Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me

March 30. 

March 30, 2013

Dug some parsnips this morning. They break off about ten inches from the surface, the ground being frozen there.

The Cliffs remind me of that narrow place in the brook where two meadows nearly meet, with floating grass, though the water is deeper there under the bank than anywhere. So the Cliffs are a place where two summers nearly meet. 

Put up a bluebird-box, and found a whole egg in it. Saw a pewee from the rail road causeway. 

Having occasion to-day to put up a long ladder against the house, I found, from the trembling of my nerves with the exertion, that I had not exercised that part of my system this winter  How much I may have lost! It would do me good to go forth and work hard and sweat. Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me. It is a backward season with me. 

Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up. 

To-day, as frequently for some time past, we have a raw east wind, which is rare in winter. 

I see as yet very little, perhaps no, new growth in the plants in open fields, but only the green radical leaves which have been kept fresh under the snow; but if I should explore carefully about their roots, I should find some expanding buds and even new-rising shoots. 

The farmers are making haste to clear up their wood-lots, which they have cut off the past winter, to get off the tops and brush, that they may not be too late and injure the young sprouts and lose a year's growth in the operation, also that they may be ready for their spring work.

From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, — which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, running from the end of Baker' s Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was. It is pretty central. 

I perceive the hollow sound from the rocky ground as I tread and stamp about the Cliffs, and am reminded how much more sure children are to notice this peculiarity than grown persons. I remember when I used to make this a regular part of the entertainment when I conducted a stranger to the Cliffs. 

On the warm slope of the Cliffs the radical (?) leaves of the St. John's- wort (somewhat spurge-like), small on slender sprigs, have been evergreen under the snow. In this warm locality there is some recent growth nearest the ground. 

The leaves of the Saxifraga vernalis on the most mossy rocks are quite fresh. 

That large evergreen leaf sometimes mistaken for the mayflower is the Pyrola rotundifolia and perhaps some other species. 

What are those leaves in rounded beds, curled and hoary beneath, reddish-rown above, looking as if covered with frost? It is now budded, - a white, downy bud. [The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium and G. purpureum.]


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 30, 1852

Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up. See March 31, 1852 ("Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months"); August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.”)

Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me. See March 9, 1852 (" When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man.”); March 21, 1853 ("Winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.")

I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river. See March 30, 1856 ("I walk over the pond and down on the middle of the river to the bridge, without seeing an opening."); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year, or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later.”)  See Also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out


On the warm slope of the Cliffs the radical leaves of the St. John's- wort  have been evergreen under the snow. See January 9, 1855 ("How pretty the evergreen radical shoots of the St. John’s-wort now exposed, partly red or lake, various species of it.. . .A little wreath of green and red lying along on the muddy ground amid the melting snows.")

The leaves of the Saxifraga vernalis on the most mossy rocks are quite fresh. See March 30, 1856 ("[I]n this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest of the meadow is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I am surprised to see . . . the golden saxifrage, green and abundant")