Wednesday, March 9, 2022

A Book of the Seasons: March 9 (when bluebirds arrive, March winds, reflections in open water )



The face of nature
reflected in still open
waters in the spring.

Colorless as light—
crystal drops of turpentine
reflecting the world.

March 9, 2015


About three inches more of snow fell last night, which, added to about five of the old, makes eight, or more than before since last spring. March 9, 1858

Thermometer at 2 P. M. 15°, sixteen inches of snow on a level in open fields, hard and dry, ice in Flint’s Pond two feet thick, and the aspect of the earth is that of the middle of January in a severe winter. March 9, 1856

Yet this is about the date that bluebirds arrive commonly. March 9, 1856

C. says that he heard and saw a bluebird on the 7th, and R. W. E. the same. This was the day on which they were generally observed. March 9, 1859

A pail of water froze nearly half an inch thick in my chamber, with fire raked up. March 9, 1856

The train which should have got down last night did not arrive till this afternoon (Sunday), having stuck in a drift. March 9, 1856

Snows this forenoon, whitening the ground again. 2 and 3 P. M. — Thermometer 41° March 9, 1860

As I recall it, February began cold, with some dry and fine driving snow, making those shell-shaped drifts behind walls, and some days after were some wild but low drifts on the meadow ice. March 9, 1860

I walked admiring the winter sky and clouds. March 9, 1860

March began warm, and I admired the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny color of the earth, and was on the alert to hear the first birds. March 9, 1860

For a few days past it has been generally colder and rawer, and the ground has been whitened with snow two or three times, but it has all been windy. March 9, 1860

You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds. March 9, 1860

Yet it is cool and raw and very windy. March 9, 1859


It is worthwhile to hear the wind roar in the woods to-day. It sounds further off than it is. March 9, 1859
These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. March 9, 1852

I have no doubt they serve some such use, as well as to hasten the evaporation of the snow and water. March 9, 1852

A warm spring rain in the night. March 9, 1852

I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind. March 9, 1852

The earth is now half bare. March 9, 1852

Though cloudy, the air excites me. March 9, 1852

Cloudy but springlike. March 9, 1852

A cloudy, rain-threatening day, not windy and rather warmer than yesterday. March 9, 1855

When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man. March 9, 1852

Rain, dissolving the snow and raising the river. March 9, 1853

I am cheered by the sound of running water now down the wooden troughs on each side the cut. March 9, 1852

The sound of water falling on rocks and of air falling on trees are very much alike. March 9, 1852

Already these puddles on the railroad, relflecting pinewoods, remind me of summer lakes. March 9, 1852

Again it rains, and I turn about. March 9, 1852

The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too, and water, where exposed in the right light on the river, is a remarkably living blue, just as the osiers appear brighter. March 9, 1859

Water is fast taking place of ice on the river and meadows. March 9, 1854

In the spaces of still open water I see the reflection of the hills and woods, which for so long I have not seen. March 9, 1854

It gives expression to the face of nature. March 9, 1854

Sometimes you see only the top of a distant hill reflected far within the meadow, where a dull-gray field of ice intervenes between the water and the shore. March 9, 1854

The face of nature is lit up by these reflections in still water in the spring. March 9, 1854

Looking from the Cliffs, the sun being invisible, I see far more light in the reflected sky in the neighborhood of the sun than I could see in the heavens from my position, and it occurred to me that the reason was that there was reflected to me from the river the view I should have got if I had stood there on the water in a more favorable position. March 9, 1855

I clamber over those great white pine masts which lie in all directions one upon another on the hillside south of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid waste. March 9, 1855

I am struck, in favorable lights, with the jewel-like brilliancy of the sawed ends thickly bedewed with crystal drops of turpentine, thickly as a shield, as if pine-wood nymphs had seasonably wept there the fall of the tree. March 9, 1855

The perfect sincerity of these terebinthine drops, each one reflecting the world, colorless as light, is incredible when you remember how firm their consistency. March 9, 1855

And is this that pitch which you cannot touch without being defiled? March 9, 1855

I see that the mud in the road has crystallized as it dried (for it is not nearly cold enough to freeze), like the first crystals that shoot and set on water when freezing. March 9, 1855

To Andromeda Ponds. Scare up a rabbit on the hillside by these ponds, which was gnawing a smooth sumach. March 9, 1855

See also where they have gnawed the red maple, sweet-fern, Populus grandidentata, white and other oaks. March 9, 1855

I get a few drops of the sweet red maple juice which has run down the main stem where a rabbit had nibbled off close a twig. March 9, 1855

I see the minute seeds of the Andromeda calyculata scattered over the melting ice of the Andromeda Ponds. March 9, 1855

I do not perceive that the early elm or the white maple buds have swollen yet. So the relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed. March 9, 1853

Painted the bottom of my boat. March 9, 1855

A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. March 9, 1859

Minott thinks, and quotes some old worthy as authority for saying, that the bark of the striped squirrel is the, or a, first sure sign of decided spring weather. March 9, 1853

An overcast and dark night. March 9, 1855


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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