Wednesday, March 16, 2022

A Book of the Seasons: March 16 (Ducks on the water, first sailing, first phoebe, red-wings)



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


With infinite and
 unwearied expectation 
usher in each dawn.

Ducks on the meadow
leave a long furrow in the 
water behind them. 

They dive and come up --  
first I see but one then a 
minute after -- three.

Red maple sap spilled
on the ice of the river
will flow to the sea.

The earth has cast off 
her white coat and come forth in
 her early spring dress. 

A flock of red-wings
how handsome as they go by --
bright-scarlet shoulders.

March 16, 2015


Before sunrise. With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before! And the dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens springs, so tenacious of life is nature. Spent the day in Cambridge Library. Walden is not yet melted round the edge. It is, perhaps, more suddenly warm this spring than usual. March 16, 1852

Another fine morning . . . I see ducks afar, sailing on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the water behind them. Watch them at leisure without scaring them, with my glass; observe their free and undisturbed motions . 
. . Others with bright white breasts, etc., and black heads . . They dive and are gone some time, and come up a rod off. At first I saw but one, then, a minute after, three . . . The first phoebe near the water is heard . . . It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening. March 16, 1854

Cloudy in the forenoon. Sun comes out and it is rather pleasant in the afternoon . . . Scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake. March 16, 1855

2 P. M. — The red maple sap is now about an inch deep in a quart pail, nearly all caught since morning . . . Going home, slip on the ice, throwing the pail over my head to save myself, and spill all but a pint. So it is lost on the ice of the river. When the river breaks up, it will go down the Concord into the Merrimack, and down the Merrimack into the sea. March 16, 1856

To Cambridge and Boston. March 16, 1857

To Conantum. A thick mist, spiriting away the snow. Very bad walking. This fog is one of the first decidedly spring signs; also the withered grass bedewed by it and wetting my feet. A still, foggy, and rather warm day . . . The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on. March 16, 1858

Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind. What a change since yesterday! Last night I came home through as incessant heavy rain as I have been out in for many years, through the muddiest and wettest of streets, still partly covered with ice. . . But to-day. . . A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come. . . .
The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress. As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters . . . 
Our sail draws so strongly that we cut through the great waves without feeling them. And all around, half a mile or a mile distant, looking over this blue foreground, I see the bare and peculiarly neat, clean-washed, and bright russet hills reflecting the bright light (after the storm of yesterday) from an infinite number of dry blades of withered grass . . . 
This sight affects me as if it were visible at this season only. What with the clear air and the blue water and the sight of the pure dry withered leaves, that distant hill affects me as something altogether ethereal. . .  
Go out into the sparkling spring air, embark on the flood of melted snow and of rain gathered from all hillsides, with a northwest wind in which you often find it hard to stand up straight, and toss upon a sea of which one half is liquid clay, the other liquid indigo, and look round on an earth dressed in a home spun of pale sheeny brown and leather-color. Such are the blessed and fairy isles we sail to! . . .
This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time. March 16, 1859

Thermometer 55; wind slight, west by south . . . Here is a flock of red-wings. I heard one yesterday, and I see a female among these. How handsome as they go by in a checker, each with a bright-scarlet shoulder! They are not so very shy, but mute when we come near. They cover the apple trees like a black fruit. March 16, 1860

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm. March 16, 1861

March 16, 22022

March 16, 2015
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.

March 15 <<<<< March 16 >>>>> March 17



A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 16
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

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