The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience

April 15. 

P. M. — To sedge-path Salix humilis. I see many planting now. 

See a pair of woodpeckers on a rail and on the ground a-courting. One keeps hopping near the other, and the latter hops away a few feet, and so they accompany one another a long distance, uttering sometimes a faint or short a-week. 

I go to find hylodes spawn. I hear some now peeping at mid-afternoon in Potter's meadow, just north of his swamp. It is hard to tell how far off they are. At a distance they often appear to be nearer than they are; when I get nearer I think them further off than they are; and not till I get their parallax with my eyes by going to one side do I discover their locality. From time to time one utters that peculiar quavering sound, I suspect of alarm, like that which a hen makes when she sees a hawk. They peep but thinly at this hour of a bright day. 

Wading about in the meadow there, barelegged, I find the water from time to time, though no deeper than before, exceedingly cold, evidently because there is ice in the meadow there still. Having stood quite still on the edge of the ditch close to the north edge of the maple swamp some time, and heard a slight rustling near me from time to time, I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. 

It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet, in a semicircle, snuffing the air, and pausing to look at me several times. Part of its course when nearest me was in the water of the ditch. It then crawled slowly away, and I saw by the ripple where it had taken to the ditch again. 

Perhaps it was after a frog, like myself. It may have been attracted by the peeping. But how much blacker was the creature I saw April 28th, 1857: A very different color, though the tail the same form. 

The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience, more perhaps than by activity. He must take his position, and then wait and watch. It is equally true of quadrupeds and reptiles. Sit still in the midst of their haunts. 

Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes, much like, at least, the Turdus Wilsonii; a light ring about eyes, and whitish side of throat (?); rather fox-colored or cinnamon tail, with ashy reflections from edges of primaries; flesh-colored legs. Did not see the breast. Could it have been what I have called T. solitarius? Soon after methought I heard one faint wood thrush note (??).

Catch a peeper at Hayden’s Pool. I suspect it may have been a female, for, though I kept it a  day at home, it did not peep. It was a pale fawn-color out of water, nine tenths of an inch long, marked with dusky like this  

though not so distinctly. It could easily climb up the side of a tumbler, and jumped eighteen inches at once. 

Equisetum arvense out by railroad, and probably I saw it out on the 12th, near the factory.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1858


See a pair of woodpeckers on a rail and on the ground a-courting . . ., uttering sometimes a faint or short a-week. See April 15, 1855 ("Pigeon woodpecker’s cackle is heard");See also April 22, 1856 ("See a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. . . . Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc "); April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet. It was pure reddish-brown above, with a blackish and somewhat bushy tail, a blunt nose, and somewhat innocent-looking head. It crept along toward me and around me, within two feet. See December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge on the road from Chelmsford to Bedford we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form. He alternately runs along on the ice and swims in the water, now and then holding up his head and long neck looking at us. Not so shy as a muskrat."); March 26, 1855 ("At the Hubbard Bath, a mink comes teetering along the ice by the side of the river. I am between him and the sun, and he does not notice me. He runs daintily, lifting his feet with a jerk as if his toes were sore. They seem to go a-hunting at night along the edge of the river "); November 13, 1855 (“Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . It was a rich brown fur . . . not black as it sometimes appears, especially on ice.”). April 28, 1857 (“It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was perfectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink”); March 13, 1859 ("I commonly saw two or three in a year. "); April 29, 1860 ("I now actually see one small-looking rusty or brown black mink scramble along the muddy shore and enter a hole in the bank.")


The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience. See January 21, 1853 (“I must stand still and listen with open ears, far from the noises of the village, that the night may make its impression on me.”); March 27, 1853 ("Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself. . . and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound”); July 17, 1854: "I watch them [white lillies] for an hour and a half.”

Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes. See note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.") and April 15, 1859 (" Not being prepared to hear it, I thought it a boy whistling at first.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Catch a peeper at Hayden’s Pool. See April 3, 1853 ("At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one.");

Already we begin to anticipate spring (a crossroad in the year of light).

February 2

Another warm, melting day, like yesterday. You can see some softening and relenting in the sky. 

We go up the Corner road and take the ice at Potter's Meadow. The Cliff Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you hear the rush of melted snow down its side in one place. 

The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue. 

The ice is about eighteen inches thick on Fair Haven. Saw some pickerel just caught there, with a fine lustre to them. 

Went to the pond in the woods which has an old ditch dug from it near Clematis Brook.  The red twigs of the cornels and the yellow ones of the sallows surrounding it are interesting at this season. We prize the least color now. 

The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.

I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you , perhaps. 

As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the pond and meadows. 

We stop awhile under Bittern Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm. There are a few greenish radical leaves to be seen, — primrose and johnswort, strawberry, etc., and spleenwort still green in the clefts. 

The winter gnat is seen in the warm air. 

February 2, 2014

Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. We begin to say that the day is springlike. 

Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1854

Saw some pickerel just caught there, with a fine lustre to them. See January 29, 1853 ("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon:") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. See February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A downy woodpecker was pecking . . .he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. See December 14, 1855 ("I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas. See January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. . . .It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. ."); February 11, 1854 ("Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Snow-flea

The winter gnat is seen in the warm air.  See January 6, 1854 ("A winter (?) gnat out on the bark of a pine");  March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air."); March 19, 1858 ("Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

We begin to say that the day is springlike. See March 2, 1859 (“We thus commonly antedate the spring more than any other season, for we look forward to it with more longing. We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet”);  March 20, 1855 ("It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on.”); April 26, 1860 ("What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

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

A true winter sound

wholly without sentiment –

the scream of the jay.

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

Already we begin to anticipate spring. 

This crossroad of light

in the gulfstream of winter

near the shores of spring.

Last night the snow was perfect for walking and fresh enough but not too fresh to reveal the abundance of life in the woods. So many tracks.  Out there in the dark I feel --  I think for the first time -- the hidden vital presence of all the woodland creatures.

Groundhog day is a crossroad in the year of light -- and one can feel it.  These earlier mornings and later nights, the memory of the dark is tugging. i could have survived worse. But the coming light and spring is inevitable.

these late winter days

the light is early

the snow, the cold, the dark

no longer a threat

now the deep solitude of winter

is a parting friend

winter lingers

one last wet kiss.

20120224

I am inspired to revisit my "Seasons" project. My book begins in early February and ends in late February because February is both spring and winter.

I have also spent part of the weekend on my quantum physics study, making a spreadsheet of dates and discoveries. And going back to reread Einstein's 1905  paper "On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light":

The wave theory of light, with continuous spatial functions, leads to contradictions when applied to the phenomena of the emmission and transformation of light

According to the assumption considered here, in the propagation of a light ray emitted from a point source, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever increasing volumes of space, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta localized at points of space that move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as complete units.

Still no one understands it. Here is Freeman Dyson in a recent blog :

Unfortunately, people writing about quantum mechanics often use the phrase “collapse of the wave-function” to describe what happens when an object is observed. This phrase gives a misleading idea that the wave-function itself is a physical object. A physical object can collapse when it bumps into an obstacle. But a wave-function cannot be a physical object. A wave-function is a description of a probability, and a probability is a statement of ignorance. Ignorance is not a physical object, and neither is a wave-function. When new knowledge displaces ignorance, the wave-function does not collapse; it merely becomes irrelevant.

It seems age 24 or 26 is the cutoff for making any discoveries in physics.  I am going to read more biographies but so far the story is over by chapter 3 and the rest is just a question of how and when will he die / loose integrity.

zphx

February 2, 2014

tinyurl.com/hdt18540204