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
March 31, 2018
Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented . . . How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? . . . 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. Woe be to us when we cease to form new resolutions on the opening of a new year! A cold, raw day with alternating hail-like snow and rain . . .
The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April. Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. The song sparrow and the transient fox-colored sparrow, –– have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert's Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it? God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference. These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings adequately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I . . . I hear late to-night the unspeakable rain, mingled with rattling snow against the windows, preparing the ground for spring. March 31, 1852
Migrating sparrows
all bear messages
that concern my life.
The sparrow cheeps and
flits and sings adequately
to the great design
of the universe.
But i reproach myself – I
do not understand.
When the air is a little hazy, the mountains are particularly dark blue. It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it. March 31, 1853
Distant mountain top
as blue to the memory
as now to the eyes.
Trust your fine instinct.
Come very near questioning --
but do not question.
I see through the window that it is a very fine day, the first really warm one. I do not know the whole till I come out at 3 P. M. and walk to the Cliffs. The slight haze of yesterday has become very thick, with a southwest wind, concealing the mountains. I can see it in the air within two or three rods, as I look against the bushes. The fuzzy gnats are in the air, and bluebirds, whose warble is thawed out. I am uncomfortably warm, gradually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I had left the outside one at home. I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes. It is suddenly warm, and this amelioration of the weather is incomparably the most important fact in this vicinity. It is incredible what a revolution in our feelings and in the aspect of nature this warmer air alone has produced. Yesterday the earth was simple to barrenness, and dead, —bound out. Out-of-doors there was nothing but the wind and the withered grass and the cold though sparkling blue water, and you were driven in upon yourself. Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth — but not so. I listen in vain to hear a frog or a new bird as yet; only the frozen ground is melting a little deeper, and the water is trickling down the hills in some places. No, the change is mainly in us. We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life. . . . Looking from the Cliffs I see that Walden is open to-day first. March 31, 1855
I go listening
for the croak of the first frog
or peep of hyla.
A new lease of life
(the change is mainly in us) –
first warm day in Spring.
I see the scarlet tops of white maples nearly a mile off, down the river, the lusty shoots of last year. March 31, 1856
Tops of white maples
nearly a mile off downriver –
last year's lusty shoots.
The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, —and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular, but seems to take its rise at an indefinite distance over wood and hill and pasture, from clefts or hollows in the March wind. It is a wind-born sound. To-day both croakers and peepers are pretty numerously heard, and I hear one faint stertorous (bullfrog-like ??) sound on the river meadow. What an important part to us the little peeping hylodes acts, filling all our ears with sound in the spring afternoons and evenings, while the existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)! The voice of the peepers is not so much of the earth earthy as of the air airy. It rises at once on the wind and is at home there, and we are incapable of tracing it further back. . . . The tortoises now quite commonly lie out sunning on the sedge or the bank. As you float gently down the stream, you hear a slight rustling and, looking up, see the dark shining back of a picta sliding off some little bed of straw-colored coarse sedge which is upheld by the button-bushes or willows above the surrounding water. They are very wary and, as I go up the Assabet, will come rolling and sliding down a rod or two, though they appear to have but just climbed up to that height. March 31, 1857
Voice of the peepers
not of the earth earthy as
of the air airy.
The dark shining back
of a picta sliding off
straw-colored coarse sedge.
Early butterflies
seem to be born of the leaves
on the forest floor.
A large flock of geese
in a perfect harrow cleave
toward the northeast,
Many painted turtles out along a ditch in Moore's Swamp. These the first I have seen, the water is so high in the meadows. One drops into the water from some dead brush which lies in it, and leaves on the brush two of its scales. Perhaps the sun causes the loosened scales to curl up, and so helps the turtle to get rid of them. . . . The wood frogs lie spread out on the surface of the sheltered pools in the woods, cool and windy as it is, dimpling the water by their motions, and as you approach you hear their lively wurk wurrk wur-r-k, but, seeing you, they suddenly hist and perhaps dive to the bottom. It is a very windy afternoon, wind northwest, and at length a dark cloud rises on that side, evidently of a windy structure, a dusky mass with lighter intervals, like a parcel of brushes lying side by side, — a parcel of "mare's-tails " perhaps. It winds up with a flurry of rain. March 31, 1859
The wood frogs lie spread
out on the surface of the
sheltered woodland pools.
A dark cloud rises --
windy afternoon ends with
a flurry of rain.
A yet warmer day. A very thick haze, concealing mountains and all distant objects like a smoke, with a strong but warm southwest wind. Your outside coat is soon left on the ground in the woods, where it first becomes quite intolerable. The small red butterfly in the wood-paths and sprout-lands, and I hear at midafternoon a very faint but positive ringing sound rising above the susurrus of the pines, — of the breeze, — which I think is the note of a distant and perhaps solitary toad; not loud and ringing, as it will be. Toward night I hear it more distinctly, and am more confident about it. I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to the sound of the winds thus each year a little in advance of the unquestionable note of the toad. Of constant sounds in the warmer parts of warm days there now begins to be added to the rustling or crashing, waterfall-like sound of the wind this faintest imaginable prelude of the toad. I often draw my companion's attention to it, and he fails to hear it at all, it is so slight a departure from the previous monotony of March. This morning you walked in the warm sprout-land, the strong but warm southwest wind blowing, and you heard no sound but the dry and mechanical susurrus of the wood; now there is mingled with or added to it, to be detected only by the sharpest ears, this first and faintest imaginable voice . . .The pewee sings in earnest, the first I have heard; and at even I hear the first real robin's song. March 31, 1860
Small red butterfly
and the distant note of a
solitary toad.
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice Out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, First frogs to begin calling
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Ring of Toads
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Phoebe
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Song Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox-colored Sparrow.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Robin in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, TheAmerican Black Duck
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
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, March 31
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 © 2009-2022
https://tinyurl.com/HDT31March
