Let me see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color

April 1. 

Gilpin says well that the object of a light mist is a "nearer distance." Among winter plants, regarded as component parts of the forest, he thinks the fern the most picturesque. He says: "We are often at a loss to distinguish in pictures, the rising from the setting sun; though their characters are very different, both in the lights and shadows. The ruddy lights indeed of the evening are more easily distinguished: but it is not perhaps always sufficiently observed, that the shadows of the evening are much less opaque, than those of the morning." 

This morning, the ground was completely covered with snow, and the water on the meadows looked dark and stormy and contrasted well with the white landscape. Now, at noon, the ground is once more as bare as before. 

He is in the lowest scale of laborers who is merely an able-bodied man and can compete with others only in physical strength. Woodchoppers in this neighborhood get but fifty cents a cord, but, though many can chop two cords in a day in pleasant weather and under favorable circumstances, yet most do not average more than seventy-five cents a day, take the months together. But one among them of only equal physical strength and skill as a chopper, having more wit, buys a cross-cut saw for four dollars, hires a man to help him at a dollar a day, and saws down trees all winter at ten cents apiece and thirty or forty a day, and clears two or more dollars a day by it. 

Yet as long as the world may last few will be found to buy the cross-cut saw, and probably the wages of the sawyer will never be reduced to a level with those of the chopper. 

2 p. m. — To Flint's Pond cedar woods via railroad, returning by C. Smith's orchard. 

Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. 

Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" is a pleasing book, so moderate, temperate, graceful, roomy, like a gladed wood; not condensed; with a certain religion in its manners and respect for all the good of the past, rare in more recent books; and it is grateful to read after them. Somewhat spare indeed in the thoughts as in the sentences. Some of the cool wind of the copses converted into grammatical and graceful sentences, with out heat. Not one of those humors come to a head which some modern books are, but some of the natural surface of a healthy mind. 

Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shores. The very sight of it, when I get so far on the causeway, though I hear the spring note of the chickadee from over the ice, carries my thoughts back at once some weeks toward winter, and a chill comes over them. 

There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above. 

The railroad men have dug around the sleepers that the sun may thaw the ground and let them down. It is not yet out. 

Cut across near Baker's barn. 

The swollen buds of some trees now give a new tint to their tops seen at a distance, — to the maples at least. Baker's peach orchard looks at this distance purplish below and red above, the color of the last year's twigs. The geranium (?) is the most common green leaf to be seen everywhere on the surface now the snow is gone. 

They have been shooting great numbers of muskrats the last day or two. 

Is that the red osier (cornel or viburnum) near the grape-vine on the Bare Hill road? 

How sure the farmer is to find out what bush affords the best withes, little of a botanist as he is ! 

The mountains seen from Bare Hill are very fine now in the horizon, so evanescent, being broadly spotted white and blue like the skins of some animals, the white predominating. 

The Peterboro Hills to the north are almost all white.

The snow has melted more on the more southern mountains. With their white mantles, not withstanding the alternating dark patches, they melt into the sky. Yet perhaps the white portions may be distinguished by the peculiar light of the sun shining on them. They are like a narrow strip of broadly spotted leopard-skin, the saddle-cloth of the sun spread along the horizon. 

I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. 

The Great Sudbury Meadows covered with water are revealed. Blue they look over the woods. Each part of the river seen further north shines like silver in the sun, and the little pond in the woods west of this hill is half open water. Cheering, that water with its reflections, compared with this opaque dumb pond. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice! 

Such am I, no doubt, to many friends. 

But, now that I have reached the cedar hill, I see that there is about an acre of open water, perhaps, over Bush Island in the middle of the pond, and there are some water-fowl there on the edge of the ice, — mere black spots, though I detect their character by discovering a relative motion, — and some are swimming about in the water. 

The pond is, perhaps, the handsomer, after all, for this distant patch only of blue water, in the midst of the field of white ice. Each enhances the other. It is an azure spot, an elysian feature, in your cold companion, making the imagined concealed depths seem deeper and rarer. This pond is worth coming to, if only be cause it is larger than Walden. 

I can so easily fancy it indefinitely large. It represents to me that Icy Sea of which I have been reading in Sir J. Richardson's book. 

The prevailing color of the woods at present, excepting the evergreens, is russet, a little more red or grayish, as the case may be, than the earth, for those are the colors of the withered leaves and the branches; the earth has the lighter hue of withered grass. Let me see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color. 

Went over the hill toward the eastern end of the pond. What is the significance of odors, of the odoriferous woods ? Sweet and yellow birch, sassafras, fever-bush, etc., are an interesting clan to me. When we bruise them in our walk, we are suddenly exhilarated by their odor. This sweet scent soon evaporates, and you must break the twig afresh. If you cut it, it is not as if you break it. Some, like the sassafras, have brought a great price as articles of commerce. No wonder that men thought they might have some effect toward renovating their lives. Gosnold, the discoverer of Cape Cod, carried home a cargo of sassafras. What could be more grateful to the discoverer of a new country than a new fragrant wood? 

Gilpin's is a book in which first there is nothing to offend, and secondly something to attract and please.

The branches of the young black birch grow very upright, as it were appressed to the main stem. Their buds appear a little expanded now. 

Saw the fox-colored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith's Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle. 

The mountains, which an hour ago were white, are now all blue, the mistiness has increased so much in the horizon, and crept even into the vales of the distant woods. The mist is in wreaths or stripes because we see the mist of successive vales. There could not easily be a greater contrast than between this morning's and this evening's landscapes. 

The sun now an hour high. Now I see the river-reach, far in the north. The more distant river is ever the most ethereal. 

Sat awhile before sunset on the rocks in Saw Mill Brook. A brook need not be large to afford us pleasure by its sands and meanderings and falls and their various accompaniments. It is not so much size that we want as picturesque beauty and harmony. If the sound of its fall fills my ear it is enough. I require that the rocks over which it falls be agreeably disposed, and prefer that they be covered with lichens. The height and volume of the fall is of very little importance compared with the appearance and disposition of the rocks over which it falls, the agreeable diversity of still water, rapids, and falls, and of the surrounding scenery. I require that the banks and neighboring hillsides be not cut off, but excite a sense of at least graceful wild-ness. 

One or two small evergreens, especially hemlocks, standing gracefully on the brink of the rill, contrasting by their green with the surrounding deciduous trees when they have lost their leaves, and thus enlivening the scene and betraying their attachment to the water. It would be no more pleasing to me if the stream were a mile wide and the hemlocks five feet in diameter. I believe that there is a harmony between the hemlock and the water which it overhangs not explainable.

In the first place, its green is especially grateful to the eye the greater part of the year in any locality, and in the winter, by its verdure overhanging and shading the water, it concentrates in itself the beauty of all fluviatile trees. It loves to stand with its foot close to the water, its roots running over the rocks of the shore, and two or more on opposite sides of a brook make the most beautiful frame to a waterscape, especially not too glaring. 

It makes the more complete frame be cause its branches, particularly in young specimens such as I am thinking of, spring from so near the ground, and it makes so dense a mass of verdure. 

There are many larger hemlocks covering the steep side-hill forming the bank of the Assabet, where they are successively undermined by the water, and they lean at every angle over the water. Some are almost horizontally directed, and almost every year one falls in and is washed away. The place is known as the " Leaning Hemlocks." 

But to return to Saw Mill Run. I love that the green fronds of the fern, pressed by the snow, lie on its rocks. It is a great advantage to take in so many parts at one view. We love to see the water stand, or seem to stand, at many different levels within a short distance, while we sit in its midst, some above, some below us, and many successive falls in different directions, meandering in the course of the fall, rather than one "chute," — rather spreading and shoaling than contracting and deepening at the fall. In a small brook like this, there are many adjuncts to increase the variety which are wanting in a river, or, if present, cannot be attended to; even dead leaves and twigs vary the ripplings and increase the foam.

And the very lichens on the rocks of the run are an important ornament, which in the great waterfall are wont to be overlooked. I enjoy this little fall on Saw Mill Run more than many a large one on a river that I have seen. The hornbeams and witch-hazel and canoe birches all come in for their share of attention. We get such a complete idea of the small rill with its overhanging shrubs as only a bird's-eye view from some eminence could give us of the larger stream. Perhaps it does not fall more than five feet within a rod and a half. I should not hear Niagara a short distance off. The never-ending refreshing sound! 

It suggests more thoughts than Montmorenci. A stream and fall which the woods imbosom. They are not in this proportion to a larger fall. They lie in a more glaring and less picturesque light. Even the bubbles are a study. It can be completely examined in its details. The consciousness of there being water about you at different levels is agreeable. The sun can break through and fall on it and vary the whole scene infinitely. 

Saw the freshly (?) broken shells of a tortoise's eggs — or were they a snake's ? — in Hosmer's field. 

I hear a robin singing in the woods south of Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound associated with New England village life. It brings to my thoughts summer evenings when the children are playing in the yards before the doors and their parents conversing at the open windows. It foretells all this now, before those summer hours are come. 

As I come over the Turnpike, the song sparrow's jingle comes up from every part of the meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the blossoms of the spirea, the meadow-sweet, soon to spring. Its cheep is like the sound of opening buds. The sparrow is continually singing on the alders along the brook-side, while the sun is continually setting. 

We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1852

 See the first bee of the season on the railroad cause way, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. See April 2, 1856 (" I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa. Though so little of the earth is bared, this frail creature has been warmed to life again. "). Also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Buff-edged butterfly

The Peterboro Hills to the north are almost all white. See April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea."); April 4, 1855 (" [O]on each side and beyond, the earth is clad with a warm russet, more pleasing perhaps than green; and far beyond all, in the northwestern horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.");February 21, 1855 ("We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests, .... A silver edging to this basin of the world"),

The place is known as the " Leaning Hemlocks.” See  March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin. For as long as I can remember, one or more of these has always been slanting over the stream at various angles, being undermined by it, until one after another, from year to year, they fall in and are swept away")  Also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks.

I believe that there is a harmony between the hemlock and the water which it overhangs not explainable. See November 4, 1851 ("[A] few small hemlocks, with their now thin but unmixed and fresh green foliage, stand over and cheer the stream [Saw Mill Brook].These little cheerful hemlocks, - the lisp of chickadees seems to come from them now, - each standing with its foot on the very edge of the stream, reaching sometimes part way over its channel, and here and there one has lightly stepped across..")

We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky.See February 12, 1854("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself")