Walking in the Rain.

April 4.

Last night, a sugaring of snow, which goes off in an hour or two in the rain. Rains all day.

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly in such an atmosphere, and makes a small angle with the earth. It is low, perhaps, for the same reason that the clouds are.

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.

To Clematis Brook via Lee's Bridge.

Again I notice that early reddish or purplish grass that lies flat on the pools, like a warm blush suffusing the youthful face of the year.

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.

How the thirsty grass rejoices! It has pushed up so visibly since morning, and fields that were completely russet yesterday are already tinged with green. We rejoice with the grass.

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. Instead of ripples there are a myriad dimples on the stream.

The lichens remember the sea to-day. The usually dry cladonias, which are so crisp under the feet, are full of moist vigor.

The rocks speak and tell the tales inscribed on them.Their inscriptions are brought out. I pause to study their geography.

At Conantum End I saw a red-tailed hawk launch, a heavy flier, flapping even like the great bittern at first,-heavy forward.

After turning Lee's Cliff I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather, --

• tree sparrows, whose song has the character of the canary's,
• F. hyemalis's, chill-lill,
• the sweet strain of the fox-colored sparrow,
• song sparrows,
• a nuthatch,
• jays,
• crows,
• bluebirds,
• robins, and
• a large congregation of blackbirds. 

They suddenly alight with great din in a stubble-field just over the wall, not perceiving me and my umbrella behind the pitch pines, and there feed silently; then, getting uneasy or anxious, they fly up on to an apple tree, where being reassured, commences a rich but deafening concert, o-gurgle-ee-e, o-gurgle-ee-e, some of the most liquid notes ever heard, as if produced by some of the water of the Pierian spring, flowing through some kind of musical water-pipe and at the same time setting in motion a multitude of fine vibrating metallic springs. Like a shepherd merely meditating most enrapturing glees on such a water-pipe. A more liquid bagpipe or clarionet, immersed like bubbles in a thousand sprayey notes, the bubbles half lost in the spray.

When I show myself, away they go with a loud harsh charr-r, charr-r. At first I had heard an inundation of blackbirds approaching, some beating time with a loud chuck, chuck, while the rest played a hurried, gurgling fugue.

Saw a sucker washed to the shore at Lee's Bridge, its tail gone, large fins standing out, purplish on top of head and snout. Reminds me of spring, spearing, and gulls.

A rainy day is to the walker in solitude and retirement like the night.
Few travellers are about, and they half hidden under umbrellas and confined to the highways. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. It is somewhat like the dark day; it is a light night. How cheerful the roar of a brook swollen by the rain, especially if there is no sound of a mill in it! 

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved.

A clustering of small narrow leaves somewhat cone-like on the shrub oak.

Some late, low, remarkably upright alders (serrulata), short thick catkins, at Clematis Brook.

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.

A little willow (Salix Muhlenbergiana?) nearly ready to bloom, not larger than a sage willow. All our early willows with catkins appearing before the leaves must belong to the group of “The Sallows. Cinereæ. Borrer," and that of the "Two-colored Willows. Discolores. Borrer," as adopted by Barratt; or, in other words, to the first § of Carey in Gray.

The other day, when I had been standing perfectly still some ten minutes, looking at a willow which had just blossomed, some rods in the rear of Martial Miles's house, I felt eyes on my back and, turning round suddenly, saw the heads of two men who had stolen out of the house and were watching me over a rising ground as fixedly as I the willow. They were study the cheapest of the two.

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1853

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly. . . and makes a small angle with the earth. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. See April 2, 1852 (" The rain was soothing, so still and sober, gently beating against and amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks. . . . The hour is favorable to thought"); April 19, 1852 (" To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth."); May 13, 1852("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty."); August 4, 1852("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this"); . August 7, 1853 (" It is worth the while to walk in wet weather;. . .The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts"); November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . . The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, . . . My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. . . . This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling."); See also January 27, 1858("It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring,")

A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.  See  March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. ")

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. See June 14, 1855 ("  It is very pleasant to  . . .see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble; the rain seemed much heavier for it")

I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather. See April 4, 1855 ("A fine morning, still and bright, with smooth water and singing of song and tree sparrows and some blackbirds. "). and note to April 4, 1860("The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages")

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved. See June 15, 1851 ("A solitary woodcock in the shade goes off with a startled, rattling, hurried note.")

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.  See   March 27, 1853 ("It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.. . .The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring,"):.  March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen"):  April 1, 1853 ("The hazel stigmas now more fully out , curving over and a third of an inch long , that the catkins begin to shed pollen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day. See April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning. . .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 Tree Sparrow

I love to hear the wind howl.

April 13.  

April 13, 2012

Tuesday.  A driving snow - storm in the night and still raging; five or six inches deep on a level at 7 A.  M. 

All birds are turned into snowbirds.  

Trees and houses have put on the aspect of winter.  

The traveller’s carriage wheels, the farmer’s wagon, are converted into white disks of snow through which the spokes hardly appear.  

But it is good now to stay in the house and read and write.  We do not now go wandering all abroad and dissipated, but the imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick as not in pleasant weather.  My life is enriched.  

I love to hear the wind howl. 

I have a fancy for sitting with my book or paper in some mean and apparently unfavorable place, in the kitchen, for instance, where the work is going on, rather a little cold than comfortable.  My thoughts are of more worth in such places than they would be in a well furnished and warmed studio.  

Windsor, according to Gilpin, is contracted from wind-shore, the Saxons not sounding the sh.  

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul, carols.  The jingle of the song sparrow, simple and sweet as it is, is not of sufficient volume nor sufficiently continuous to command and hold attention, and the bluebird’s is but a transient warble, from a throat overflowing with azure and serene hopes; but the song of the robin on the elms or oaks, loud and clear and heard afar through the streets of a village, makes a fit conclusion to a spring day.  The larks are not yet in sufficient numbers or sufficiently musical.  The robin is the prime singer as yet. 

The blackbird’s conqueree, when first heard in the spring, is pleasant from the associations it awakens, and is best heard by one boating on the river.  It belongs to the stream.  

The robin is the only bird with whose song the groves can be said to be now vocal morning and evening, for, though many other notes are heard, none fill the air like this bird.  As yet no other thrushes.  

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  

Heard the robin singing as usual last night, though it was raining.  

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms.  

As I came home through the streets at 11 o’clock last night through the snow, it cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows.  I mean the catkins of the earliest willow.  

To think of those little sunny spots in nature, so incredibly contrasting with all this white and cold.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 13, 1852

The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick. See  December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources.”)

I love to hear the wind howl. See October 5, 1853 ("The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds like a loon on the pond. ”)

Snowed all day, till the ground was covered eight inches deep.  See April 6, 1852 ("Last night a snow-storm, and this morning we find the ground covered again six or eight inches deep") See also note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.")

The elm buds begin to show their blossoms. See April 13, 1859 ("The streets are strewn with the bud-scales of the elm, which they, opening, have lost off, and their tops present a rich brown already. I hear a purple finch on one"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch

The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing, — sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul. See  April 8, 1855 ("The robins now sing in full blast "); April 16, 1856 ("The robins sing with a will now. What a burst of melody!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

It cheered me to think that there was a little bit of a yellow blossom by warm sandy watersides which had expanded its yellow blossom on the sunny side amid the snows. See  April 12, 1852 (" See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . this earliest, perhaps swamp, willow with its bright-yellow blossoms on one side of the ament. It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun")