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
I feel on my cheek
the air cooled by snow stretching
to the Icy Sea.
Snow-covered mountains
in the northwest horizon
glisten in the sun.
April 4, 2014
I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills . . . I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek. Those hills are probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea. April 4, 1852
I feel on my cheek
the air cooled by snow stretching
to the Icy Sea.
Last night, a sugaring of snow, which goes off in an hour or two in the rain. Rains all day . . . The robins sang this morning, nevertheless, and now more than ever hop about boldly in the garden in the rain, with full, broad, light cow-colored breasts. P. M. -- Rain, rain . . . A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort. We go abroad with a slow but sure contentment, like turtles under their shells. We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. Our comfort is positive then. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. Now we seem to hear the ground a-soaking up the rain, and not falling ineffectually on a frozen surface. We, too, are penetrated and revived by it. Robins still sing, and song sparrows more or less, and blackbirds, and the unfailing jay screams .After turning Lee's Cliff I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather . . . A rainy day is to the walker in solitude and retirement like the night. April 4, 1853
All day surveying a wood-lot in Acton for Abel Hosmer . . . The afternoon very pleasant. April 4, 1854
Snow-covered mountains
in the northwest horizon
glisten in the sun.
The alder scales south of the railroad, beyond the bridge, are loosened. This corresponds to the opening (not merely expansion showing the fuzziness) of the white maple buds. There is still but little rain, but the fog of yesterday still rests on the earth. My neighbor says it is the frost coming out of the ground. This, perhaps, is not the best description of it. It is rather the moisture in this warm air, condensed by contact with the snow and ice and frozen ground . . . Notwithstanding all the snow the skunk-cabbage is earlier than last year, when it was also the earliest flower and blossomed on the 5th of April . . .The ground no sooner begins to be bare to a considerable extent than I see a marsh hawk, or harrier. April 4, 1856
Moisture in warm air
condensed by contact with snow
ice and frozen ground.
Caught a croaking frog in some smooth water in the railroad gutter. Above it was a uniform (perhaps olive?) brown, without green, and a yellowish line along the edge of the lower jaws. It was, methinks, larger than a common Rana palustris. Nearby was its spawn, in very handsome spherical masses of transparent jelly, two and a half to three inches in diameter . . .with a black or dark centre as big as a large shot . . . Yet this pool must have been frozen over last night! What frog can it be? April 4, 1857
Black-centered gobules
in spherical masses of
transparent jelly.
Go to the cold pond-hole south of J. P. Brown’s, to hear the croaking frogs. They are in full blast on the southwest side . . . and there they have dropped their spawn on the twigs. I stand for nearly an hour within ten feet on the bank overlooking them . . . I see one or two pairs coupled, now sinking, now rising to the surface. The upper one, a male, quite dark brown and considerably smaller than the female, which is reddish--such part of her as I can see--and has quite distinct dark bars on its posterior extremities, while I cannot discern any on the male . . . But the greatest commotion comes from a mass of them, five or six inches in diameter, where there are at least a dozen or fifteen clinging to one another and making a queer croaking . . . At length, when all the rest had been scared to the bottom by nearer approach, I got near to the struggling mass. They were continually dropping off from it, and when at length I reached out to seize it, there were left but two. Lifting the female, the male still clung to her with his arms about her body, and I caught them both, and they were perfectly passive while I carried them off in my hand. To my surprise the female was the ordinary light-reddish-brown wood frog (R. sylvatica), with legs distinctly barred with dark, while the male, whose note alone I have heard, methinks, was not only much smaller, but of a totally different color, a dark brown above with dark-slate colored sides, and the yet darker bars on its posterior extremities and the dark line from its snout only to be distinguished [on] a close inspection. Throat and beneath, a cream white, like but clearer than the female . . . I have caught the female in previous years, as last spring in New Bedford, but could find no description of him and suspected it to be an undescribed frog . . . I brought these frogs home and put them in a pan of water. April 4, 1858
Lifting the female
the male still clung to her and
I brought these frogs home.
The osier bark now, as usual, looks very yellow when wet, and the wild poplar very green . . . When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold. There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer. April 4, 1859
It is warmer, an April-like morning after two colder and windy days, threatening a moist or more or less showery day, which followed. The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages, -- robins, tree sparrows, and methinks I heard the purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check. April 4, 1860
After raw weather
the birds as eager to sing
as flowers to bloom.
April 4, 2015
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. the osier in Winter and early Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain
April 4, 2015
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, April 4
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
https://tinyurl.com/HDT04April
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