The first sight of the blue water in the spring.

April 5. 

The April weather still continues. It looks repeatedly as if the sun would shine, and it rains five minutes after. 

I look out to see how much the river has risen. Last night there were a great many portions or islets visible, now they are engulfed, and it is a smooth expanse of water and icy snow. The water has been steadily deepening on Concord meadows all night, rising with a dimple about every stem and bush. 

P. M. —- To North River at Tarbell’s. 

Fair weather again. See half a dozen blackbirds, uttering that sign-like note, on the top of Cheney’s elm, but notice no red at this distance. Were they grackles? 

Hear after some red-wings sing baby-lee. Do these ever make the sign—like note? Is not theirs a fine shrill whistle ? 

The ice from the sides of the rivers has wheeled round in great cakes and lodged against each of the railroad bridges, i. e. over each stream. Near the town there is the firmest body of ice (in the river proper) above Hubbard’s Bridge. 

A warm and pleasant afternoon. The river not yet so high by four or five feet as last winter. 

Hear, on all sunny hillsides where the snow is melted, the chink clicking notes of the F. hyemalis flitting before me. I am sitting on the dried grass on the south hillside be hind Tarbell’s house, on the way to Brown’s. These birds know where there is a warm hillside as well as we. 

The warble of the bluebird is in the air. 

From Tarbell’s bank we look over the bright moving flood of the Assabet with many maples standing in it, the purling and eddying stream, with a hundred rills of snow water trickling into it.  

Further toward J. P. Brown’s, see two large ant-hills (red before, black abdomens), quite covered on all the sunny portion with ants, which appear to have come forth quite recently and are removing obstructions from their portals. Probably the frost is quite out there. Their black abdomens glisten in the sun. Each is bringing up some rubbish from beneath. The outlines of one of these hills is a very regular cone; both are graceful curves. 

Come out upon the high terrace behind Hosmer’s, whence we overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. 

See half a dozen white sheldrakes in the meadow, where Nut Meadow Brook is covered with the flood. There are two or three females with them. These ducks swim together first a little way to the right, then suddenly turn together and swim to the left, from time to time making the water fly in a white spray, apparently with a wing. Nearly half a mile off I see their green crests in the sun. They are partly concealed by some floating pieces of ice and snow, which they resemble. 

On the hill beyond Clamshell scare up two turtle doves. 

It is that walking when we must pick the hardest and highest ground or ice, for we commonly sink several inches in the oozy surface.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1856

Hear, on all sunny hillsides where the snow is melted, the chink clicking notes of the F. hyemalis flitting before me. See April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

The warble of the bluebird is in the air. See April 5, 1853 ("The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. See March 5, 1854 ("and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows."); March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. "); April 3, 1853 ("Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue.");  April 4, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue."); April 5, 1856 ("We overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. "); April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. "); April 9, 1856 ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring. 

See half a dozen white sheldrakes in the meadow, where Nut Meadow Brook is covered with the flood.  See April 7, 1855 ("In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. . . .I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly."); see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

The North Branch — it is all solid.

March 24.

Very pleasant day. Thermometer 48° at noon. 

9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30. One F. hyemalis in yard. Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. 

I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp. So much partly for being out the whole forenoon. Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear. The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. 

Cross the river behind Monroe’s. Go everywhere on the North Branch — it is all solid — and crust bears in the morning. Yet last year I paddled my boat to Fair Haven Pond on the 19th of March!

The snow is so coarse-grained and hard that you can hardly get up a handful to wash your hands with, except the dirty surface.  Before noon I slump two feet in the snow. 

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap. 

The white maple sap does not flow fast generally at first, —or 9 A. M., — not till about ten. You bore a little hole with your knife, and presently the wounded sap—wood begins to glisten with moisture, and anon a clear crystalline tear-like drop flows out and runs down the bark, or drops at once to the snow. This is the sap of which the far-famed maple sugar is made. That’s the sweet liquor which the Indians boiled a thousand years ago. 

My sugar-making was spoiled by putting in much soda instead of saleratus by accident. I suspect it would have made more sugar than the red did. It proved only brittle black candy. This sap flowed just about as fast as that of the red maple. It is said that a great deal of sap will run from the yellow birch. 

Cut a piece of Rhus Toxicodendron resting on rock at Egg Rock, five eighths of an inch in diameter, which had nineteen rings of annual growth. It is quite hard and stiff.

The river begins to open generally at the bends for ten or twenty rods, and I see the dark ice alternating with dark water there, while the rest of the river is still covered with snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1856

I hear a bluebird’s warble . . . Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear.  See   February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird

The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. See March 24, 1854 (“Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note.”); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it.”); March 19, 1858 ("Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note."); ; March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis”); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?),. . . It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 23, 1852 ("Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco; andA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds."); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out."); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy"); March 25, 1856 ("The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places.")

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

It is a cold and windy Sunday.

February 3.

Analyzed the crow blackbird’s nest from which I took an egg last summer, eight or ten feet up a white maple by river, opposite Island. Large, of an irregular form, appearing as if wedged in between a twig and two large contiguous trunks. From outside to outside it measures from six to eight inches; inside, four; depth, two; height, six. The foundation is a loose mass of coarse strips of grape-vine bark chiefly, some eighteen inches long by five eighths of an inch mikania stems, a few cellular river weeds, as rushes, sparganium, pipe-grass, and some soft, coarse, fibrous roots. The same coarse grape-vine bark and grass and weed stems, together with some harder, wiry stems, form the sides and rim, the bark being passed around the twig. The nest is lined with the finer grass and weed stems, etc. The solid part of the nest is of half-decayed vegetable matter and mud, full of fine fibrous roots and wound internally with grass stems, etc., and some grape bark, being an inch and a half thick at bottom. Pulled apart and lying loose, it makes a great mass of material. This, like similar nests, is now a great haunt for spiders. 

P. M. — Up North Branch. A strong northwest wind (and thermometer 11°), driving the surface snow like steam. About five inches of soft snow now on ice.

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.

Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice. Half a dozen hog’s bristles might have been brought by some bird to its nest there. These made a very warm and soft nest. 

Get some kind of vireo’s nest from a maple far up the stream, a dozen feet high, pensile; within, almost wholly rather coarse grape-vine shreds; without, the same and bark, covered with the delicate white spider-nests (?), birch-bark shreds, and brown cocoon silk. 

Returning, see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree, from which at the same instant a small bird, perhaps a. creeper or nuthatch, flitted timidly away. The shrike was apparently in pursuit. 

We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back. 

How different this from sailing or paddling up the stream here in July, or poling amid the rocks! Yet still, in one square rod, where they have got out ice and a thin transparent-ice has formed, I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. 

It is a cold and windy Sunday. 

The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile. It whisks round the corner of the house, in at a crevice, and flirts off with all the heat before we have begun to feel it. 

Some of the low drifts but a few inches deep, made by the surface snow blowing, over the river especially, are of a fine, pure snow, so densely packed that our feet make hardly any impression on them. 

River still tight at Merrick’s. 

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them. 

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1856

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice. . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow.");January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels."); January 24, 1856 (" A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill."); January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ').

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them.  See January 20,1860 ("What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

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

A new leaf of Nature’s Album.

January 31.

P. M. —Up North Branch. 

There are a few inches of light snow on top of the little, hard and crusted, that I walked on here last, above the snow ice. The old tracks are blotted out, and new and fresher ones are to be discerned. It is a tabula rasa. 

These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album. At first you detect no track of beast or bird, and Nature looks more than commonly silent and blank. You doubt if anything has been abroad, though the snow fell three days ago, but ere long the track of a squirrel is seen making to or from the base of a tree, or the hole where he dug for acorns, and the shells he dropped on the snow around that stump. 

The wind of yesterday has shaken down countless oak leaves, which have been driven hurry-scurry over this smooth and delicate and unspotted surface, and now there is hardly a square foot which does not show some faint trace of them. They still spot the snow thickly in many places, though few can be traced to their lairs. 

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. 

The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.

Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. Here is where one has come down the bank and hopped meanderingly across the river. Another an inch and a quarter wide by five, six, or seven apart from centre to centre. 

The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side.

But what track is this, just under the bank? 

It must be a bird, which at last struck the snow with its wings and took to flight. There are but four hops in all, and then it ends, though there is nothing near enough for it to hop upon from the snow. The form of the foot is somewhat like that of a squirrel, though only the outline is distinguished. The foot is about two inches long, and it about two inches from outside of one foot to outside of the other. Sixteen inches from hop to hop, the rest in proportion. Looking narrowly, I see where one wing struck the bank ten feet ahead as it passed. A quarter of a mile down-stream it occurs again, and near by still less of a track, but marks as if it had pecked in the snow.

Could it be the track of a crow with its toes unusually close together? Or was it an owl? [Probably a crow. Vide Feb. 1st. Hardly a doubt of it.]   

Some creature has been eating elm blossom-buds and dropping them over the snow. 

See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1856

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ... See January 24, 1856 (“A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill.”); February 3, 1856 ("See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.")

The track of a crow with its toes unusually close together.  See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow, the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably,"); January 24, 1856 (“The tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart.”);  February 1, 1856 ("The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

Leaves on the water.

October 19.

Paddle E. Hoar and Mrs. King up the North Branch.

A seed of wild oat left on. 

The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1853

A seed of wild oat left on. See June 3, 1853 (" Is that rank grass by the Red Bridge already between three and four feet high wild oats?"); August 15, 1858 ("Wild oats, apparently in prime. This is quite interesting and handsome, so tall and loose. The lower, spreading and loosely drooping, dangling or blown one side like a flag, staminate branches of its ample panicle are of a lively yellowish green, contrasting with the very distant upright pistillate branches, suggesting a spear with a small flag at the base of its head. It is our wild grain, unharvested") [Note: "Wild oat" here refers to Zizania aquatica (wild rice) not sessille bellwort. See Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal and note to September 24, 1852 ("The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long").See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts]

The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore. See October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it,"); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish."); October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet."); October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye."); October 17, 1857 ("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them."); October 17, 1858 ("They remind me of ditches in swamps, whose surfaces are often quite concealed by leaves now. The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle, ")

Shall not I too resume my spring life?

February 27

The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.

Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a moderately, cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease.

Cross the river on ice. 

Near Tarbell's and Harrington's the North Branch has burst its icy fetters. This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. As I stand looking up it westward for half a mile where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up with a fine-grained silvery sparkle.

If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope?

To-night a circle round the moon.


H. D Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1852

The mosses now are in fruit. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green 

This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. . . .shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? See March 20, 1853 ("The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore.")

Bright and immortal

the unfettered stream sparkles

in the clear cool air.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shall not I too resume my spring life?

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 © 2009-2025

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