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 pleasant days
of spring come out like a squirrel
and go in again.
The mystery of the
life of plants is kindred with
that of our own lives.
March 7, 1859
March 7, 2019
The student of lichens has his objects of study brought to his study on his fuel without any extra expense. March 7, 1852
A raw east wind and rather cloudy. March 7, 1855
Frost this morning, though completely overcast. 3 P.M. -- 34º. March 7, 1860
It is an overcast and moist but rather warm afternoon. March 7, 1854
A very pleasant, spring-promising day. March 7, 1852
What is the earliest sign of spring? March 7, 1853
The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds? March 7, 1853
Do not the insects awake with the flow of the sap? March 7, 1853
C. says that he saw a swarm of very small gnats in the air yesterday. March 7, 1860
Bluebirds, etc., probably do not come till insects come out. March 7, 1853
Or are there earlier signs in the water? - the tortoises, frogs, etc. March 7, 1853
Find the yellow bud of a Nuphar advena in the ditch on the Turnpike on E. Hosmer's land. March 7, 1853
Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. March 7, 1855
White maple buds partly opened, so as to admit light to the stamens, some of them, yesterday at least. March 7, 1860
To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet. March 7, 1855
See some fuzzy gnats in the air. March 7, 1854
It is remarkable how true each plant is to its season. March 7, 1854
Why should not the fringed gentian put forth early in the spring, instead of holding in till the latter part of September? How short a time it is with us! March 7, 1854
The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives,. . .We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface still. The ultimate expression or fruit of any created thing is a fine effluence which only the most ingenuous worshipper perceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. The cause and the effect are equally evanescent and intangible, and the former must be investigated in the same spirit and with the same reverence with which the latter is perceived. . . ., and the essence is as far on the other side of the surface, or matter, as reverence detains the worshipper on this, and only reverence can find out this angle instinctively. Shall we presume to alter the angle at which God chooses to be worshipped? March 7, 1859
I come out to hear a spring bird, the ground generally covered with snow yet and the channel of the river only partly open. March 7, 1859
I walk up the river on the ice to Fair Haven Pond. March 7, 1852
As I cross the snow (2 P.M.) where it lies deepest in hollows, its surface honeycombed by the sun, I hear it suddenly sink under and around me with a crash, March 7, 1852
It has melted next the earth, and my weight makes it fall. March 7, 1852
Walking by the river this afternoon, it being half open and the waves running pretty high, — the black waves, yellowish where they break over ice, — I inhale a fresh, meadowy, spring odor from them which is a little exciting. March 7, 1858
Most of the snow left on bare, dry level ground consists of the remains of drifts, particularly along fences, — most on the south side. March 7, 1854
[Snow is] probably quite as deep as any time before, this year. March 7, 1856
I may say that there has not been less than sixteen inches of snow on a level in open land since January 13th. March 7, 1856
There are still two or more inches of ice next the ground in open land. March 7, 1856
It is now difficult getting on and off Walden. March 7, 1855
A little sleety snow falling all day, which does not quite cover the ground, — a sugaring.
Song sparrow heard through it; not bluebird. March 7, 1860
The only birds I see to-day are the lesser redpolls. March 7, 1853
I have not seen a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla hyemalis.
March 7, 1853
Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? March 7, 1855
As I walk, these first mild spring days. . . I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of passage just arrived. March 7, 1859
I hear several jays this morning. March 7, 1859
On the Hill I hear first the tapping of a small woodpecker. March 7, 1859
I then see a bird alight on the dead top of the highest white oak on the hilltop, on the topmost point. March 7, 1859
It is a shrike. March 7, 1859
While I am watching him eight or ten rods off, I hear robins down below, west of the hill.March 7, 1859
The robins kept their ground, one alighting on the very point which the shrike vacated. March 7, 1859
The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or peep-eep-eep, as when in distress with young just flown. March 7, 1859
When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look. March 7, 1859
I hear of two who saw bluebirds this morning, and one says he saw one yesterday. March 7, 1859
This seems to have been the day of their general arrival here, but I have not seen one in Concord yet. March 7, 1859
It is a good plan to go to some old orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, especially in the morning when all is still. March 7, 1859
You can thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would not have been audible to you. March 7, 1859
Hear the first bluebird, — something like pe-a-wor, — and then other slight warblings, as if farther off. March 7, 1854
Am surprised to see the bird within seven or eight rods on the top of an oak by the orchard's edge under the hill. March 7, 1854
But he appears silent, while I hear others faintly warbling and twittering far in the orchard. March 7, 1854
When he flies I hear no more, and I suspect that he has been ventriloquizing; as if he hardly dare open his mouth yet, while there is so much winter left. March 7, 1854
He revisits the apple trees, and appears to find some worms. March 7, 1854
Probably not till now is his food to be found abundantly. March 7, 1854
At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact. March 7, 1855
Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss (forming a firm bed about an inch high, like little pines, surmounted by a fine red stem with a green point, in all three quarters of an inch high), which they had fed on to a great extent, evidently when it was covered with snow, shearing it off level. March 7, 1855
They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter. March 7, 1855
At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon. March 7, 1852
It is rather mild to-night. I can walk without gloves. March 7, 1852
There is no snow on the trees. March 7, 1852
The ground is thinly covered with a crusted snow, through which the dead grass and weeds appear, telling the nearness of spring. March 7, 1852
Going through the high field beyond the lone graveyard, I see the track of a boy's sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon. March 7, 1852
Though the snow-crust between me and the moon reflects the moon at a distance, westward it is but a dusky white; only where it is heaped up into a drift, or a steep bank occurs, is the moonlight reflected to me as from a phosphorescent place. March 7, 1852
I distinguish thus large tracts an eighth of a mile distant in the west, where a steep bank sloping toward the moon occurs, that glow with a white, phosphorescent light, while all the surrounding snow is comparatively dark, as if shaded by the woods. March 7, 1852
I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me. March 7, 1852
As I look down the railroad, standing on the west brink of the Deep Cut, I see a promise or sign of spring in the way the moon is reflected from the snow covered west slope,-- a sort of misty light as if a fine vapor were rising from it. March 7, 1852
The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow, --a monumental stillness, whose void must be supplied by thought. March 7, 1852
We were walking along the sunny hillside on the south of Fair Haven Pond (on the 4th), which the choppers had just laid bare, when, in a sheltered and warmer place, we heard a rustling amid the dry leaves on the hillside and saw a striped squirrel eying us from its resting-place on the bare ground. March 7, 1855
It sat still till we were within a rod, then suddenly dived into its hole, which was at its feet, and disappeared.
The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again. March 7, 1855
The moon appears to have waned a little, yet, with this snow on the ground, I can plainly see the words I write. March 7, 1852
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spring sounds. Woodpeckers Tapping
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
March 7, 2021
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 © 2009-2022
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