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
In the course of ages
rivers wriggle in their beds
until comfortable.
March 24, 2020
The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground. March 24, 1852
The past has been a remarkable winter; such a one as I do not remember. The ground has been bare almost all the time, and the river has been open about as much. I got but one chance to take a turn on skates over half an acre. The first snow more than an inch deep fell January 13th, but probably was not a foot deep and was soon gone. There was about as much more fell February 13th, and no more to be remembered, i.e. only two or three inches since. I doubt if there has been one day when it was decidedly better sleighing than wheeling. I have hardly heard the sound of sleigh-bells.
Freshly cut pine wood
world of light and purity
its life oozing out.
Fair again, the snow melting. Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note. The same ducks under Clamshell Hill. Goose Pond half open. Flint's has perhaps fifteen or twenty acres of ice yet about shores. Can hardly tell when it is open this year.
The same ducks under
Clamshell Hill. Black ducks — the most
common that I see.
March 24, 1854
Up Assabet by boat. A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground . . . The last four days, including this, have been very cold and blustering. The ice on the ponds, which was rapidly rotting, has somewhat hardened again, so that you make no impression on it as you walk. I crossed Fair Haven Pond yesterday, and could have crossed the channel there again. The wind has been for the most part northwesterly, but yesterday was strong southwesterly yet cold. The northwesterly comes from a snow-clad country still, and cannot but be chilling. We have had several flurries of snow, when we hoped it would snow in earnest and the weather be warmer for it. It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year.
It is too cold to
think of those signs of spring I
recorded last year.
9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30. One F. hyemalis in yard. Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp . . . The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. Cross the river behind Monroe’s. Go everywhere on the North Branch — it is all solid — and crust bears in the morning. Yet last year I paddled my boat to Fair Haven Pond on the 19th of March! The snow is so coarse-grained and hard that you can hardly get up a handful to wash your hands with, except the dirty surface. Before noon I slump two feet in the snow . . . The river begins to open generally at the bends for ten or twenty rods, and I see the dark ice alternating with dark water there, while the rest of the river is still covered with snow.
Paddle up Assabet. The water is fast going down. See a small water bug. It is pretty still and warm. As I round the Island rock, a striped squirrel that was out the steep polypody rock scampered up with a chuckle. On looking close, I see the crimson white maple stigmas here and there, and some early alder catkins are relaxed and extended and almost shed pollen. I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light.
We are not at once
conscious of the whole fruit of
our experience.
[Fair Haven Pond] not yet open. A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice. The chip of the ground-bird [That is, song sparrow.] resembles that of a robin, i.e., its expression is the same, only fainter, and reminds me that the robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind.
A cold northwest wind
comes over much snow and ice –
pond not yet open.
March 24, 1858
Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. It is a singular sound for awakening Nature to make, associated with the first warmer days, when you sit in some sheltered place in the woods amid the dried leaves. How moderate on her first awakening, how little demonstrative! You may sit half an hour before you will hear another. . . Can you ever be sure that you have heard the very first wood frog in the township croak?
Can you be sure that
you have heard the first wood frog
in the township croak?
March 24, 1859
Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow . . . They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an electric, fibry look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences.
Cold and blustering
again with flurries of snow--
cold dark slate wind-clouds.
March 24, 1860
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice Out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The note of the dark-eyed junco going northward
*****
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 24, 2020 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24 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 © 2009-20224 |
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