Signs of Spring

March 8.

10 A. M. Rode to Saxonville with F. Brown to look at a small place for sale, via Wayland. Return by Sudbury. On wheels in snow.

A spring sheen on the snow.

The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike.

The snow pure white, but full of water and dissolving through the heat of the sun.

Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a large black weasel, to appearance, worming its supple way over the snow. Where it ran, its tracks were thus: the intervals between the fore and hind feet sixteen or eighteen inches by two and a half.

The distant view of the open flooded Sudbury meadows, all dark blue, surrounded by a landscape of white snow, gave an impulse to the dormant sap in my veins. Dark-blue and angry waves, contrasting with the white but melting winter landscape.

Ponds, of course, do not yet afford this water prospect; only the flooded meadows.

There is no ice over or near the stream, and the flood has covered or broken up much of the ice on the meadows. The aspect of these waters at sunset, when the air is still, begins to be unspeakably soothing and promising.

Waters are at length, and begin to reflect, and, instead of looking into the sky, I look into the placid reflecting water for the signs and promise of the morrow.

These meadows are the most of ocean that I have fairly learned.

Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, overflows and bursts its icy fetters. This is the sap of which I make my sugar after the frosty nights, boiling it down and crystallizing it.

I must be on the lookout now for the gulls and the ducks.

That dark-blue meadowy revelation.

It is as when the sap of the maple bursts forth early and runs down the trunk to the snow.

Saw two or three hawks sailing.

Saw the remains of four cows and a horse that were burned in a barn a month ago. Where the paunch was, a large bag of coarse hay and stalks was seen in the midst of an indistinct circumference of ribs.

Saw some very large willow buds expanded (their silk) to thrice the length of their scales, indistinctly carved or waved with darker lines around them. They look more like, are more of, spring than anything I have seen.

Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, now, before any spring bird has arrived.

I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms with a view to purchasing if not paying for them.

Heard the first flies buzz in the sun on the south side of the house.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 8, 1853

The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. See February 16, 1856 ("the melting snow shines in the ruts."); February 21, 1860 ("When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts."); March 9, 1859 ("A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too.")

Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a large black weasel, to appearance, worming its supple way over the snow. See December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge . . .we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form;   February 26, 1856 ("I see at bottom of the mill brook, below Emerson’s, two dead frogs. . . .t. Were they left by a mink, or killed by cold and ice? ");.March 13, 1859 ("I commonly saw two or three in a year. ")

Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, overflows and bursts its icy fetters. See 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 ? Have I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life's current ?")

Saw two or three hawks sailing. See. March 8, 1857 ("Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season.") See also March 6, 1858 (" I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter, Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

Heard the phebe, or spring note of the chickadee, See February 24, 1857 ("A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. "); March 1, 1854 ("I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee"); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day."); March 10, 1852 ("Hear the phoebe note of the chickadee to-day for the first time.."): March 14, 1852 (" Again I hear the chickadee's spring note.”); March 19, 1958 ("Hear the phebe note of a chickadee."); March 22, 1855 ("My first distinct spring note (phe-be) of the chickadee.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter