The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
Bright and immortal
the unfettered stream sparkles
in the clear cool air.
February 27, 2015
Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a moderately, cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. February 27, 1852
Another cold, clear day, but the weather gradually moderating. February 27, 1855
C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard's Close brook in woods to-day. February 27, 1860
Though it was a dry, powdery snow-storm yesterday, the sun is now so high that the snow is soft and sticky this afternoon. February 27, 1859
The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. February 27, 1859
The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. February 27, 1860
Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature. February 27, 1857
I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm. February 27, 1858
I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. February 27, 1857
I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter. February 27, 1856
Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox. February 27, 1856
Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox. February 27, 1856
The river has skimmed over again in many places. February 27, 1857
Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river . . . The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. February 27, 1856
Morning. — Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded. February 27, 1854
The rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground seeks its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river. February 27, 1854
Floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. February 27, 1854
White cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream are whiter than ever in this spring sun. February 27, 1860
E. Wood thinks that he has lost the surface of two acres of his meadow by the ice . . . Blue-joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before. February 27, 1851
Near Tarbell's and Harrington's the North Branch has burst its icy fetters. This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. February 27, 1852
As I stand looking up it westward for half a mile where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up with a fine-grained silvery sparkle. February 27, 1852
If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? February 27, 1852
The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. February 27, 1860
The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. February 27, 1860
I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white. . . . the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). February 27, 1860
Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, February 27, 1860
This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. February 27, 1860
This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease. February 27, 1852
February 27 , 2017
The mosses now are in fruit – or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae. February 27, 1852
Are not fungi the best hygrometers? February 27, 1857
February 27, 2020
I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. February 27, 1860
I have just heard a bluebird . . . but cannot tell whither it comes. February 27, 1861
Miss Minott and Miss Potter have both died within a fortnight past , and the cottage on the hillside seems strangely deserted; but the first bluebird comes to warble there as usual. February 27, 1861
Mother hears a robin to-day. February 27, 1861
It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, — beside melting all the snow, — and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground. February 27, 1854
It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. February 27, 1851 See Walking
February 27, 2024
To-night a circle round the moon. February 27, 1852
*****
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Ice out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue waters in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
January 2, 1856 ("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. ")
January 8, 1855 (" I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him.. . .")
January 22, 1855 ("Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.”)
January 31, 1855 ("A clear, cold, beautiful day.")
February 1, 1857 ("Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway.")
February 12, 1856 ("Forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, . . .twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)
February 12, 1860 ("Where the agitated surface of the river is exposed,[I see] the blue-black water.That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. . . .It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.")
February 13, 1851 ("Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.")
February 13, 1859 ("The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. ")
February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least.")
February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light.")
February 22, 1855 ("Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber.")
February 22, 1855 ("Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber.")
February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.")
February 25, 1851 ("The crust of the meadow afloat. . . .When the ice melts or the soil thaws, of course it falls to the bottom, wherever it may be. Here is another agent employed in the distribution of plants.")
February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”)
February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice.”)
February 28, 1855 ("Still cold and clear . Ever since the 23d inclusive a succession of clear but very cold days . .. Since the 25th it has been very slowly moderating.)
February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.")
March 1, 1855 ("Banks of snow by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling white due to the higher sun.")
March 1, 1856 ("Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening, which I had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen inches on a level . . . Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.”)
March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air?")
March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years.")
March 10, 1853 ("Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air.")
March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet.")
March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. This great expanse of deep-blue water, deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my soul as of yore? It is hard to soften me now. The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.")
March 18, 1860 (“Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”)
March 20, 1853 ("The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore.")
March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”)
March 22, 1855 ("The bluebird faintly warbles, with such ventriloquism that I thought him further off.")
March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”)
March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)")
April 2, 1852 ("The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought.")
April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs.")
April 2, 1856 ("Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain")
April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.")
April 22, 1856 ("It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers.")
February 27, 2020
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 27
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
tinyurl.com/hdt27feb
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