before. Yet a single day's rain completely obliterated some of them. 

Cousin Charles says that, on the timbers of a very old house recently taken down in Haverhill, the chalk-marks made by the framers, numbering the sticks, [were] as fresh as if just made. 

I saw a large timber over the middle of the best room of the Hunt house which had been cased, according to all accounts, at least a hundred years ago, the casing having just been taken off. I saw that the timber appeared to have been freshly hewn on the under side, and I asked the carpenter who was taking down the house what he had been hewing that timber for, — for it had evidently been done since it was put up and in a very inconvenient position, and I had no doubt that he had just done it, for the surface was as fresh and distinct from the other parts as a fresh whittling, — but he answered to my surprise that he had not touched it, it was so when he took the casing off. When the casing was put on, it had been roughly hewn by one standing beneath it, in order to reduce its thickness or perhaps to make it more level than it was. So distinct and peculiar is the weather-stain, and so indefinitely it may be kept off if you do not allow this painter to come [?] to your wood. 

Cousin Charles says that he took out of the old Haverhill house a very broad panel from over the fire place, which had a picture of Haverhill at some old period on it. The panel had been there perfectly sheltered in an inhabited house for more than a hundred years. It was placed in his shop and no moisture allowed to come near it, and yet it shrunk a quarter of an inch in width when the air came to both sides of it. 

He says that his men, who were digging a cellar last week on a southwest slope, found fifty-one snakes of various kinds and sizes — green, black, brown, etc. — about a foot underground, within two feet square (or cube ?). The frost was out just there, but not in many parts of the cellar. They could not run, they were so stiff, but they ran their tongues out. They did [not] take notice of any hole or cavity.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 27, 1859


Seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March:

• two alders.  See March 22, 1853 (" The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower.")
• the aspen. See March 21, 1855 ("aspen catkins are very conspicuous now.")
• the hazel. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs of life in the bush.")
• the maple.  See March 27, 1857 ("Leave the boat and run down to the white maples by the bridge. The white maple is well out with its pale [?] stamens on the southward boughs, and probably began about the 24th.")

See also March 21, 1858("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating"); March 26, 1857 ("The buds of the cowslip are very yellow, and the plant is not observed a rod off, it lies so low and close to the surface of the water in the meadow. It may bloom and wither there several times before villagers discover or suspect it")

What was that large rather grayish duck on Fair Haven Pond this afternoon?

March 26.

March 26, 2018

P. M. — To Conantum via Cardinal Shore and boat.

 The river has gone down considerably, but the rain of yesterday and to-day has checked its fall somewhat. 

Much earth has been washed away from the roots of grasses and weeds along the banks of the river, and many of those pretty little bodkin bulbs are exposed and so transported to new localities. This seems to be the way in which they are spread. 

I see many smallish ants on the red carcass of a musquash just skinned and lying on the bank, cold and wet as the weather is. They love this animal food. 

On the top of the hill at Lee's Cliff much wintergreen has been eaten; at least a great many leaves are lying loose, strewn about. 

I find washed up on the (Cardinal) shore a little bream about an inch and an eighth long, very much like those found at Walden last fall. It has about seven transverse bars, a similar dorsal fin, a reddish-copper iris, with the black vertical dash through the eye. I think it must be one of the common breams of the river, — though I see only the black spot on the operculum and not any red one, — and apparently all the young are thus striped (?) . 

What was that large rather grayish duck on Fair Haven Pond this afternoon? It was far off. Was it a last year's male sheldrake, or a female, or another?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1859

Much earth has been washed away from the roots of grasses and weeds along the banks of the river, and many of those pretty little bodkin bulbs are exposed and so transported to new localities. See April 22, 1856 ("What is that little bodkin-shaped bulb which I found washed up on the edge of the meadow, white with a few small greenish rounded leafets? "); April 16, 1858 ("The bodkin-like bulb, . . . is probably the water-purslane. I see it floating free and sending out many rootlets, on pools and ditches. In this way it spreads itself.")

On the top of the hill at Lee's Cliff much wintergreen has been eaten. See November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”); November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); December 23, 1855 (“At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, . . . checkerberry, wintergreen, . . .”); February 16, 1855 (“I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen.”); see also July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”)

A little bream about an inch and an eighth long, very much like those found at Walden last fall.  See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch. ... Yet, from their form and single dorsal fin, I think they are breams. Are they not a new species? "); November 27, 1858 ("They have about seven transverse dark bars, a vertical dark mark under eye, and a dark spot on edge of operculum. "); December 3, 1858 ("The largest of the four breams (vide November 26th) . . . Operculums tinged, streaked, and spotted with golden, coppery, greenish, and violet reflections. A vertical dark mark or line, corresponding to the stripes, through the eye. Iris copper-color or darker. ")

How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun.

March 25. 

A rainy day. 

P. M.— To Clamshell. 

I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. 

Again I walk in the rain and see the rich yellowish browns of the moist banks. These Clamshell hills and neighboring promontories, though it is a dark and rainy day, reflect a certain yellowish light from the wet withered grass which is very grateful to my eyes, as also the darker more reddish browns, as the radical leaves of the Andropogon scoparius in low tufts here and there. (Its culms, where they stand, are quite light yellow.) 

Surely russet is not the name which describes the fields and hillsides now, whether wet or dry. There is not red enough in it. I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." 

On the south side of these warm hills, it may perhaps be called one of the fawn-colors, i. e. brown inclining to green. 

Much of this peculiar yellowish color on the surface of the Clamshell plain is due to a little curled sedge or grass growing at short intervals, loosely covering the ground (with green mosses intermixed) in little tufts  like curled hair. 

I saw yesterday, in Laurel Glen, where the early sedge had been grazed very close to the ground, and the same, perhaps digested, fine as green-paint dust, lay around. Was it the work of a mouse? 

Day before yesterday, in clear, dry weather, we had pale-brown or fawn-colored earth, i. e., a dry, withered grass blade [color]; to-day, a more yellow brown or tawny, the same being wet. The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. The earth is more truly russet in November, when there is more redness left in the withered and withering vegetation. Such is the change in the color of the bare portions of the earth (i. e. bare of trees and bushes) produced by rain. 

Also the oak leaves are much redder. In fair weather the light color of these objects was simply a light reflected from them, originating in the sun and sky; now it is a more proper and inward light, which attracts and confines our attention to moist sward itself. 

A snipe flies away from the moist Clamshell shore, uttering its cr-a-ack c-r-r-rack. 

I thought the other day, How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun. 

A score of my townsmen have been shooting and trapping musquash and mink of late. Some have got nothing else to do. If they should strike for higher wages now, instead of going to the clam-banks, as the Lynn shoemakers propose, they would go to shooting musquash. They are gone all day; early and late they scan the rising tide; stealthily they set their traps in remote swamps, avoiding one another. 

Am not I a trapper too, early and late scanning the rising flood, ranging by distant wood-sides, setting my traps in solitude, and baiting them as well as I know how, that I may catch life and light, that my intellectual part may taste some venison and be invigorated, that my nakedness may be clad in some wild, furry warmth? 

The color of spring hitherto, — I should say that in dry weather it was fawn-colored, in wet more yellowish or tawny. When wet, the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens and the mosses.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1859

Lynn shoemakers. See Lynn Shoeworkers Strike ("On March 17th,  1860 a demonstration by 10,000 shoeworkers from Lynn, Salem, Marblehead, and other Essex County towns caused Lynn officials to call in police and militia units from Boston. . . by the end of March growing numbers of shoeworkers had returned to their jobs. By early April, the historic strike was over.")

I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker. See March 25, 1853 (“I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree. ”); March 25, 1856 (“There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. ”)  See also note to March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. When wet, the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens and the mosses. See March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . .. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields - withered grass lit by the sun - is the color of a teamster's coat. It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year");  March 16, 1859 ("This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time.")

Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak?

March 24. 

P. M. — Down railroad. Southeast wind. 

Begins to sprinkle while I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. I think they get under weigh a little earlier, i. e., you will hear many of them sooner than you will hear many hylodes. Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. 

It is a singular sound for awakening Nature to make, associated with the first warmer days, when you sit in some sheltered place in the woods amid the dried leaves. How moderate on her first awakening, how little demonstrative! You may sit half an hour before you will hear another. You doubt if the season will be long enough for such Oriental and luxurious slowness. But they get on, nevertheless, and by to-morrow, or in a day or two, they croak louder and more frequently. 

Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak? Ah! how weather-wise must he be! There is no guessing at the weather with him. He makes the weather in his degree; he encourages it to be mild. The weather, what is it but the temperament of the earth? and he is wholly of the earth, sensitive as its skin in which he lives and of which he is a part. His life relaxes with the thawing ground. 

He pitches and tunes his voice to chord with the rustling leaves which the March wind has dried. Long before the frost is quite out, he feels the influence of the spring rains and the warmer days. His is the very voice of the weather. He rises and falls like quicksilver in the thermometer. 

You do not perceive the spring so surely in the actions of men, their lives are so artificial. They may make more fire or less in their parlors, and their feelings accordingly are not good thermometers. 

The frog far away in the wood, that burns no coal nor wood, perceives more surely the general and universal changes. 

In the ditch under the west edge of Trillium Wood I see six yellow-spot turtles. They surely have not crawled from far. Do they go into the mud in this ditch? A part of the otherwise perfectly sound and fresh-looking scales of one has been apparently eaten away, as if by a worm. 

There sits also on the bank of the ditch a Rana fontinalis, and it is altogether likely they were this species that leaped into a ditch on the 10th. This one is mainly a bronze brown, with a very dark greenish snout, etc., with the raised line down the side of the back. This, methinks, is about the only frog which the marsh hawk could have found hitherto. 

Returning, above the railroad causeway, I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring, flitting along the cause way-bank. They have not yet the bright plumage they will have, but in some lights might be mistaken for sparrows. There is considerable difference in color between one and another, but the flaps of their coats are black, and their heads and shoulders more or less yellow. They are eating the seeds of the mullein and the large primrose, clinging to the plants sidewise in various positions and pecking at the seed-vessels. Wilson says, "In the month of April they begin to change their winter dress, and, before the middle of May, appear in brilliant yellow.” 

C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this! He says that when they had got far off they looked like a black ribbon almost perpendicular waving in the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1859

I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking. See March 23, 1959 ("We hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog. "); March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog [first] may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”); March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill.”) and note to May 6, 1858 (the frogs of Massachusetts). Compare March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes . . . I listen in vain to hear a frog”). See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

In the ditch under the west edge of Trillium Wood I see six yellow-spot turtles. See March 26, 1860 (“The yellow-spotted tortoise may [first]be seen February 23, as in '57, or not till March 28, as in '55”); February 23, 1857 "See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. . . . The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen signs of the spring. . . . the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches.”);
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring, flitting along the cause way-bank. See April 7, 1855 (“See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew.”); April 19, 1858 ("Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this! See March 28, 1859 ("Perhaps it is this easterly wind which brings geese, as it did on the 24th."); March 10, 1854 ("We always have much of this rainy, drizzling, misty weather in early spring, after which we expect to hear geese."); March 14, 1854 ("See a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

Can you be sure that 

you have heard the first wood frog 

in the township croak?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The very first wood frog

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590324

Like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date.

March 23. 

March 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Cardinal Shore and sail to Well Meadow and Lee's Cliff. 

It clears up at 2 p. m. The Lycoperdon stellatum are numerous and blossomed out widely in Potter's Path by Bare Hill, after the rain of the night. 

As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head. I have now no doubt that I saw some on the 21st flying here, and it is very likely that Rice saw them here on the 17th, as he says. 

The pond may be said to be open to-day. There is, however, quite a large mass of ice, which has drifted, since the east wind arose yesterday noon, from the east side over to the north of the Island. 

This ice, of which there may be eight or ten acres, is so very dark, almost black, that it is hard to discern till you are just upon it, though some little pieces which we broke off and left on its edge were very visible for half a mile. When at the edge of this field of ice, it was a very dark gray in color, had none of the usual whiteness of ice. It was about six inches thick, but was most completely honeycombed. The upper surface was not only thus dark, dusky, or blackish, but full of little hollows three to six inches across, and the whole mass undulated with the waves very much, irregular cracks alternately opening and closing in it, yet it was well knitted together. 

With my paddle I could depress it six inches on the edge, and cause it to undulate like a blanket for a rod or more, and yet it bore us securely when we stepped out upon it, and it was by no means easy to break off or detach a piece a foot wide. In short, it was thoroughly honeycombed and, as it were, saturated with water. The masses broken off reminded me of some very decayed and worm-eaten interiors of trees. Yet the small cakes into which it visibly cracked when you bent it and made it undulate were knitted together or dovetailed somewhat like the plates of a tortoise-shell, and immediately returned to their places.  

Though it would bear you, the creaking of one such part on another was a quite general and considerable noise, and one detached mass, rubbed in your hand upon the edge of the field, yielded a singular metallic or ringing sound, evidently owing to its hollowness or innumerable perforations. It had a metallic ring. The moment you raised a mass from the water, it was very distinctly white and brilliant, the water running out from it. This was the relic of that great mass which I saw on the 21st on the east side. 

There was a great quantity of bayonet rush, also, drifted over here and strewn along the shore. This and the pontederia are the coarsest of the wrack. 

Now is the time, then, that it is added to the wrack, probably being ripped up by the ice. It reminds you of the collections of seaweed after a storm, — this river-weed after the spring freshets have melted and dispersed the ice. The ice thus helps essentially to clear the shore. 

I am surprised to see one of those sluggish ghost-horses alive on the ice. It was probably drifted from the shore by the flood and here lodged. 

That dark, uneven ice has a peculiarly coarse-grained appearance, it is so much decomposed. The pieces are interlocked by the irregularities of the perpendicular combing. The underside presents the most continuous surface, and it is held together chiefly on that side. One piece rings when struck on another, like a trowel on a brick, and as we rested against the edge of this ice, we heard a singular wheezing and grating sound, which was the creaking of the ice, which was undulating under the waves and wind. 

As we entered Well Meadow, 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. 

These are the most eagle-like of our common hawks. They very commonly perch upon the very topmost plume of a pine, and, if motionless, are rather hard to distinguish there. 

The cowslip and most of the skunk-cabbage there have been and are still drowned by flood; else we should find more in bloom. As it is, I see the skunk- cabbage in bloom, but generally the growth of both has been completely checked by the water. 

While reconnoitring there, we hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog. 

We cross to Lee's shore and sit upon the bare rocky ridge overlooking the flood southwest and northeast. It is quite sunny and sufficiently warm. I see one or two of the small fuzzy gnats in the air. The prospect thence is a fine one, especially at this season, when the water is high. 

The landscape is very agreeably diversified with hill and vale and meadow and cliff. As we look southwest, how attractive the shores of russet capes and peninsulas laved by the flood! Indeed, that large tract east of the bridge is now an island. How fair that low, undulating russet land! 

At this season and under these circumstances, the sun just come out and the flood high around it, russet, so reflecting the light of the sun, appears to me the most agreeable of colors, and I begin to dream of a russet fairyland and elysium. How dark and terrene must be green! but this smooth russet surface reflects almost all the light. 

That broad and low but firm island, with but few trees to conceal the contour of the ground and its outline, with its fine russet sward, firm and soft as velvet, reflecting so much light, — all the undulations of the earth, its nerves and muscles, revealed by the light and shade, and even the sharper ridgy edge of steep banks where the plow has heaped up the earth from year to year, — this is a sort of fairyland and elysium to my eye. 

The tawny couchant island! Dry land for the Indian's wigwam in the spring, and still strewn with his arrow-points. The sight of such land reminds me of the pleasant spring days in which I have walked over such tracts, looking for these relics. How well, too, this smooth, firm, light-reflecting, tawny earth contrasts with the darker water which surrounds it, — or perchance lighter sometimes! 

At this season, when the russet colors prevail, the contrast of water and land is more agreeable to behold. What an inexpressibly soft curving line is the shore! Or if the water is perfectly smooth and yet rising, you seem to see it raised an eighth of an inch with swelling up above the immediate shore it kisses, as in a cup or the of [sic] a saucer. Indian isles and promontories. 

Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak, and dream of a russet elysium. Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. Spring has a beauty of its own which we would not exchange for that of summer, and at this moment, if I imagine the fairest earth I can, it is still russet, such is the color of its blessed isles, and they are surrounded with the phenomena of spring. 

The qualities of the land that are most attractive to our eyes now are dryness and firmness. It is not the rich black soil, but warm and sandy hills and plains which tempt our steps. We love to sit on and walk over sandy tracts in the spring like cicindelas. 

These tongues of russet land tapering and sloping into the flood do almost speak to one. They are alternately in sun and shade. When the cloud is passed, and they reflect their pale-brown light to me, I am tempted to go to them. 

I think I have already noticed within a week how very agreeably and strongly the green of small pines contrasts with the russet of a hillside pasture now. Perhaps there is no color with which green contrasts more strongly. 

I see the shadow of a cloud — and it chances to be a hollow ring with sunlight in its midst — passing over the hilly sprout-land toward the Baker house, a sprout-land of oaks and birches; and, owing to the color of the birch twigs, perhaps, this shadow turns all from russet to a decided dark-purplish color as it moves along. 

And then, as I look further along eastward in the horizon, I am surprised to see strong purple and violet tinges in the sun, from a hillside a mile off densely covered with full-grown birches. It is the steep old corn-field hillside of Jacob Baker's. 

I would not have believed that under the spring sun so many colors were brought out. 

It is not the willows only that shine, but, under favorable circumstances, many other twigs, even a mile or two off. 

The dense birches, so far that their white stems are not distinct, reflect deep, strong purple and violet colors from the distant hillsides opposite to the sun.

Can this have to do with the sap flowing in them? 

As we sit there, we see coming, swift and straight, northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. Ere long the same returns with his mate, the red-throated, the male taking the lead. 

The loud peop (?) of a pigeon woodpecker is heard in our sea [?], and anon the prolonged loud and shrill cackle, calling the thin-wooded hillsides and pastures to life. It is like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date. Up up up up up up up up up ! What a rustling it seems to make among the dry leaves! 

You can now sit on sunny sheltered sprout-land hillsides and enjoy the sight and sound of rustling dry leaves. 

Then I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice. This shows that the crows get along the meadow's edge also what has washed up.

 It is suggested that the blue is darkest when reflected from the most agitated water, because of the shadow (occasioned by the inequalities) mingled with it. Some Indians of the north have but one word for blue and black, and blue is with us considered the darkest color, though it is the color of the sky or air. Light, I should say, was white; the absence of it, black. Hold up to the light a perfectly opaque body and you get black, but hold up to it the least opaque body, such as air, and you get blue. Hence you may say that blue is light seen through a veil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1859

A male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. See March 17, 1860 (“See a large flock of sheldrakes . . . flying with great force and rapidity over my head in the woods. Now I hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air.”); April 6, 1855 (“I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A single croak from a wood frog . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak. See March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier.."); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking . . . Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. ")

An alarm-clock set

as to wake Nature up at

exactly this date.

Spring has a beauty –

beauty we would not exchange

for that of summer.

Birches reflect deep 

strong purple and violet 

colors from the hillsides.

Sitting on this rock

we hear the first wood frog’s croak

and begin to dream.

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