Now is the time for meadow walking.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

4.30 A. M. -To the river.

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed.

The heart-leaf flower is abundant more than ever, but shut up at this hour.

The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock.

The Polygonum hydropiperoides, I think it is, now in blossom in the mud by the river.

Morning-glories are in perfection now, some dense masses of this vine with very red flowers, very attractive and cool-looking in dry mornings. They are very tender and soon defaced in a nosegay.

The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cultivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge.

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day, thus showing a preference for that portion of the day.

P. M. — To Conantum.

The wind makes it rather more comfortable to-day.

That small globose white flower with glossy radical leaves is common now on the muddy shore of the river.

The fishes' nests are left high and dry, and I perceive that they are distinctly hollowed, five or six inches deep, in the sand, i. e. below the surrounding surface.

Here are some which still contain their panful of water, but are no longer connected with the river. They have a distinct raised edge of sand about one and a half inches high and three or four wide.

The lilies I have tried in water this warmest weather have wilted the first day. Only the water can produce and sustain such flowers. Those which are left high and dry, or even in very shallow water, are wont to have a dwarfed growth.

The Victoria lily is a water flower.

The river is low. 

Now is the time for meadow walking. (I am in the meadow north of Hubbard's Bridge.) You go dry-shod now through meadows which were comparatively impassable before, —- those western reserves which you had not explored. We are thankful that the water has preserved them inviolate so long.

There is a cheerful light reflected from the undersides of the ferns in the drier meadows now, and has been for some time, especially in breezy weather.

It was so in June.

The dusty roads and roadsides begin to show the effects of drouth.

The corn rolls.

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight.

Is it not later than the chestnut?

The elder is a very conspicuous and prevalent flower now, with its large flat cymes.

Pogonias and calopogons are very abundant in the meadows. They are interesting, if only for their high color.

Any redness is, after all, rare and precious. It is the color of our blood. The rose owes its preëminence in great measure to its color. It is said to be from the Celtic rhos, red. It is nature's most precious color.

Impatiens fulva, by Corner Spring.

I hear often nowadays the kingbird's chattering twitter.

As you walk under oaks, you perceive from time to time a considerable twig come gently falling to the ground, whose stem has been weakened by a worm, and here and there lie similar twigs whose leaves are now withered and changed.

How valuable and significant is shade now! Trees appear valuable for shade mainly, and we observe their shadows as much as their form and foliage.

The waving of the meadow-grass near Fair Haven Isle is very agreeable and refreshing to one looking down from an elevation. It appears not merely like a waving or undulation, but a progress, a creeping, as of an invisible army, over it, its flat curly head.

The grass appears tufted, watered.

On the river the ripple is continued into the pads, where it is smoother,-- a longer undulation.

Pines or evergreens do not attract so much attention now. They have retired on the laurels of the winter campaign.

What is called genius is the abundance of life or health, so that whatever addresses the senses, as the flavor of these berries, or the lowing of that cow, which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain-side just before night, where odoriferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor, serenity, and expectation of perpetual untarnished morning, — each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication.  The shrunken stream of life overflows its banks, makes and fertilizes broad intervals, from which generations derive their sustenances.

This is the true overflowing of the Nile. 

So exquisitely sensitive are we, it makes us embrace our fates, and, instead of suffering or indifference, we enjoy and bless. If we have not dissipated the vital, the divine, fluids, there is, then, a circulation of vitality beyond our bodies. The cow is nothing. Heaven is not there, but in the condition of the hearer.

I am thrilled to think that I owe a perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that these berries have fed my brain. After I had been eating these simple, wholesome, ambrosial fruits on this high hillside, I found my senses whetted, I was young again, and whether I stood or sat I was not the same creature.

The yellow lily is not open-petalled like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping. On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They both make freckles beautiful.

Fragrances must not be overpowering, however sweet. I love the sweet fragrance of melilot.

The Circæa alpina, enchanter's-nightshade, by Corner Spring, low, weed-like, somewhat like touch-me-not leaves. Was it not the C. Lutetiana (a larger plant) that I found at Saw Mill Brook?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1852

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day. See June 20, 1853 (" Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut."); July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. See July 16, 1852 ("The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, . . . The tree resounds with the hum of bees, — bumblebees and honey-bees ; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here, — a perfect susurrus, a sound, as C. says, unlike any other in nature, — not like the wind, as that is like the sea. . . . The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry.");. July 17, 1854 ("I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many"); . July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 (" We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. ") Compare June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”); June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.""); June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 3, 1853("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely."); July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”); and see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Now is the time for meadow walking. See August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go."); August 21, 1859 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet.."); June 26, 1860 ("You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.") Compare July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.")

Whatever addresses the senses . . . each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication. See  July 16, 1851 ("To have such sweet impressions made on us,. . . This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.");   August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody."); December 11, 1855 ("My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world; Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

A Book of the Seasons: the Brown Season

No one, to my knowledge, 

has observed the minute differences in the seasons. 

Henry Thoreau, June 11, 1851

 The brown season 

extends from about the 6th of March 

ordinarily into April. 

March 26, 1860

March 29, 2016

March 2.  I love to look now at the fine grained russet hillsides in the sun, ready to relieve and contrast with the azure of the bluebirds.  March 2, 1855

March 5. As I go along by Sleepy Hollow, this strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come. March 5, 1855

March 10. Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off. . . .There are some other plants with bright-green leaves which have either started somewhat or have never suffered from the cold under the snow. March 10, 1852

March 10.These earliest spring days are peculiarly pleasant. We shall have no more of them for a year. I am apt to forget that we may have raw and blustering days a month hence. The combination of this delicious air, which you do not want to be warmer or softer, with the presence of ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet portions, the south hillsides, of the earth, this is the charm of these days. It is the summer beginning to show itself like an old friend in the midst of winter. You ramble from one drier russet patch to another.  March 10, 1859

March 11. From the hill the river and meadow is about equally water and ice, — rich blue water and islands or continents of white ice — no longer ice in place — blown from this side or that . . . The distant mountains are all white with snow while our landscape is nearly bare. March 11, 1854

March 12. Memorable is the warm light of the spring sun on russet fields in the morning. A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. . . .I look across the meadows to Bedford, and see that peculiar scenery of March, in which I have taken so many rambles, the earth just bare and beginning to be dry, the snow lying on the north sides of hills, the gray deciduous trees and the green pines soughing in the March wind — they look now as if deserted by a companion, the snow. When you walk over bare lichen-clad hills, just beginning to be dry, and look afar over the blue water on the meadows, you are beginning to break up your winter quarters and plan adventures for the new year. The scenery is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind. March 12, 1854

March 12. Now you walk in a comparative lull, anticipating fair weather, with but a slight drizzling,. . . In one of these lulls, as I passed the Joe Hosmer (rough-cast) house, I thought I never saw any bank so handsome as the russet hillside behind it. . . .this russet grass with its weeds, being saturated with moisture, was in this light the richest brown, methought, that I ever saw. There was the pale brown of the grass, red browns of some weeds (sarothra and pinweed probably), dark browns of huckleberry and sweet-fern stems, and the very visible green of the cladonias thirty rods off, and the rich brown fringes where the broken sod hung over the edge of the sand-bank. I did not see the browns of withered vegetation so rich last fall, . . .A peculiar and unaccountable light seemed to fall on that bank or hillside, though it was thick storm all around. A sort of Newfoundland sun seemed to be shining on it. It was such a light that you looked around for the sun that might be shining on it . . .These tints of brown were as softly and richly fair and sufficing as the most brilliant autumnal tints. In fair and dry weather these spots may be commonplace, but now they are worthy to tempt the painter's brush. . . .This kind of light, the air being full of rain and all vegetation dripping with it, brings out the browns wonderfully. March 12, 1859

March 13. I cannot easily forget the beauty of those terrestrial browns in the rain yesterday. The withered grass was not of that very pale hoary brown that it is to-day, now that it is dry and lifeless, but, being perfectly saturated and dripping with the rain, the whole hillside seemed to reflect a certain yellowish light, so that you looked around for the sun in the midst of the storm. All the yellow and red and leather-color in the fawn-colored weeds was more intense than at any other season. The withered ferns which fell last fall — pin weeds, sarothra, etc. — were actually a glowing brown for the same reason, being all dripping wet. The cladonias crowning the knolls had visibly expanded and erected themselves, though seen twenty rods off, and the knolls appeared swelling and bursting as with yeast. All these hues of brown were most beautifully blended, so that the earth appeared covered with the softest and most harmoniously spotted and tinted tawny fur coat of any animal. The very bare sand slopes, with only here and there a thin crusting of mosses, was [sic] a richer color than ever it is. In short, in these early spring rains, the withered herbage, thus saturated, and reflecting its brightest withered tint, seems in a certain degree to have revived, and sympathizes with the fresh greenish or yellowish or brownish lichens in its midst, which also seem to have withered. It seemed to me — and I think it may be the truth — that the abundant moisture, bringing out the highest color in the brown surface of the earth, generated a certain degree of light, which, when the rain held up a little, reminded you of the sun shining through a thick mist. March 13, 1859

March 16. The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress. As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. The fawn-colored oak leaves, with a few pines intermixed, thickly covering the hill, look not like a withered vegetation, but an ethereal kind, just expanded and peculiarly adapted to the season and the sky. Look toward the sun, the water is yellow, as water in which the earth has just washed itself clean of its winter impurities; look from the sun and it is a beautiful dark blue; but in each direction the crests of the waves are white, and you cannot sail or row over this watery wilderness without sharing the excitement of this element. Our sail draws so strongly that we cut through the great waves without feeling them. And all around, half a mile or a mile distant, looking over this blue foreground, I see the bare and peculiarly neat, clean- washed, and bright russet hills reflecting the bright light (after the storm of yesterday) from an infinite number of dry blades of withered grass. The russet surfaces have now, as it were, a combed look, — combed by the rain. And the leather-color of withered oak leaves covering Ball's Hill, seen a mile or two off in the strong light, with a few pines intermixed, as if it were an island rising out of this blue sea in the horizon. This sight affects me as if it were visible at this season only. What with the clear air and the blue water and the sight of the pure dry withered leaves, that distant hill affects me as something altogether ethereal . . . This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time. March 16, 1859

March 18. When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. It is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. It is a deeper and warmer blue than in winter, methinks. . . Is it not the higher sun, and cleansed air, and greater animation of nature? There is a warmer red to the leaves of the shrub oak, and to the tail of the hawk circling over them. March 18, 1858

March 18. Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind, with a clear interval and a brilliant double rainbow at sunset, — a day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain. March 18, 1859

March 19. The snow of March 14th is about gone, and the landscape is once more russet. The thick ice of the meadows lies rotting on each side of the stream, white and almost soft as snow. March 19, 1855

March 19. That first general exposure of the russet earth, March 16th, after the soaking rain of the day before, which washed off most of the snow and ice, is a remarkable era in an ordinary spring. The earth casting off her white mantle and appearing in her homely russet garb. This russet — including the leather-color of oak leaves — is peculiar and not like the russet of the fall and winter, for it reflects the spring light or sun, as if there were a sort of sap in it. When the strong northwest winds first blow, drying up the superabundant moisture, the withered grass and leaves do not present a merely weather-beaten appearance, but a washed and combed springlike face. The knolls forming islands in our meadowy flood are never more interesting than then. This is when the earth is, as it were, re-created, raised up to the sun, which was buried under snow and ice. March 19, 1858

March 23. At this season and under these circumstances, the sun just come out and the flood high around it, russet, so reflecting the light of the sun, appears to me the most agreeable of colors, and I begin to dream of a russet fairyland and elysium. How dark and terrene must be green! but this smooth russet surface reflects almost all the light. . . . How well, too, this smooth, firm, light-reflecting, tawny earth contrasts with the darker water which surrounds it, — or perchance lighter sometimes! At this season, when the russet colors prevail, the contrast of water and land is more agreeable to behold. . . .Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak, and dream of a russet elysium. Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. Spring has a beauty of its own which we would not exchange for that of summer, and at this moment, if I imagine the fairest earth I can, it is still russet, such is the color of its blessed isles, and they are surrounded with the phenomena of spring. . . .These tongues of russet land tapering and sloping into the flood do almost speak to one. They are alternately in sun and shade. When the cloud is passed, and they reflect their pale-brown light to me, I am tempted to go to them. I think I have already noticed within a week how very agreeably and strongly the green of small pines contrasts with the russet of a hillside pasture now. Perhaps there is no color with which green contrasts more strongly. I see the shadow of a cloud — and it chances to be a hollow ring with sunlight in its midst — passing over the hilly sprout-land toward the Baker house, a sprout-land of oaks and birches; and, owing to the color of the birch twigs, perhaps, this shadow turns all from russet to a decided dark-purplish color as it moves along. And then, as I look further along eastward in the horizon, I am surprised to see strong purple and violet tinges in the sun, from a hillside a mile off densely covered with full-grown birches. It is the steep old corn-field hillside of Jacob Baker's. I would not have believed that under the spring sun so many colors were brought out. March 23, 1859

March 25.  I walk in the rain and see the rich yellowish browns of the moist banks.. . .Surely russet is not the name which describes the fields and hillsides now, whether wet or dry. There is not red enough in it. I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." On the south side of these warm hills, it may perhaps be called one of the fawn-colors, i. e. brown inclining to green . . .Much of this peculiar yellowish color on the surface of the Clamshell plain is due to a little curled sedge or grass growing at short intervals. . .Day before yesterday, in clear, dry weather, we had pale-brown or fawn-colored earth, i. e., a dry, withered grass blade [color]; to-day, a more yellow brown or tawny, the same being wet. The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. The earth is more truly russet in November, when there is more redness left in the withered and withering vegetation . . . The color of spring hitherto, — I should say that in dry weather it was fawn-colored, in wet more yellowish or tawny. March 25, 1859

March 25.  As I walk I am excited by the living dark-blue color of the open river and the meadow flood seen at a distance over the fields, contrasting with the tawny earth and the patches of snow. March 25, 1860

March 25. To speak of the general phenomenon of March . . .The 6th, it clears off cold and windy. The snow is chiefly gone; the brown season begins. The tawny frozen earth looks drier than it is . . .The 7th is a day of misty rain and mistling , and of moist brown earth into which you slump as far as it is thawed at every step.  . . Now you admire the various brown colors of the parded earth . . . The 10th, you first notice frost on the tawny grass. The river-channel is open, and you see great white cakes going down the stream between the still icy  meadows, and the wind blows strong from the northwest, as usual. The earth begins to look drier and is whiter or paler-brown than ever, dried by the wind. The very russet oak leaves mixed with pines on distant hills look drier too. March 25, 1860

March 26, 2023

When the sun comes out 

of a cold slate-colored cloud –

fore-glow of the year. 

 March 26, 1860

March 26. When the sun comes out of a cold slate-colored cloud, these windy days, the bleached and withered pastures reflect its light so brightly that they are almost white. They are a pale tawny, or say fawn-color, without any redness. The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. The first part of it, when the frost is rapidly coming out and transient snows are melting, the surface of the earth is saturated with moisture. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses (that commonest one) and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields — withered grass lit by the sun — is the color of a teamster’s coat.  It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year.  March 26, 1860

March 27. The flowers of the alder, now partly in bloom, maybe half, make the impression at a little distance of a collection of the brown twigs of winter — also are of the same color with many withered leaves. . . Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all, and most do not observe the flower of a fifth, the maple. The first four are yellowish or reddish brown at a little distance, like the banks and sward moistened by the spring rain. The browns are the prevailing shades as yet, as in the withered grass and sedge and the surface of the earth, the withered leaves, and these brown flowers. March 27, 1859

March 28.  The Emys picta, now pretty numerous, when young and fresh, with smooth black scales without moss or other imperfection, unworn, and with claws perfectly sharp, is very handsome. When the scales are of this clear, though dull, black, the six middle ones, counting from side to side, are edged forward with broad dull greenish-yellow borders, the others with a narrow whitish border, and the singular vermilion and yellow marks of the marginal scales extend often on to the lateral scales. The concentric lines of growth are in distinguishable. The fore and hind legs and tail are slashed or streaked horizontally with broad clear vermilion and also a fine yellow line or two, answering to those on the hinge scales continued, showing the tenant to be one with the house he occupies. Beneath it is a clear buff.He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs?  At Lee’s Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff edged butterflies (Vanessa Antiopa) and pick up three dead or dying, two together, the edges of their wings gone. Several are fluttering over the dry rock débris under the cliff, in whose crevices probably they have -wintered. Two of the three I pick up are not dead, though they will not fly. Verily their day is a short one. What has checked their frail life? Within, the buff edge is black with bright sky-blue spots, and the main part within is a purplish brown. Those little oblong spots on the black ground are light as you look directly down on them, but from one side they vary through violet to a crystalline rose-purple. . .The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa’s wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves. March 28, 1857

March 28. As we sweep past the north end of Poplar Hill, with a sand-hole in it, its now dryish, pale-brown mottled sward clothing its rounded slope, which was lately saturated with moisture, presents very agreeable hues. In this light, in fair weather, the patches of now dull-greenish mosses contrast just regularly enough with the pale-brown grass. It is like some rich but modest- colored Kidderminster carpet, or rather the skin of a monster python tacked to the hillside and stuffed with earth. These earth colors, methinks, are never so fair as in the spring.. Now the green mosses and lichens contrast with the brown grass, but ere long the surface will be uniformly green. I suspect that we are more amused by the effects of color in the skin of the earth now than in summer. Like the skin of a python, greenish and brown, a fit coat for it to creep over the earth and be concealed in. Or like the skin of a pard, the great leopard mother that Nature is, where she lies at length, exposing her flanks to the sun. I feel as if I could land to stroke and kiss the very sward, it is so fair. It is homely and domestic to my eyes like the rug that lies before my hearth-side. Such ottomans and divans are spread for us to recline on. Nor are these colors mere thin superficial figures, vehicles for paint, but wonderful living growths, — these lichens, to the study of which learned men have devoted their lives, — and libraries have been written about them. The earth lies out now like a leopard, drying her lichen and moss spotted skin in the sun, her sleek and variegated hide. I know that the few raw spots will heal over. Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the color of the poor man's loaf.  The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only for October feasts, which would make us sick if eaten every day. One side of each wave and ripple is dark and the other light blue, reflecting the sky, — as I look down on them from my boat, — and these colors (?) combined produce a dark blue at a distance. These blue spaces ever remind me of the blue in the iridescence produced by oily matter on the surface, for you are slow to regard it as a reflection of the sky. The rippling undulating surface over which you glide is like a changeable blue silk garment. March 28, 1859

March 30. As I look through the window, I actually see a warmer atmosphere with its fine shimmer against the russet hills and the dry leaves . . . There is a very perceptible greenness on our south bank now, but I cannot detect the slightest greenness on the south side of Lee’s Hill as I sail by it. It is a perfectly dead russet. March 30, 1855

March 31. When the air is a little hazy, the mountains are particularly dark blue. It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it. March 31, 1853

April 1.  The prevailing color of the woods at present, excepting the evergreens, is russet, a little more red or grayish, as the case may be, than the earth, for those are the colors of the withered leaves and the branches; the earth has the lighter hue of withered grass. Let me see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color. April 1, 1852

April 1.   When I look out the window I see that the grass on the bank on the south side of the house is already much greener than it was yesterday.  April 1, 1855 

April 3. It is surprising how the earth on bare south banks begins to show some greenness in its russet cheeks in this rain and fog, -- a precious emerald-green tinge, almost like a green mildew, the growth of the night, -- a green blush suffusing her cheek, heralded by twittering birds. How encouraging to perceive again that faint tinge of green, spreading amid the russet on earth’s cheeks! I revive with Nature; her victory is mine. This is my jewelry. April 3, 1856

April 4.  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. April 4, 1853

April 4. The earth is clad with a warm russet, more pleasing perhaps than green; and far beyond all, in the northwestern horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun. April 4, 1855

April 4  Methinks the peculiar and interesting Brown Season of the spring lasts from the time the snow generally begins to go off — as this year the fore part of March — till the frost is generally (or entirely ?) out. Perhaps it will be through the first week of April this year. Ordinary years it must be somewhat later.  April 4, 1859 

April 9. As yet the landscape generally wears its November russet. April 9, 1854

April 13. One or two crowfoots Lee's Cliff, fully out, surprise me like a flame bursting from the russet ground . . .The winter-rye fields quite green, contrasting with the russet. April 13, 1854

April 14. There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones. April 14, 1854

April 23. How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth. April 23, 1854

April 24. The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored . . .all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color, from the dead grass, with the reddish and gray of forests mingled with evergreen; April 24, 1852

April 24. Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. April 24, 1857

April 24. Looking over Heywood's meadow, I am struck by the vivid greenness of the tips of the sedge just pushing up out of its dry tussocks in the water. All the lower part of the tussock is brown, sere, prostrate blades of last year, while from the amid the withered blades spring up ranks of green life like a fire . . . the renewal of life. April 24, 1859 

April 25.  I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like. It struck me as I was going past some opening and by chance looked up some valley or glade, — greenness just beginning to prevail over the brown or tawny. It is a sudden impression of greater genialness in the air, when this greenness first makes an impression on you at some turn,. . .It reminds you of the time, not far off, when you will see the dark shadows of the trees there and buttercups spotting the grass. Even the grass begins to wave. . . I glance up some warm southern slope, sunny and still, where the thinly scattered blades of green grass, lately sprung, already perchance begin to wave, and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. April 25, 1859

April 28. Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . . during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet. April 28, 1854 

April 28, 2019

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.

  April 7, 1853 

*****

See also:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 13 (midwinter colors)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
May 5, 1854 ("The peculiarly beautiful clean and tender green of the grass there! Green herbs of all kinds, — tansy, buttercups, etc., etc., etc., now make more or less show. Put this with the grassy season's beginning.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Season

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDTBrown

A Book of the Seasons: February 13 (Midwinter colors)

 

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

February 13.

Walking toward the sun

rainbow colors reflected

from powdery snow.

February 13, 1859

The red of sunsets

and of the snow at evening

and in rainbow flocks.

February 13, 1860

The blue of the sky and

of the ice and water

of shadows on snow.

February 13, 1860

 

Yellow of the sun

the morning and evening sky

and sedge bright when lit.

February 13, 1860

White of snow and clouds

and the black of clouds and of

thin wet snow on ice.

February 13, 1860

Purple of mountains

of the snow in drifts and of

clouds at evening.

February 13, 1860

The green of the sky

and of the ice and water

toward evening.

February 13, 1860

February 13, 2022

Color, which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline or pencil sketches and become men of science. February 13, 1852

The principal charm of a winter walk over ice is perhaps the peculiar and pure colors exhibited.

• There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs.
• The blue of the sky, and of the ice and water reflected, and of shadows on snow.
• The yellow of the sun and the morning and evening sky, and of the sedge (or straw-color, bright when lit on edge of ice at evening),
•  and all three in hoar frost crystals.
• Then, for the secondary, there is the purple of the snow in drifts or on hills, of the mountains, and clouds at evening.
• The green of evergreen woods, of the sky, and of the ice and water toward evening.
• The orange of the sky at evening.
• The white of snow and clouds,
•  and the black of clouds, of water agitated, and water saturating thin snow on ice.
• The russet and brown and gray, etc., of deciduous woods.
• The tawny of the bare earth.

February 13, 1860

I suspect that the green and rose (or purple) are not noticed on ice and snow unless it is pretty cold, and perhaps there is less greenness of the ice now than in December, when the days were shorter. February 13, 1860

The sun being in a cloud, partly obscured, I see a very dark purple tinge on the flat drifts on the ice earlier than usual, and when afterward the sun comes out below the cloud, I see no purple nor rose. February 13, 1860

Hence it seems that the twilight has as much or more to do with this phenomenon, supposing the sun to be low, than the slight angle of its rays with the horizon. February 13, 1860

The crust is quite green with the needles of pitch pines, sometimes whole plumes which have recently fallen. February 13, 1856

I observed that the swamp was variously shaded, or painted even, like a rug, with the sober colors running gradually into each other, by the colored recent shoots of various shrubs which grow densely, as the red blueberry, and the yellowish-brown panicled andromeda, and the dark-brown or blackish Prinos verticillatus, and the choke-berry, etc. February 13, 1858

There is much panicled andromeda . . . seventeen years old, with yellowish wood. February 13, 1858

How often vegetation is either yellow or red! as the buds of the swamp-pink, the leaves of the pitcher-plant, etc., etc. February 13, 1858

And to-day I notice yellow-green recent shoots of high blueberry. February 13, 1858

Also mosses, mingled red and green. February 13, 1851

A yellow water, a foot or two deep, covers the ice on the meadows, but is not frozen quite hard enough to bear. February 13, 1852

This yellowish ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals. February 13, 1859

As I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. February 13, 1859

It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate. February 13, 1859

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, signs of spring: mosses bright green

Winter Colors (The solstice) (posted December 21, 2020)

November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”)

November 20, 1857 ("the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry . . . have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow. ")

November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”)

November 23, 1857 ("The panicled andromeda is upright, light-gray, with a rather smoother bark, more slender twigs, and small, sharp red buds lying close to the twig.")

December 1, 1852 (“The large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,")

December 6, 1856 ("The rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray")

December 11, 1855 ("The great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda")

December 20, 1851 ("Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape.")
December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")

January 5, 1853 ("A fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon.")

January 10, 1859 ("I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. This gradually deepens to purple and violet in some places, and the pink is very distinct, especially when, after looking at the simply white snow on other sides, you turn your eyes to the hill.")

January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset.") 

January 19, 1859 ("I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening")

January 25, 1858 ("The small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda");
January 25, 1858 ("The large yellowish buds of the swamp pink,.")
January 29, 1860 ("A parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow as I walk toward the sun. ")

January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky.")

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.")
February12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the low snow-patches. ")

February 12, 1860 ("surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. I thus find myself returning over a smooth green sea, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower.")

February 18, 1852 ("The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes.")

February 27, 1852 ("The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.")

March 10, 1859 ("Fine red-stemmed mosses have begun to push and bud on Clamshell bank")

March 16, 1859 ("This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time.")

Mosses now in fruit

are warmly red in the sun

when seen from one side.

April 25, 1857

February 13, 2022

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.

  April 7, 1853 

February 12 <<<<<<< February 13 >>>>>>> February 14

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 13 (midwinter colors)

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

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

December 22. Wednesday.

Surveying the Hunt Farm this and the 20th.

C. says that Flint's Pond was frozen over yesterday.

A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them.

The snow balled so badly to-day while I was working in the swamp, that I was set up full four inches.

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, – the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and, on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry.

The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow; and the squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now, or the glimpse of a meadow (?) mouse, give occasion for a remark.

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red Bridge, which looked like a bright reflection of a setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid, in this winter evening air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1852

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")

The squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now. See November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”); January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”) and note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. See December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.");  December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen"); January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! "); see also February 16, 1854 ("Snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell") Compare  January 14, 1853 ("Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country."); February 21, 1854 ("There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness")

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain.

March 20 . 

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. 

A foggy morning; turns to some April-like rain, after east wind of yesterday. 

A. Buttrick says he saw and heard woodcocks the 5th of March this year, or much earlier than ever before. Thinks they are now laying. His dog put them up at the brushy point below Flint's,– one pair there. Is an other pair at Hunt’s Pond, another at Eleazer Davis's Hill. 

He says that he caught three skunks and a crow last week in his traps baited with muskrat for mink. Says a fox will kill a skunk and eat him greedily before he smells, but nothing will eat a mink. 

2 P.M. — Thermometer about 49. 

This is a slight, dripping, truly April-like rain. You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. More mist than rain; no wind, and the water perfectly smooth and dark, but ever and anon the cloud or mist thickens and darkens on one side, and there is a sudden rush of warm rain, which will start the grass. 

I stand on Hunt's Bridge and, looking up- stream, see now first, in this April rain, the water being only rippled by the current, those alternate dark and light patches on the surface, all alike dimpled with the falling drops. (The ground now soaks up the rain as it falls, the frost being pretty commonly out.) It reminds me of the season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. 

I see where some one has lately killed a striped snake. 

The white maple by the bridge is abundantly out, and of course did not open this rainy day. Yesterday, at least, it began.

I observed on the 18th a swarm of those larger tipulidæ, or fuzzy gnats , dancing in a warm sprout-land, about three feet above a very large white pine stump which had been sawed off quite smoothly and was conspicuous. They kept up their dance directly over this, only swaying to and fro slightly, but always recovering their position over it. 

This afternoon, in the sprinkling rain, I see a very small swarm of the same kind dancing in like manner in a garden, only a foot above the ground but directly over a bright tin dish,— apparently a mustard-box, — and I suspect that they select some such conspicuous fixed point on the ground over which to hover and by which to keep their place, finding it for their convenience to keep the same place. These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water.  [ For same , March 10 , 1859]

Methinks this gentle rainy day reminds me more of summer than the warmest fair day would. 

A. Buttrick said to-day that the black ducks come when the grass begins to grow in the meadows, i.e. in the water. 

Perhaps calm weather and thermometer at about 50, the frost being commonly out and ground bare, may be called an April-like rain. The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50°  55° , 56° , 56°, and 51° (average 53 1/2°), - quite a spell of warm weather (succeeding to cold and blustering), in which the alders and white maples, as well as many more skunk-cabbages, bloomed, and the hazel catkins became relaxed and elongated. 

A. Buttrick says he has seen ground squirrels some time. 

I hear that the first alewives have been caught in the Acushnet River.

Our own mistakes often reveal to us the true colors of objects better than a conscious discrimination. Coming up the street the other afternoon, I thought at first that I saw a smoke in Mr. Cheney's garden. It was his white tool-house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1860

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. See April 9, 1861 ("Worm-piles in grass."); April 14, 1859 (“There are many worm holes or piles in the door-yard this forenoon. How long?”); April 26, 1856 (“Worm-piles about the door-step this morning; how long?”)

You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. 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. ")

The season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. See March 21, 1858 ("Standing by that pool, it is pleasant to see the dimples made on its smooth surface by the big drops, after the rain has held up a quarter of an hour."); July 31, 1860 ("The differently shaded or lit currents of the river through it all; but anon it begins to rain very hard, and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot.")

These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water. See March 19, 1858 ("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)