Cold and blustering. 2 P . M . — 35º .
To Well Meadow and Walden. See first cloud of dust in street.
One early willow on railroad, near cowcatcher , just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward.
I notice on hillside in Stow's wood-lot on the west of the Cut what looks like a rope or hollow semicylinder of sawdust around a large white pine stump, just over its instep. There are two or three mouse - holes between the prongs, and the mice have evidently had a gallery through this dust . Much of it is very coarse and fibry [sic], — fibres of wood an inch or more long mixed with finer. This is probably the work of the mice in the winter on the roots below, making rooms for themselves. Some of the fine dust is formed into a pellet a quarter of an inch wide and flat, of a regular form, half as thick as wide. If not so large you might think they had passed through the creature. The ring of this dust or chewings is not more than two inches wide, and yet it is a hollow semicylinder, more or less regular.
I think that I can explain it thus: The mice — of course deer mice — had a gallery in the snow around the stump, from hole to hole. When they began to gnaw away the stump underground they brought up their gnawings, and, of course, had no place to cast them but in the gallery through which they ran . Can it be that they eat any of this wood? The gnawings and dust were abundant and fresh, while that made by worms under the bark was old and dirty and could not have been washed into this position, though some of it might have been made by worms beneath the ground.
At Well Meadow I notice, as usual, that the common cress has been eaten down close, and the uncertain coarse sedge there, etc.
The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds have just begun to appear, but not yet any hellebore.
The senecio is considerably grown, and I see many little purplish rosettes of Viola pedata leaves in sandy paths well grown.
One Caltha palustris flower, just on the surface of the water, is perfectly out. [None out at Second Division Brook the next day, or 26th.]
See no ducks on Fair Haven Pond, but, sailing over it and at length hovering very long in one place with head stretched downward, a fish hawk.
It is hard descending steep north hillsides as yet, because the ground is yet frozen there and you cannot get a hold by sinking your heels into it.
The grass is dense and green as ever, and the caltha blooms in sheltered springy places, being protected from frosts in the night, probably, by a vapor arising from the warm water.
Though the meadow flood is low, methinks they [the meadows] must be covered with a sweet grass which has lately grown under water (parts of them at least), so much the more accessible to such ducks as feed on shore. Probably many ducks as well as geese do feed on shore in the night.
Windy as it is, you get along comfortably enough in the woods, and see the chill-lills and cinnamon sparrows flitting along from bush to bush. Methought on the 18th, a warm day, that the chill-lills and tree sparrows haunted rather the shaded and yet snowy hollows in the woods.
The deep some thirty rods behind where I used to live is mostly covered with ice yet, but no doubt such are generally open now, - - Ripple Lake, for example.
To speak of the general phenomena of March:
When March arrives, a tolerably calm, clear, sunny, spring like day, the snow is so far gone that sleighing ends and our compassion is excited by the sight of horses laboriously dragging wheeled vehicles through mud and water and slosh. We shall no longer hear the jingling of sleigh bells.
The sleigh is housed, or, perchance, converted into a wheeled vehicle by the travelling peddler caught far from home. The wood-sled is perhaps abandoned by the roadside, where the snow ended, with two sticks put under its runners, — there to rest, it may be, while the grass springs up green around it, till another winter comes round. It may be near where the wagon of the careless farmer was left last December on account of the drifted snow.
As March approaches, at least, peddlers will do well to travel with wheels slung under their sleighs, ready to convert their sleighs into wheeled vehicles at an hour's warning.
Even the boy's sled gets put away by degrees, or when it is found to be in the way, and his thoughts are directed gradually to more earthy games. There are now water privileges for him by every roadside.
The prudent farmer has teamed home, or to market, his last load of wood from the lot, nor left that which was corded a year ago to be consumed by the worms and the weather . He will not have to sell next winter oak wood rotted an inch deep all round, at a reduction in the price if he deals with knowing customers. He has hauled his last logs to mill.
No more shall we see the sled-track shine or hear the sled squeak along it. The boy's sled gets put away in the barn or shed or garret, and there lies dormant all summer, like a wood chuck in the winter. It goes into its burrow just before woodchucks come out, so that you may say a wood chuck never sees a sled, nor a sled a woodchuck, — unless it were a prematurely risen woodchuck or a belated and unseasonable sled . Before the woodchuck comes out the sled goes in . They dwell at the antipodes of each other. Before sleds rise woodchucks have set. The ground squirrel too shares the privileges and misfortunes of the woodchuck. The sun now passes from the constellation of the sled into that of the woodchuck.
The snow-plow, too, has now nothing more to do but to dry-rot against another winter, like a thing whose use is forgotten, incredible to the beholder, its vocation gone. I often meet with the wood-sled by the path care fully set up on two sticks and with a chip under the cop to prevent its getting set, as if the woodman had waited only for another snow-storm to start it again, little thinking that he had had his allowance for the year. And there it rests, like many a human enterprise postponed, sunk further than he thought into the earth after all, its runners, by which it was to slide along so glibly, rotting and its ironwork rusting. You question if it will ever start again.
If we must stop, says the schemer, leave the enter prise so that we can start again under the best possible circumstances. But a scheme at rest begins at once to rust and rot though there may be two sticks under the runner and a chip under the cop. The ineradicable [?] grass will bury it and when you hitch your forces to it a year hence it is a chance if it has not lost its cohesion. Examine such a scheme, and see if it rests on two sticks and can be started again Examine also its joints, and see if it will cohere when it is started . You can easily find sticks and chips, but who shall find snow to put under it? There it slumbers, sinking into the ground, willingly returning to the earth from which it came. Mortises and tenons and pins avail not to withhold it.
The sleighing, the sledding, or sliding, is gone. We now begin to wheel or roll ourselves and commodities along which requires more tractile power . The pon derous cart and the spruce buggy appear from out their latebræ like the dusty flies that have wintered in a crevice, and we hear the buzzing of their wheels . The high-set chaise, the lumbering coach like wasps and gnats and bees come humming forth. The runners have cut through to the earth; they go in search of the snow into the very gutters or invade the territory of the foot-passenger.
The traveller, when he returns the hired horse to his stable, concludes at last that it is worse sleighing than wheeling. To be sure , there was one reach where he slid along pretty well under the north side of a wood, but for the most part he cut through, as when the cook cuts edgings of dough for her pies, and the grating on the gravel set his teeth on edge. You see where the teamster threw off two thirds his load by the roadside, and wonder when he will come back for it.
Last summer I walked behind a team which was ascending the Colburn Hill, which was all dripping with melting ice, used to cool the butter which it held. In January, perchance I walk up the same hill behind a sled-load of frozen deer between snow-drifts six feet high .
To proceed with March:
Frost comes out of warm sand-banks exposed to the sun, and the sand flows down in the form of foliage. But I see still adhering to the bridges the great chandelier icicles formed in yesterday ' s cold and windy weather.
By the 2d, ice suddenly softens and skating ends. This warmer and springlike day, the inexperienced eagerly revisit the pond where yesterday they found hard and glassy ice, and are surprised and disappointed to find it soft and rotten. Their aching legs are soon satisfied with such sport. Yet I have in such a case found a strip of good skating still under the north side of a hill or wood. I was the more pleased because I had foreseen it. Skates, then, have become useless tools and follow sleds to their winter quarters. They are ungratefully parted with, not like old friends surely. They and the thoughts of them are shuffled out of the way, and you will probably have to hunt long before you find them next December.
It is too late to get ice for ice-houses, and now, if I am not mistaken, you cease to notice the green ice at sunset and the rosy snow, the air being warmer and softer. Yet the marks and creases and shadings and bubbles, etc., in the rotting ice are still very interesting.
If you walk under cliffs you see where the melted snow which trickled down and dripped from their perpendicular walls has frozen into huge organ-pipe icicles. The water going down, you notice, perchance, where the meadow-crust has been raised and floated off by the superincumbent ice, i. e., if the water has been high in the winter, — often successive layers of ice and meadow-crust several feet in thickness. The most sudden and greatest revolution in the condition of the earth's surface, perhaps, that ever takes place in this town.
The air is springlike. The milkman closes his ice house doors against the milder air.
By the 3d, the snow-banks are softened through to earth. Perchance the frost is out beneath in some places, and so it melts from below upward and you hear it sink as it melts around you as you walk over it. It is soft, saturated with water, and glowing white.
The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. It glances and shines like burnished silver. If you walk to sandy cliffs you see where new ravines have formed and are forming. An east wind to-day, and maybe brings rain on —
The 5th, a cold mizzling rain, and, the temperature falling below zero, it forms a thin glaze on your coat, the last glaze of the year.
The 6th, it clears off cold and windy. The snow is chiefly gone ; the brown season begins. The tawny frozen earth looks drier than it is. The thin herd's or piper-grass that was not cut last summer is seen all slanting southeast, as the prevailing wind bent it before the snow came, and now it has partly sprung up again. The bleached grass white.
The 7th is a day of misty rain and mistling , and of moist brown earth into which you slump as far as it is thawed at every step . Every now and then the mist thickens and the rain drives in upon you from one side .
Now you admire the various brown colors of the parded earth, the plump cladonias, etc., etc. Perchance you notice the bæomyces in fruit and the great chocolate colored puffball still losing its dust, and, on bare sandy places, the Lycoperdon stellatum, and then your thoughts are directed to arrowheads and you gather the first Indian relics for the season. The open spaces in the river are now long reaches, and the ice between is mackerelled, and you no longer think of crossing it except at the broadest bay. It is, perhaps, lifted up by the melted snow and the rain.
The 8th, it is clear again, but a very cold and blustering day, yet the wind is worse than the cold. You calculate your walk beforehand so as to take advantage of the shelter of hills and woods; a very slight elevation is often a perfect fence. If you must go forth facing the wind, bending to the blast, and sometimes scarcely making any progress, you study how you may return with it on your back. Perchance it is suddenly cold, water frozen in your chamber, and plants even in the house; the strong draft consumes your fuel rapidly, though you have but little left. You have had no colder walk in the winter. So rapidly is the earth dried that this day or the next perhaps you see a cloud of dust blown over the fields in a sudden gust.
The 9th, it is quite warm, with a southwest wind. The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening. It is a dark night.
The 10th, you first notice frost on the tawny grass. The river-channel is open, and you see great white cakes going down the stream between the still icy meadows, and the wind blows strong from the north west, as usual. The earth begins to look drier and is whiter or paler-brown than ever, dried by the wind. The very russet oak leaves mixed with pines on distant hills look drier too.
The 11th is a warmer day and fair, with the first considerable bluish haze in the air. It reminds you of the azure of the bluebird, which you hear, which per haps you had only heard of before .
The morning of the 12th begins with a snow- storm, snowing as seriously and hard as if it were going to last a week and be as memorable as the Great Snow of 1760, and you forget the haze of yesterday and the bluebird. It tries hard but only succeeds to whiten the ground, and when I go forth at 2 P. M. the earth is bare again. It is much cooler and more windy than yesterday, but springlike and full of life. It is, however, warm in the sun, and the leaves already dry enough to sit on. Walden is melted on the edge on the northerly side. As I walk I am excited by the living dark-blue color of the open river and the meadow flood (?) seen at a distance over the fields, contrasting with the tawny earth and the patches of snow. In the high winds in February, at open reaches in the river it was positively angry and black; now it is a cold, dark blue, like an artery. The storm is not yet over. The night sets in dark and rainy, - the first considerable rain, taking out the frost. I am pleased to hear the sound of it against the windows, for that copious rain which made the winter of the Greeks and Romans is the herald of summer to us.
The 13th, the ways are getting settled in our sandy village. The river is rising fast. I sit under some sheltering promontory and watch the gusts ripple the meadow flood.
14th. This morning it snows again, and this time it succeeds better, is a real snow-storm, — by 2 o'clock, three or four inches deep, — and winter is fairly back again. The early birds are driven back or many of them killed. The river flood is at its height, looking dark amid the snow.
15th. The ice is all out of the river proper and the meadow, except ground ice or such as lies still at the bottom of the meadow, under water.
16th. The ice of the night fills the river in the morning, and I hear it go grating downward at sunrise. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half. I taste a spring cranberry, save a floating rail, feel the element fluctuate beneath me, and am tossed bodily as I am in thought and sentiment Than longen folk to gon on voyages. The water freezes on the oars. I wish to hear my mast crack and see my rapt [ ? ] boat run on her side , so low her deck drinks water and her keel plows air. My only competitors or fellow-voyagers are the musquash hunters. To see a dead sucker washing on the meadows! The ice has broken up and navigation commenced. We may set sail for foreign parts or expect the first arrival any day. To see the phenomena of the water and see the earth from the water side, to stand outside of it on another element, and so get a pry on it in thought at least, that is no small advantage. I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. Every musquash-shooter has got his boat out ere this. Some improvident fellows have left them out , or let them freeze in , and now find them in a leaking condition . But the solid ice of Fair Haven as yet bars all progress in that direction. I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat .
17th . The last night, perhaps, we experience the first wind of the spring that shakes the house. Some who sleep in attics expect no less than that the roof will be taken off. They calculate what chance there is for the wind to take hold of the overlapping roof or eaves. You hear that your neighbor's chimney is blown down. The street is strewn with rotten limbs, and you notice here and there a prostrate pine on the hills. The frozen sidewalks melt each morning When you go to walk in the afternoon, though the wind is gone down very much, you watch from some hilltop the light flashing across some waving white pines. The whole forest is waving like a feather in the wind. Though the snow is gone again here, the mountains are seen to be still covered, and have been ever since the winter. With a spy-glass I can look into such a winter there as it seems to me I have only read of . No wonder the northwest wind is so cold that blows from them to us.
18th. A warm day. I perceive, on some warm wooded hillsides half open to the sun, the dry scent of the withered leaves, gathered in piles here and there by the wind. They make dry beds to recline on, and remind me of fires in the woods that may be expected ere long.
The 19th, say 56 or 60 and calm, is yet warmer, a really warm day. Perhaps I wear but one coat in my walk, or sweat in two. The genial warmth is the universal topic. Gnats hum; the early birds warble. Especially the calmness of the day is admirable. The wind is taking a short respite ,locked up in its cave somewhere. We admire the smoothness of the water, the shimmering over the land. All vegetation feels the influence of the season. Many first go forth to walk and sit outdoors awhile. The river falling , I notice the coarse wrack left along the shore, dotted with the scarlet spring cranberries. Before night a sudden shower, and some hear thunder, a single low rumble.
The 21st is warm too by the thermometer, but more windy.
The 23d, a channel is worn through Fair Haven Pond . 24th. The winds are let out of their cave, and have fairly resumed their sway again, with occasional flurries of snow which scarcely reach the earth. Gusty electric clouds appear here and there in the sky, like charges of cavalry on a field of battle. It is icy cold, too, and you need all your winter coats at least. The fresh spray, dashed against the alders and willows, makes rake and horn icicles along the causeways.
25th. Colder yet. Considerable ice forms. The river skims over along the side. The river is down again, lower than any time this month.
26th. Warm again. The frost is at length quite out 229 of early gardens. A few begin to plow, and plant peas and rye, etc. In the afternoon a thick haze conceals the mountains and wreathes the woods, the wind going east.
27th. Steady, pattering, April-like rain, dimpling the water, foretold by the thick haze of yesterday, and soaked up by the ground for the most part, the frost being so much out.
28th. Some sit without a fire in afternoon, it is so warm. I study the honeycombed black ice of Fair Haven Pond.
29th. See a pellet frost in the morning, – or snow. Fair Haven Pond is open.
30th. You see smokes rising above the woods in the horizon this dry day, and know not if it be burning brush or an accidental fire.
31st. The highways begin to be dusty, and even our minds; some of the dusty routine of summer even begins to invade them. A few heels of snow may yet be discovered, or even seen from the window.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1860
By the 2d, ice suddenly softens and skating ends. See
March 3, 1855 ("Day before yesterday there was good skating, and it was a beautiful warm day for it. Yesterday the ice began to be perceptibly softened. To-day it is too soft for skating.")
The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. See
February 21, 1860 ("It is a spring phenomenon. The water . . .producing countless regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples. . . .When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. ")
The 8th, it is clear again, but a very cold and blustering day, yet the wind is worse than the cold. You calculate your walk beforehand so as to take advantage of the shelter of hills and woods. See
March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere.")
Perchance it is suddenly cold, water frozen in your chamber, and plants even in the house; the strong draft consumes your fuel rapidly, though you have but little left. See
March 5, 1857 ("This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter.")
14th. This morning it snows . . ., three or four inches deep, — and winter is fairly back again. See note to
March 24, 1852 ("The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground.")
16th. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream. See
February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat.");.
March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it.");.
March 9, 1855 ("Painted the bottom of my boat");
March 15, 1854 (Paint my boat"");
March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind");
March 17, 1857 ("Launch my boat");.
March 19, 1855 (". Launch my boat"). March 19, 1858 ("Painted my boat afternoon");
March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold. ");.
March 22, 1858 ("Launch my boat and row down stream")
29th. See a pellet frost in the morning, – or snow. Fair Haven Pond is open. See
March 22, 1860 ("Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! - but melts about as fast as it falls."); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later""); March 29, 1854 (" Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun."); March 29, 1855 (" Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.")
