A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

 It is a spring phenomenon . . .

When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts,

know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring.

February 21, 1860

February 9.  And the brightness of the morning is increased tenfold by the sun reflected from broad sheets of rain and melted snow water. The sun is reflected from a hundred rippling sluices of snow-water finding its level in the fields. February 9, 1854

February 16.  I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance. February 16, 1856

February 21. I see now, in the ruts in sand on hills in the road, those interesting ripples which I only notice to advantage in very shallow running water, a phenomenon almost, as it were, confined to melted snow running in ruts in the road in a thaw, especially in the spring.  It is a spring phenomenon.  The water, meeting with some slight obstacle, ever and anon appears to shoot across diagonally to the opposite side, while ripples from the opposite side intersect the former, producing countless regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples.   If you hold your head low and look along up such a stream in a right light, it is seen to have a regularly braided surface, tress-like, preserving its figures as if it were solid, though the stream is seen pulsing high through the middle ripples in the thread of the stream. 

The ripples are as rectilinear as ice-crystals. 

When you see the sparkling stream 

from melting snow in the ruts, 

know that then is to be seen 

this braid of the spring. 

February 21, 1860

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

March 8.  A spring sheen on the snow. The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. The snow pure white, but full of water and dissolving through the heat of the sun.  March 8, 1853

March 9.  A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. 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.  Yet it is cool and raw and very windy   March 9, 1859

March 25.  To speak of the general phenomena of March: . . . The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. It glances and shines like burnished silver. March 25, 1860

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:

• Bright blue water
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• My greatcoat on my arm
• Catkins Expanding
• Spring sounds.  Woodpeckers Tapping
• the Red-wing in Spring
• The anxious peep of the early robin
•  Red Maple Sap Flows
• The Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)
• Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ
• Listening for the bluebird
• Catkins expanding
•  The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• the Osier in Winter and early Spring
•  February 21

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Braided ripples of melting snow

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 ©  2009-2023

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