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
Ice the next moment
is as perfect water as if
melted a million years.
Rain, rain, rain; but even this is fair weather after so much snow. The ice on Walden has now for some days looked white like snow, the surface being softened by the sun. I see a flock of blackbirds and hear their conqueree. The ground is mostly bare now. Again I hear the chickadee's spring note. March 14, 1852
High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. March 14, 1853
Threatening rain after clear morning. Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Alder scales are visibly loosened, their lower edges (i. e. as they hang) showing a line of yellowish or greenish.. . . P. M. — To Great Meadows. Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain . . . From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather. March 14, 1854
High winds, growing colder and colder, ground stiffening again. My ears have not been colder the past winter . . . March is rightly famous for its winds. March 14, 1853
Threatening rain after clear morning. Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Alder scales are visibly loosened, their lower edges (i. e. as they hang) showing a line of yellowish or greenish.. . . P. M. — To Great Meadows. Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain . . . From within the house at 5.30 p. m. I hear the loud honking of geese, throw up the window, and see a large flock in disordered harrow flying more directly north or even northwest than usual. Raw, thick, misty weather. March 14, 1854
Three inches of snow in the morning, and it snows a little more during the day, with occasional gleams of sunshine. Winter back again in prospect, and I see a few sparrows, probably tree sparrows, in the yard. March 14, 1855
Quite warm. Thermometer 46° . . . As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,—for I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river, — the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — and I fancy the sap fast flowing in their pores. Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen. March 14, 1856
A warmer day at last. It has been steadily cold and windy, with repeated light snows, since February 26th came in. This afternoon is comparatively warm, and the few signs of spring are more reliable . . . Many of those small, slender insects, with long, narrow wings (some apparently of same species without), are crawling about in the sun on the snow and bark of trees. March 14, 1857
I think I have seen many more tracks of skunks within two or three weeks than all the winter before; as if they were partially dormant here in the winter. March 14, 1858
I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring . . . It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers.The sleighing which began the 4th of March is now done, the only sleighing since the winter of ’56–7. March 14, 1858
I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge . . .It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast. . . . The river is still rising. It is open [?] and generally over the meadows. The meadow ice is rapidly breaking up. Great cakes half a dozen rods long are drifted down against the bridges. March 14, 1859
I see a Fringilla hyemalis, the first bird, perchance, — unless one hawk, – which is an evidence of spring . . . It flits past with a rattling or grating chip, showing its two white tail-feathers.The sleighing which began the 4th of March is now done, the only sleighing since the winter of ’56–7. March 14, 1858
I see a large flock of grackles searching for food along the water's edge . . .It must be something just washed up that they are searching for, for the water has just risen and is still rising fast. . . . The river is still rising. It is open [?] and generally over the meadows. The meadow ice is rapidly breaking up. Great cakes half a dozen rods long are drifted down against the bridges. March 14, 1859
The Peterboro Hills are covered with snow, though this neighborhood is bare. We thus see winter retiring for some time after she has left us, commonly. March 14, 1860
I am surprised to find Walden almost entirely open . . .I may say it opens to-morrow. I have not observed it to open before before the 23d of March. [March 19, 1856, it was twenty-six inches thick! !] . . . 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 it had been melted a million years . . . What if our moods could dissolve thus completely? . . . It seems as if it must rejoice in its own newly acquired fluidity, as it affects the beholder with joy. Often the March winds have no chance to ripple its face at all. March 14, 1860
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
The Song Sparrow Sings
*****
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. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of ’52–3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. . . . On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.
In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April.
March 14, 2016
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 14
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt14March
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