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
The first song sparrows
inconspicuous and shy
amid the stubble.
March 3, 2012
Going by the solidago oak at Clamshell Hill bank, I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak, all with their breasts toward me, — sitting so still and quite white, seen against the white cloudy sky, they did not look like birds but the ghosts of birds. . .These were almost as white as snow balls . . . It was a very spectral sight, and after I had watched them for several minutes, I can hardly say that I was prepared to see them fly away like ordinary buntings when I advanced further. March 3, 1859
Moore's larch trees beyond Sleepy Hollow cut this winter. They were much decayed. The woodpeckers had stripped many of bark in pursuit of grubs. When the woodpeckers visit your woods in great numbers, you may suspect that it is time to cut them. March 3, 1852
A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out.
Not only is this cone, resting upright on the ground, fully blossomed, a very beautiful object, but the winged seeds which half fill my hand, small triangular black seeds with thin and delicate flesh colored wings, remind me of fishes. March 3, 1855
The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes and thence down the trunk to the ground, except in one place where the hole was made in the south side of the tree, where it is melted and is flowing a little. Generally, then, when the thermometer is thus low, say below freezing-point, it does not thaw in the auger-holes. March 3, 1857
A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out.
The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes and thence down the trunk to the ground, except in one place where the hole was made in the south side of the tree, where it is melted and is flowing a little. Generally, then, when the thermometer is thus low, say below freezing-point, it does not thaw in the auger-holes. March 3, 1857
There is no expanding of buds of any kind, nor early birds, to be seen. Nature was thus premature — anticipated her own revolutions — with respect to the sap of trees, the buds (spiraea at least), and birds. The warm spell ended with February 26th. March 3, 1857
Skating yesterday and to-day. March 3, 1857
See two small water-bugs at the spring; none elsewhere. March 3, 1859
I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon. March 3, 1860
Going to Acton this morning, I saw some sparrows on the wall, which I think must have been the F. hyemalis (?). March 3, 1859
The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away. March 3, 1860
The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away. March 3, 1860
How imperceptibly the first springing takes place! March 3, 1859
In some still, muddy springs whose temperature is more equable than that of the brooks, while brooks and ditches are generally thickly frozen and concealed and the earth is covered with snow, and it is even cold, hard, and nipping winter weather, some fine grass which fills the water like a moss begins to lift its tiny spears or blades above the surface, which directly fall flat for half an inch or an inch along the surface, and on these (though many are frost-bitten) you may measure the length to which the spring has advanced, — has sprung.
Very few indeed,
even of botanists, are
aware of this growth.
March 3, 1859
The mossy bank along the south side of Hosmer's second spring ditch is very interesting. There are many coarse, hair-like masses of that green and brown moss on its edge, hanging over the ditch, alternating with withered-looking cream-colored sphagnum tinged with rose-color, in protuberances, or mammae, a foot across on the perpendicular side of the ditch. March 3, 1859
C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. March 3, 1860
It is an exceedingly warm and pleasant day. The snow is suddenly all gone except heels, and -- what is more remarkable -- the frost is generally out of the ground . . .for the reason that it has not been in it. March 3, 1861
It is an exceedingly warm and pleasant day. The snow is suddenly all gone except heels, and -- what is more remarkable -- the frost is generally out of the ground . . .for the reason that it has not been in it. March 3, 1861
I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready. March 3, 1860
*****
March 3, 2024
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.
Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) ("This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. It commonly opens about the first of April.”)
March 3, 2024
*****
December 14, 1851 ("I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter.")
January 21, 1852 ("This winter they are cutting down our woods more seriously than ever,--Fair Haven hill, Walden, Linnaea, Borealis Wood, etc., etc. Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!")
January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not”)
February 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed, blown thirty rods from J. Hosmer’s little grove.”)
Flock of snow buntings
and that black and white effect
when they fly past you.
February 1, 1857
February 18, 1857 ("Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably!")
February 21, 1857 ("Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's.”)
February 22, 1855 (“Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber.”)
February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.")
February 24, 1857 ("Get my boat out the cellar.")
February 25, 1857 ("I hear of lilac buds expanding, but have not looked at them.")
February 26, 1857 ("I saw Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas to-day grown half an inch (!!), whose starting I heard of on the 18th.")
February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat")
February 27, 1853 (“The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.”)
February 27, 1858 ("I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm.”)
March 1, 1856 ("I see a pitch pine seed with its wing, far out on Walden.”)
March 2, 1858 (“See a large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow”)
March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow.”).
March 2, 1860 ("At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome")
March 2, 1860 ("The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. ")
Fully blossomed cone —
winged black seeds half fill my hand
like tiny fishes.
March 4, 1852 ("I see where a maple has been wounded the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar. ")
March 4, 1859 ("I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up . . . very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living, perhaps slightly glaucous, green.")
March 5, 1852 ("As I sit under their boughs, looking into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black dots of the expanded buds against the sky. Their sap is flowing.”)
March 5, 1857 ("The lilac buds cannot have swollen any since the 25th of February, on account of the cold.")
March 6, 1853 ("Part of the pitch pine cones are yet closed.”)
March 7, 1855 ("It is now difficult getting on and off Walden.")
March 8, 1860 ("You cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [in] the maples in midwinter in some days,. . .There is something of spring in all seasons. “)
March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it.”)
March 9, 1855("Painted the bottom of my boat.”)
March 10, 1852 (" See a sparrow, perhaps a song sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the ground is covered with snow.”)
ed to sing?”)
March 11, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick,”)
March 11, 1859 (“By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs”)
March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceas
March 11, 1861 ("C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, so that the lines on my map would not strike any ice, but that there is ice in the deep cove. It will be open then the 12th or 13th. This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.”)
Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) (".On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. . . .. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.”)
March 14, 1860 (" I am surprised to find Walden open. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years")
March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat.”)
March 15, 1857 (“An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present.”)
March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill");
March 16, 1860 ("As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half.")
March 17, 1857 (" No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring, but he will presently discover some evidence that vegetation had awaked some days at least before.")
April 18, 1852 ("Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new?")
March 3, 2012
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
"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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