A Ramble over the Peterboro Hills.

Spikenard, Mt. Prichard

September 6, 2020

September 6. 

Girls picking hops in Townsend.

Some fields are completely yellow — one mass of yellow — from the solidago. It is the prevailing flower the traveller sees.

Walked from Mason Village over the mountain tops to Peterboro.

Saw, sailing over Mason Village about 10 A. M., a white-headed and white-tailed eagle with black wings, —  a grand sight.

The “doubly compound racemed panicles” of the spikenard berries, varnish-colored berries, or color of varnished mahogany.

Met a crazy man, probably being carried to a hospital, who must take us both by the hand and tell us how the spirit of God had descended on him and given him all the world, and he was going to make every man a present of half a million, etc., etc. 

High blackberries by the roadside abundant still, the long, sweet, mulberry-shaped ones, mostly confined to the road, and very grateful to the walker.

A stone by the roadside in Temple, whitewashed, with an inscription in black, evincing the vulgarity of the Yankees, “Here Jesse Spofford was killed,” etc., etc., not telling how. Thus we record only the trivial, not the important event, as the advent of a thought. Who cares whether Jesse Spofford was killed or not, if he does not know whether he was worthy to live?

A man in Peterboro told me that his father told him that Monadnock used to be covered with forest, that fires ran through it and killed the turf; then the trees were blown down, and their roots turned up and formed a dense and impenetrable thicket in which the wolves abounded. They came down at night, killed sheep, etc., and returned to their dens, whither they could not be pursued, before morning; till finally they set fire to this thicket, and it made the greatest fire they had ever had in the county, and drove out all the wolves, which have not troubled them since.

He himself had seen one wolf killed there when he was a boy.

They kill now raccoons, hedgehogs, and wildcats there.

I thought that I did not see so great a proportion of forest from their hilltops as about Concord, to which they agreed. I should say their hills were uncommonly rocky, more stone than soil.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1852

Girls picking hops in Townsend. See September 5, 1856 ("Hereabouts women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.")

Some fields are completely yellow — one mass of yellow — from the solidago. September 7, 1858 ("It is an early September afternoon,. . . the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun . . .The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette."); September 12, 1859 (" Many a dry field now, like that of Sted Buttrick's on the Great Fields, is one dense mass of the bright golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis, waving in the wind and turning upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand, flowerets each. It is the greatest mass of conspicuous flowers in the year,")

A white-headed and white-tailed eagle with black wings, — a grand sight. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-headed Eagle

The spikenard berries, varnish-colored berries, or color of varnished mahogany. See August 21, 1854 ("Spikenard berries are now mahogany-color. "); September 4, 1856 ("Aralia racemosa berries just ripe . . . not edible. "); September 4, 1859 ("See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long.")

High blackberries by the roadside abundant still. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

Walked from Mason Village over the mountain tops to Peterboro. See September 7, 1852 ("Across lots to Monadnock, some half-dozen miles in a straight line from Peterboro"); September 27, 1852 ("Who can believe that the mountain peak which he beholds fifty miles off in the horizon, rising far and faintly blue above an intermediate range, while he stands on his trivial native hills or in the dusty high way, can be the same with that which he looked up at once near at hand from a gorge in the midst of primitive woods? For a part of two days I travelled across lots once, loitering by the way, through primitive wood and swamps over the highest peak of the Peterboro Hills to Monadnock, . . .I cannot realize that on the tops of those cool blue ridges are in abundance berries still, bluer than themselves, as if they borrowed their blueness from their locality. From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them. "); See also  February 21,1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests, with perhaps a house on some remote, bare ridge seen against them.") 

They set fire to this thicket . . ., and drove out all the wolves, which have not troubled them since. See March 23, 1856 ("But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.")

What avails you now the fire you stole from heaven?

November 13

To Fair Haven Hill. 

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. 

Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. You can hardly ruck up any skin on Nature's bones. 

The sap is down; she won't peel. Now is the time to cut timber for yokes and ox-bows, leaving the tough bark on, — yokes for your own neck.  

Finding yourself yoked to Matter and to Time. Truly a hard day, hard times these! 

Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters. 

Friends long since gone there, and you left to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets. 

Ah, but is not this a glorious time for your deep inward fires? 

And will not your green hickory and white oak burn clear in this frosty air? 

 

Now is not your manhood taxed by the great Assessor? Taxed for having a soul, a ratable soul.

A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground! 

What do the thoughts find to live on? What avails you now the fire you stole from heaven? Does not each thought become a vulture to gnaw your vitals? 

No Indian summer have we had this November. I see but few traces of the perennial spring. 

Now is there nothing, not even the cold beauty of ice crystals and snowy architecture, nothing but the echo of your steps over the frozen ground, no voice of birds nor frogs. You are dry as a farrow cow. The earth will not admit a spade.  All fields lie fallow. Shall not your mind? 

True, the freezing ground is being prepared for immeasurable snows, but there are brave thoughts within you that shall remain to rustle the winter through like white oak leaves upon your boughs, or like scrub oaks that remind the traveller of a fire upon the hillsides; or evergreen thoughts, cold even in midsummer, by their nature shall contrast the more fairly with the snow. 

Some warm springs shall still tinkle and fume, and send their column of vapor to the skies.

The walker now fares like cows in the pastures, where is no grass but hay; he gets nothing but an appetite. If we must return to hay, pray let us have that which has been stored in barns, which has not lost its sweetness.  

The poet needs to have more stomachs than the cow, for for him no fodder is stored in barns. He relies upon his instinct, which teaches him to paw away the snow to come at the withered grass.

Methinks man came very near being made a dormant creature, just as some of these animals. The ground squirrel, for instance, which lays up vast stores, is yet found to be half dormant, if you dig him out. 

Now for the oily nuts of thought which you have stored up. 

The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. Perhaps this is owing, not only to the greater clearness of the atmosphere, which brings them nearer, but to the absence of the leaves! They are many miles nearer for it. A little mistiness occasioned by warmth would set them further off and make them fainter. 

I see snow on the Peterboro hills, reflecting the sun. It is pleasant thus to look from afar into winter. We look at a condition which we have not reached. Notwithstanding the poverty of the immediate landscape, in the horizon it is simplicity and grandeur. 

I look into valleys white with snow and now lit up by the sun, while all this country is in shade. This accounts for the cold northwest wind. 

There is a great gap in the mountain range just south of the two Peterboro hills. Methinks I have been through it, and that a road runs there. At any rate, humble as these mountains are compared with some, yet at this distance I am convinced that they answer the purpose of Andes; and, seen in the horizon, I know of nothing more grand and stupendous than this great mountain gate or pass, a great cleft or sinus in the blue banks, as in a dark evening cloud, fit portal to lead from one country, from one quarter of the earth, to another, where the children of the Israelites may file through. 

Little does the New Hampshire farmer who drives over that road realize through what a sublime gap he is passing. You would almost as soon think of a road to wind through and over a dark evening cloud. This prospect of the mountains from our low hills is what I would rather have than pastures on the mountain sides such as my neighbors own, aye, than townships at their base. 

Instead that I drive my cattle up in May, I turn my eyes that way. My eyes pasture there, and straightway the yearling thoughts come back. The grass they feed on never withers, for though they are not evergreen, they're ever blue to me. For though not evergreen to you, to me they're ever blue.

I do not fear my thoughts will die, 

For never yet it was so dry 

as to scorch the azure of the sky. 

It knows no withering and no drought, 

Though all eyes crop, it ne'er gives out. 

My eyes my flocks are; 

Mountains my crops are. 

I do not fear my flocks will stray, 

For they were made to roam the day, 

For they can wander with the latest light, 

Yet be at home at night. 

Just spent a couple of hours (eight to ten) with Miss Mary Emerson at Holbrook's. 

The wittiest and most vivacious woman that I know, certainly that woman among my acquaintance whom it is most profitable to meet, the least frivolous, who will most surely provoke to good conversation and the expression of what is in you. She is singular, among women at least, in being really and perseveringly interested to know what thinkers think. 

She relates herself surely to the intellectual where she goes. It is perhaps her greatest praise and peculiarity that she, more surely than any other woman, gives her companion occasion to utter his best thought. In spite of her own biases, she can entertain a large thought with hospitality, and is not prevented by any intellectuality in it, as women commonly are. 

In short, she is a genius, as woman seldom is, reminding you less often of her sex than any woman whom I know. In that sense she is capable of a masculine appreciation of poetry and philosophy. I never talked with any other woman who I thought accompanied me so far in describing a poetic experience. 

Miss Fuller is the only woman I think of in this connection, and of her rather from her fame than from any knowledge of her. 

Miss Emerson expressed to-night a singular want of respect for her own sex, saying that they were frivolous almost without exception, that woman was the weaker vessel, etc.; that into what ever family she might go, she depended more upon the "clown " for society than upon the lady of the house. Men are more likely to have opinions of their own. 

The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat. So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow. 

Just in proportion to the outward poverty is the inward wealth.  In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1851

The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart . . . In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame. See November 27, 1853 ("Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow; but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now.")

Finding yourself yoked to Matter and to Time. See September 7, 1851 ("I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it"); February 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down."); September 24, 1859 ("Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created."); There was an artist in the city of Kouroo ("As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way"): See also The Maine Woods ("I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me . . . I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me?")

Not a mosquito left. Not an insect. Crickets gone into winter quarters. See November 13, 1858 ("Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs."); See also November 12, 1851 ("The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes.")  and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

Just spent a couple of hours (eight to ten) with Miss Mary Emerson. Compare November 14. 1851 ("Was introduced to two young women . . .  I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has regular features. The society of young women is the most unprofitable I have ever tried.")

The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.");  March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top . . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Mountains in the Horizon

I see snow on the Peterboro hills, reflecting the sun. See February 21,1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.")

Instead that I drive my cattle up in May, I turn my eyes that way. My eyes pasture there . . . The grass they feed on never withers. See October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? . . . My eyes it is alone that wander to those blue pastures, which no drought affects.")

The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. See February 21, 1855 ("I see a train go by . . . from somewhere up country. . . thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow . . . It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.")

Such, some years, may be our first snow.  See November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon.") See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow.")

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  November 13

Now is there nothing

but the echo of your steps

over frozen ground.

In this cold weather

 your deep inward fires burn

 with a clearer flame.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, In cold weather a clearer flame.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt51113

The earth is our ship.

January 2

January 2, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

Going up the hill through Stow’s young oak wood land, I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. This is the voice of the wood now. 

It would be comparatively still and more dreary here in other respects, if it were not for these leaves that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is enlivening and inspiriting like that, suggesting how all the land is seacoast to the aerial ocean. It is the sound of the surf, the rut of an unseen ocean, billows of air breaking on the forest like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It rises and falls, wells and dies away, with agreeable alternation as the sea surf does. Perhaps the landsman can foretell a storm by it. 

It is remarkable how universal these grand murmurs are, these backgrounds of sound, —the surf, the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc.,-—which yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially one voice, the earth-voice, the breathing or snoring of the creature. 

The earth is our ship, and this is the sound of the wind in her rigging as we sail. 

Just as the inhabitant of Cape Cod hears the surf ever breaking on its shores, so we countrymen hear this kindred surf on the leaves of the forest. Regarded as a voice, — though it is not articulate, — (but this is nearer a consonant sound), labials, dentals, palatals, sibilants, mutes, aspirate, etc., so this may be called folial or frondal, produced by air driven against the leaves, and comes nearest to our sibilants or as pirate. 

The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown. 

Michaux said that white oaks would be distinguished by their retaining their leaves in the winter, but as far as my observation goes they cannot be so distinguished. All our large oaks may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower limbs and about the trunks, though only a few, and the white oak scarcely more than the others, while the same trees when young are all alike thickly clothed in the winter, but the leaves of the white oaks are the most withered and shrivelled of them all. 

Why do young oaks retain their leaves while old ones shed them? Why do they die on the stem, having some life at the base in the one case, while they wither through at the base in the other case? Is it because in the former case they have more sap and vigor? 

There being some snow on the ground, I can easily distinguish the forest on the mountains (the Peterboro Hills, etc.) and tell which are forested, those parts and those mountains being dark like a shadow. I cannot distinguish the forest thus far in the summer. 

The white pines, etc., as I look down on them from this hill, are now darker, as becomes the sterner season, like a frost-bitten apple, — a sombre green.

When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, — Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham’s rule, — I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. 

Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat. 

The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk, — turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively, — but so the beautiful walkers are not made. 

Mediaeval, or law, Latin seems to have invented the word “forest,” not being satisfied with silva, nemus, etc. Webster makes it from the same root with “L. foris, Fr. hors, and the Saxon faran, to go, to depart.” The allied words “all express distance from cities and civilization, and are from roots expressing departure or wandering,” —as if this newer term were needed to describe those strange, wild woods furthest from the centres of civilization. 

The earth, where quite bare, is now, and for five or six weeks, russet without any lively red, —not golden-russet. 

I notice on the top of the Cliffs that the extremities of the smooth sumach are generally dead and withered, while those of the staghorn, which art so downy, are alive. Is this a prevailing difference? Which extends furthest north? 

The outside bark-scales of some large pitch pines in the midst of the woods having dropped off gives a peculiar flatness to the ridges, as if it had been shaved or scraped. 

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Tells of Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under the ice and was drowned below the Holt; was found afterward by Sted Buttrick, his collar taken off and given to Lakin. They used to cross the river there on the ice, going to market, formerly. 

Looking from the southwest side of Walden toward Heywood's Peak before sunset, the brown light on the oak leaves is almost dazzling.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1859

I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. See November 1, 1857 (“When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus”)

First of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”); February 3, 1860 ("Any fool can make a rule /  And every fool will mind it.")

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Compare January 30, 1855 ("Minott . . .told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.")

January 2. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau,  January 2

The sharp dry rustle

of withered oak leaves is the

voice of the wood now –

The earth is our ship

and this is the sound of the

rigging as we sail.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The earth is our ship.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt590102

A new life in Nature beginning to awake.

February 21

To Fair Haven Hill via Cut. 

A clear air, with a northwesterly, March-like wind, as yesterday. What is the peculiarity in the air that both the invalid in the chamber and the traveller on the highway say these are perfect March days? The wind is rapidly drying up earth, and elevated sands already begin to look whitish. 

How much light there is in the sky and on the surface of the russet earth! It is reflected in a flood from all cleansed surfaces which rain and snow have washed, - from the railroad rails and the mica in the rocks and the silvery latebrae of insects there, - and I never saw the white houses of the village more brightly white. 

Now look for an early crop of arrowheads, for they will shine. 

When I enter the wooded hollow on the east of the Deep Cut, it is novel and pleasant to hear the sound of the dry leaves and twigs, which have so long been damp and silent, more worn and lighter than ever, crackling again under my feet, - though there is still considerable snow about, along wall-sides. etc., - and to see the holes and galleries recently made by the mice in the fine withered grass of such places, the upper aralia hollow there. 

I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow. A warmth begins to be reflected from the partially dried ground here and there in the sun in sheltered places, very cheering to invalids who have weak lungs, who think they may weather it till summer now. Nature is more genial to them. 

When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these, the news is told to how many myriads of grubs that underlie them! When I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. 

February 21

It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along.

We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests, with perhaps a house on some remote, bare ridge seen against them. A silver edging, or ear-like handle, to this basin of the world. They look like great loaves incrusted with pure white sugar; and I think that this must have been the origin of the name “sugar-loaf” some times given to mountains, and not on account of their form. 

We look thus from russet fields into a landscape above it and where a promontory casts a shadow along the mountains’ side. I see what looks like a large lake of misty bluish water on the side of the further Peterboro mountain, its edges or shore very distinctly defined. This I conclude was the shadow of another part of the mountain. And it suggests that, in like manner, what on the surface of the moon is taken for water may be, shadows. Could not distinguish Monadnock till the sun shone on it. 

I see a train go by, which has in front a dozen dirt cars from somewhere up country, laden apparently with some kind of earth (or clay); and these, with their loads, were thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow, a part of that sugary crust I had viewed with my glass, which contrasted singularly with the bare tops of the other cars, which it had hitched on this side, and the twenty miles at least of bare ground over which they had rolled. It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.

How plain, wholesome, and earthy are the colors of quadrupeds generally! The commonest I should say is the tawny or various shades of brown, answering to the russet which is the prevailing color of the earth’s surface, perhaps, and to the yellow of the sands beneath. The darker brown mingled with this answers to the darker-colored soil of the surface. The white of the polar bear, ermine weasel, etc., answers to the snow; the spots of the pards, perchance, to the earth spotted with flowers or tinted leaves of autumn; the black, perhaps, to night, and muddy bottoms and dark waters. There are few or no bluish animals. 

Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 21, 1855

I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season. See February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds."); . February 22, 1855  ("The westerly wind is rather raw, but in sheltered places it is deliciously warm") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring:the new warmth of the sun; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A Sunny Nook in Spring

I see a train go by, which has in front a dozen dirt cars thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow, a part of that sugary crust I had viewed with my glass, It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing. See November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat. So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”)

The chickadee passes the news along. See February 9, 1854 ("The chickadees flew to me, as if glad to see me . . . I heard one wiry phe-be"); February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, The spring note of the chickadee

We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. See April 4, 1855 ("In the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun"); April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills . . . 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.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? See February 18, 1857 ("I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring;  Geese Overhead

February 21. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 21

Chickadee passes

the news through all the forest –

spring is approaching.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  A new life in Nature beginning to awake.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550221

I see the snow lying thick

April 4. 

It is refreshing to stand on the face of the Cliff and see the water gliding over the surface of the almost perpendicular rock in a broad thin sheet, pulsing over it.

It reflects the sun for half a mile like a patch of snow, as you stand close by  bringing out the colors of the lichens like polishing or varnish. It is admirable, regarded as a dripping fountain.

You have lichens and moss on the surface, and starting saxifrage, ferns still green, and huckleberry bushes in the crevices.

The rocks never appear so diversified, and cracked, as if the chemistry of nature were now in full force.

Then the drops, falling perpendicularly from a projecting rock, have a pleasing geometrical effect.

I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, and though the ground is bare from the seashore to their base, I presume it is covered with snow from their base to the Icy Sea. 

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.


H.D.Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1852

I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills See April 4, 1855 ("far beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun."); April 4, 1859 ("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.")


I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek.   Overheard April 2, 2019  ("My father always said the air won't be warm until they get the snow out of the mountains")