Monday, March 28, 2022

A Book of the Seasons: March 28 (stone fruit, frogs, turtles, geese, juncos, butterflies, the mystery of death)

 



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 



It is a stone fruit–
mind-print of the oldest men –
each one yields a thought.

Smoky maple swamps
now have a reddish tinge from
their expanding buds.

Too cold for birds to sing
and for me to hear --
the bluebird’s warble
comes feeble
and frozen to my ear.
March 28, 1855

So I help myself
to live worthily – loving
my life as I should.

March 28, 2016
Each day's feast in Nature's year 
is a surprise to us and adapted to our appetite and spirits. 
She has arranged such an order of feasts as never tires.


A pleasant afternoon; cool wind but warm sun. Snow almost all gone . . . Saw dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season; also a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hubbard's Bridge . . . The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds . . . 10.15 P. M. — The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. They will probably settle in the river. Who knows but they had expected to find the pond open? March 28, 1852


Too cold for the birds to sing much. There appears to be more snow on the mountains. Many of our spring rains are snow-storms there. The woods ring with the cheerful jingle of the F. hyemalis. This is a very trig and compact little bird, and appears to be in good condition. The straight edge of slate on their breasts contrasts remarkably with the white from beneath; the short, light-colored bill is also very conspicuous amid the dark slate; and when they fly from you, the two white feathers in their tails are very distinct at a good distance. They are very lively, pursuing each other from bush to bush. Could that be the fox-colored sparrow I saw this morning, — that reddish-brown sparrow ? . . . This is a raw, cloudy, and disagreeable day. Yet I think you are most likely to see wildfowl this weather. March 28, 1853


P. M. — To White Pond. Coldest day for a month or more, — severe as almost any in the winter . . . A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold. The fox-colored sparrow sings sweetly also. See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk. Got first proof of "Walden." March 28, 1854


As for the singing of birds, — the few that have come to us, — it is too cold for them to sing and for me to hear. The bluebird’s warble comes feeble and frozen to my ear. March 28, 1855


Uncle Charles buried. He was born in February, 1780, the winter of the Great Snow, and he dies in the winter of another great snow,—a life bounded by great snows . . . Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that. For a long time you have appeared further and further off to me. I see that you will at length disappear altogether. For a season my path seems lonely without you. The meadows are like barren ground. The memory of me is steadily passing away from you. My path grows narrower and steeper, and the night is approaching. March 28, 1856


The Emys picta, now pretty numerous, when young and fresh, with smooth black scales without moss or other imperfection, unworn, and with claws perfectly sharp, is very handsome. . . .He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs? At Lee’s Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff edged butterflies (Vanessa Antiopa) . . . Those little oblong spots on the black ground are light as you look directly down on them, but from one side they vary through violet to a crystalline rose-purple.. . .A pleasing sight this of the earlier painted tortoises which are seen along the edge of the flooded meadows,. . .The Emys guttata is found in brooks and ditches. I passed three to-day, lying cunningly quite motionless, with heads and feet drawn in, on the bank of a little grassy ditch,. . .Do I ever see a yellow-spot turtle in the river? Do I ever see a wood tortoise in the South Branch? There is consolation in the fact that a particular evil, which perhaps we suffer, is of a venerable antiquity, for it proves its necessity and that it is part of the order, not disorder, of the universe. When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring. Thus they have fallen on fate. And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here. March 28, 1857


After a cloudy morning, a warm and pleasant afternoon. I hear that a few geese were seen this morning.. . .I go down the railroad, turning off in the cut. I notice the hazel stigmas in the warm hollow on the right there, just beginning to peep forth. This is an unobserved but very pretty and interesting evidence of the progress of the season.. . .Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so these put forth their stigmas in the spring. How many accurate thermometers there are on every hill and in every valley: Measure the length of the hazel stigmas, and you can tell how much warmth there has been this spring. How fitly and exactly any season of the year may be described by indicating the condition of some flower! I go by the springs toward the epigaea.. . .In the sunny epigaea wood I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves be fore, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies. . . . I look toward Fair Haven Pond, now quite smooth. There is not a duck nor a gull to be seen on it. I can hardly believe that it was so alive with them yesterday. Apparently they improve this warm and pleasant day, with little or no wind, to continue their journey northward. . . . But when one kind of life goes, another comes. . . . On ascending the hill next his home, every man finds that he dwells in a shallow concavity whose sheltering walls are the convex surface of the earth, beyond which he cannot see. March 28, 1858


I landed on two spots this afternoon and picked up a dozen arrowheads. It is one of the regular pursuits of the spring.As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travellers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads when the proper season comes round again. So I help my self to live worthily, and loving my life as I should . . . Many as I have found, methinks the last one gives me about the same delight that the first did. Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America . . . It is a stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought . . . It was originally winged for but a short flight, but it still, to my mind's eye, wings its way through the ages, bearing a message from the hand that shot it. Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men . . . If you scan the horizon at this season of the year you are very likely to detect a small flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese against the sky. . . .Our vernal lakes have a beauty to my mind which they would not possess if they were more permanent. Everything is in rapid flux here, suggesting that Nature is alive to her extremities and superficies. To-day we sail swiftly on dark rolling waves or paddle over a sea as smooth as a mirror, unable to touch the bottom, where mowers work and hide their jugs in August; coasting the edge of maple swamps, where alder tassels and white maple flowers are kissing the tide that has risen to meet them. But this particular phase of beauty is fleeting. March 28, 1859


March 28, 2018
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 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 © 2009-2022

 https://tinyurl.com/HDT28March

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