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
Rain now turns to snow
with large flakes that cohere in
the air as they fall.
April 2, 2014
The sun is up. The water on the meadows is perfectly smooth and placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain), bluebirds, - and I hear also a lark, - as if all the earth had burst forth into song. . . For a long distance, as we paddle up the river, we hear the two-stanza'd lay of the pewee on the shore, - pee-wet, pee-wee, etc. Those are the two obvious facts to eye and ear, the river and the pewee. We hardly set out to return, when the water looked sober and rainy. There was more appearance of rain in the water than in the sky, - April weather look. And soon we saw the dimples of drops on the surface . The clouds, the showers, and the breaking away now in the west, all belong to the summer side of the year and remind me of long-past days. We land in a steady rain and walk inland by R. Rice's barn, regardless of the storm, toward White Pond. At last the drops fall wider apart, and we pause in a sandy field near the Great Road of the Corner, where it was agreeably retired and sandy, drinking up the rain. The rain was soothing, so still and sober, gently beating against and amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks. The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought. The rain now turns to snow with large flakes, so soft many cohere in the air as they fall. They make us white as millers and wet us through. I hear a solitary hyla for the first time. At Hubbard's Bridge, count eight ducks going over. Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten. April 2, 1852
Looking up the flakes
are black against the sky and
now the ground whitens.
The rain cleared away yesterday afternoon, and today the air is remarkably clear. I can see far into the pine woods to tree behind tree, and one tower behind another of silvery needles, stage above stage, relieved with shade. The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, -- vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound. The first this year of the higher-colored birds, after the bluebird and the blackbird's wing. It so affects me as something more tender. April 2, 1853
The pine warbler's cool
woodland sound affects me as
something more tender.
I was sitting on the rail over the brook, when I heard something which reminded me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. Why is it that not the note itself, but something which reminds me of it, should affect me most? April 2, 1854
Something reminds me
of the song of the robin --
rainy days, past springs.
Not only the grass but the pines also were greener yesterday for being wet. To-day, the grass being dry, the green blades are less conspicuous than yesterday. It would seem, then, that this color is more vivid when wet, and perhaps all green plants, like lichens, are to some extent greener in moist weather. Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant when a plant is moist or most alive. A plant is said to be green in opposition to being withered and dead. The word, according to Webster, is from the Saxon grene, to grow, and hence is the color of herbage when growing. High winds all night, rocking the house, opening doors, etc. To-day also. It is wintry cold also, and ice has formed nearly an inch thick in my boat. April 2, 1855
It is wintry cold
and ice has formed in my boat
nearly an inch thick.
I hear a few song sparrows tinkle on the alders by the railroad. They skulk and flit along below the level of the ground in the ice-filled ditches; and bluebirds warble over the Deep Cut. A foot or more of snow in Andromeda Ponds. In the warm recess at the head of Well Meadow, which makes up on the northeast side of Fair Haven, I find many evidences of spring . . . It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower . . . Here, where I come for the earliest flowers, I might also come for the earliest birds. They seek the same warmth and vegetation. And so probably with quadrupeds,—rabbits, skunks, mice, etc. I hear now, as I stand over the first skunk-cabbage, the notes of the first red-wings, like the squeaking of a sign, over amid the maples yonder. Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain, seven or eight rods off, yet so low and smothered with its ventriloquism that you would say it was half a mile off. It seems to be wooing its mate, that sits within a foot of it. There are many holes in the surface of the bare, springy ground amid the rills, made by the skunks or mice, and now their edges are bristling with feather like frostwork, as if they were the breathing-holes or nostrils of the earth. . . . It is evident that it depends on the character of the season whether this flower or that is the most forward; whether there is more or less snow or cold or rain, etc. I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves. I see and hear flies and bees about. A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa. Though so little of the earth is bared, this frail creature has been warmed to life again . . . A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow. . . . Some of the earliest plants are now not started because covered with snow. April 2, 1856
To stretch on bare ground
feel its warmth in my back and
smell earth and dry leaves.
A great change in the weather. I set out apple trees yesterday, but in the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep. On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life. April 2, 1857
At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre . . . The hazel has just begun to shed pollen here, perhaps yesterday in some other places. This loosening and elongating of its catkins is a sufficiently pleasing sight, in dry and warm hollows on the hillsides. It is an unexpected evidence of life in so dry a shrub. On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, turning my glass to each sparrow on a rock or tree. At last I see one, which flies right up straight from a rock eighty [or] one hundred feet and warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, after the manner of the skylark, methinks, and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain. See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that . . .Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. It has probably been here as long as I said before. Returning, I saw a sparrow-like bird flit by in an orchard, and, turning my glass upon it, was surprised by its burning yellow. This higher color in birds surprises us like an increase of warmth in the day. April 2, 1858
There are many fuzzy gnats now in the air, windy as it is. Especially I see them under the lee of the middle Conantum cliff, in dense swarms, all headed one way, but rising and falling suddenly all together as if tossed by the wind. They appear to love best a position just below the edge of the cliff, and to rise constantly high enough to feel the wind from over the edge, and then sink suddenly down again. They are not, perhaps, so thick as they will be, but they are suddenly much thicker than they were, and perhaps their presence affects the arrival of the phoebe, which, I suspect, feeds on them. . . . As I go down the street just after sunset, I hear many snipe to-night. This sound is annually heard by the villagers, but always at this hour, i. e. in the twilight, — a hovering sound high in the air, — and they do not know what to refer it to.. . . Hardly one in a hundred hears it, and perhaps not nearly so many know what creature makes it. Perhaps no one dreamed of snipe an hour ago, but . . . but as soon as the dusk begins, so that a bird's flight is concealed, you hear this peculiar spirit-suggesting sound, now far, now near, heard through and above the evening din of the village. April 2, 1859
Cold and windy. 2 P. M. — Thermometer 31°, or fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. I had expected rain to succeed the thick haze. It was cloudy behind the haze and rained a little about 9 P. M., but, the wind having gone northwest (from southwest), it turned to snow. April 2, 1860
Cold and windy and
the ground slightly whitened by
a flurry of snow.
A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average. April 2, 1861
April 2, 2017
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Phoebe
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,,the Buff-edged Butterfly
April 2, 2021
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
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
