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
February 28, 2017
The westering sun
reflected from their edges
makes them shine finely.
A pleasant morning. February 28, 1854
Nearly two inches of snow in the night. February 28, 1857
The snow lies on the ice in large but very shallow drifts . . . broad crescents (apparently) convex to the northwest. February 28, 1857
Ever since the 23d inclusive a succession of clear but very cold days in which, for the most part, it has not melted perceptibly during the day. February 28, 1855
Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. February 28, 1855
Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad. February 28, 1855
Many great cakes have lodged on a ridge of the meadow west of the river here, and suggest how such a ridge may be growing from year to year. February 28, 1855
This is a powerful agent at work. February 28, 1855
The westering sun reflected from their edges makes them shine finely. February 28, 1855
I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. February 28, 1856
Around the shore ice is covered with water and rests on the bottom, while the middle is raised with the water, and hence a ridge is heaved up where the two ices meet. February 28, 1854
Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. February 28, 1857
To-day it snows again, covering the ground. February 28, 1852
The snow finally turns to a drenching rain. February 28, 1852
2 P. M. — Thermometer 52; wind easterly. February 28, 1860
One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. February 28, 1860
One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck. February 28, 1860
Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day. February 28, 1858
C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. February 28, 1860
Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season. February 28, 1860
Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. February 28. 1861
I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about. February 28, 1860
Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin . . .The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. February 28, 1860
I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow. February 28, 1857
It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted
by muskrats or minks. February 28, 1857
Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? February 28, 1857
A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created. . . and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it. February 28, 1856
I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine. February 28, 1858
I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. February 28, 1860
Saw a mackerel in the market. The upper half of its sides is mottled blue and white like the mackerel sky, as stated January 19th. February 28, 1859
At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. February 28, 1857
It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. February 28, 1857
You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. February 28, 1856
It is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do. February 28, 1860
To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten,– so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men. February 28, 1852
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Goldeneye (Whistler)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring
*****
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")
November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it .")
December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”)
December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”)
January 3, 1860 ("[Melvin] speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow.")
January 8, 1860 ("When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.]")
January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”)
January 10, 1859 ("The middle of the river where narrow . . . is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly.")
January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . . similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")
January 22, 1856 ("I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. . . They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. ")
January 31, 1856 ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.")
February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. ")February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.")
February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see")
February 18, 1857 ("The bluebird does not come till the air consents.")
February 21, 1861 ("Plucking and stripping a pine cone")
February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”)
February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more —arctic enough to look at.”)
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, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”)
February 25, 1859 ("I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago.")
February 26, 1855 ("Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.")
February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.”)
February 27, 1857 ("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, 1861 (" Mother hears a robin to-day.")
February 27, 1853 ("The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.")
February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes.")
Snows again to-day
covering the ground then turns
to a drenching rain.
February 28, 1852
March 1, 1856 ("It is remarkable that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter . . .Coombs should (as he says) have killed two sheldrakes at the falls by the factory, a place which I had forgotten, some four or six weeks ago. Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening . . . If there is a crack amid the rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.")
March 8, 1859 ("If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure.")
March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")
March 15, 1852 ("A mild spring day. The air is full of bluebirds . . . liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity.")
March 17, 1858 ("The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill.")
March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.")
March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”)
March 23, 1859 ("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.")
March 27, 1858 ("Among them [sheldrakes], or near by, I at length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, having a white spot on the head, a black back, and altogether less white, and also keeping more or less apart and not diving when the rest do.")
March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open.")
March 29, 1855 ("Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.")
March 30, 1852 ("From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, – which is in fact thus only revealed . . . I never knew before exactly where the channel was.")
April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”)
April 8, 1855 (“As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach.”)
Apirl 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.")
April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)
April 29, 1855 ("See his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly.")
May 30, 1859 ("Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears.")
June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”)
August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”)
August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")
September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”)
October 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are.")
February 28, 2019
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 28
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/hdt28feb
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