April 2.
8 A. M. — To Lee’s Cliff via railroad, Andromeda Ponds, and Well Meadow.
I go early, while the crust is hard. 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. Pushed up through the dead leaves, yet flattened by the snow and ice which has just melted here, behold! the skunk-cabbage has been in bloom, i.e. has shed pollen some time and been frost-bitten and decayed. All that now sheds pollen here has been frost-bitten. Others are ready to shed it in a day or two.
I find no other flower nearly so forward as this. The cowslip appears to be coming next to it. Its buds are quite yellowish and half an inch, almost, in diameter. The alder scales do not even appear relaxed yet. This year, at least, the cabbage is the first flower; and perhaps it is always earlier than I have thought, if you seek it in a favorable place.
The springy soil in which it grows melts the snows early, and if, beside, it is under the south side of a hill in an open oozy alder swamp in a recess sheltered from cold Winds like this, it may commonly be the first flower.
It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower. I have hitherto found my earliest at Clamshell, a much more exposed place. Look for some narrow meadowy bay, running north into a hill and protected by the hill-on the north and partly on the east and west. At the head of this meadow, where many springs ooze out from under the hill and saturate all the ground, dissolving the snow early in the spring, in the midst, or on the edge, of a narrow open alder swamp, there look for the earliest skunk-cabbage and cowslip, where some little black rills are seen to meander or heard to tinkle in the middle of the coldest winter. There appear the great spear-heads of the skunk-cabbage, yellow and red or uniform mahogany-color, ample hoods sheltering their purple spadixes.
The plaited buds of the hellebore are four or five inches high. There are beds of fresh green moss in the midst of the shallow water. What is that coarse sedge-like grass, rather broadly triangularish, two inches high in the water? This and the cress have been eaten, probably by the rabbits, whose droppings are abundant. I see where they have gnawed and chipped off the willow osiers. Common grass is quite green.
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.
That grass which had grown five inches on the 30th is apparently the cut-grass of the meadows. The withered blades which are drooping about the tufts are two feet long. I break the solid snow-bank with my feet and raise its edge, and find the stiff but tender yellow shoots beneath it. They seem not to have pierced it, but are prostrate beneath it. They have actually grown beneath it, but not directly up into it to any extent; rather flattened out beneath it.
Cross Fair Haven Pond to Lee’s Cliff.
The crow foot and saxifrage seem remarkably backward; no growth as yet. But the catnip has grown even six inches, and perfumes the hillside when bruised. The columbine, with its purple leaves, has grown five inches, and one is flower-budded, apparently nearer to flower than anything there. Turritis stricta very forward, four inches high.
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.
Here is the broken shell of one of those large white snails (Helix albolabris) on the top of the Cliff. It is like a horn with ample mouth wound on itself. I am rejoiced to find anything so pretty. I cannot but think it nobler, as it is rarer, to appreciate some beauty than to feel much sympathy with misfortune. The Powers are kinder to me when they permit me to enjoy this beauty than if they were to express any amount of compassion for me. I could never excuse them that.
A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.
Muskrat-houses have been very scarce indeed the past winter. If they were not killed off, I cannot but think that their instinct foresaw that the river would not rise. The river has been at summer level through the winter up to April!
I returned down the middle of the river to near the Hubbard Bridge without seeing any opening.
Some of the earliest plants are now not started because covered with snow, as the stellaria and shepherd’s purse. Others, like the Cares Pennsylvanica, the crowfoot, saxifrage, callitriche, are either covered or recently uncovered. I think it must be partly owing to the want of rain, and not wholly to the snow, that the first three are so backward.
The white maples and hazels and, for the most part, the alders still stand in snow; yet those alders on the bare place by the skunk-cabbage, above named, appear to be no more forward!
Maybe trees, rising so high, are more affected by cold winds than herbaceous plants.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1856
It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower. . . .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. See
February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. “);
March 18, 1860 ("skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell . . .There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. ")
April 4, 1856 ("I find many sound cabbages shedding their pollen under Clamshell Hill. . . . This is simply the earliest flower such a season as this, i. e. when the ground continues covered with snow till very late in the spring. ");
April 7, 1855 ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.");
April 8, 1855 (“As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach.”)
April 10, 1855 ("These few earliest flowers . . .are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet.");
April 17, 1855 ("So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower, as if he had slumbered all winter at the root of the plant. No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
The Earliest Flower
I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground . . . and smell the earth and the dry leaves. . . . See
March 4, 1854 ("I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground”);
March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”);
May 4, 1859 ("I draw near to the land; I begin to lie down and stretch myself on it. After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land.”)
; May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.”)
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. See ;
March 29, 1857 ("I hear that sign-squeaking blackbird, and, looking up, see half a dozen on the top of the elm at the foot of Whiting’s lot. . .on the whole I think them grackles (?). Possibly those I heard on the 18th were the same ?? Does the red-wing ever make a noise like a rusty sign?");
April 3, 1856 ("Hear also squeaking notes of an advancing flock of redwings [or grackles, am uncertain which makes that squeak]") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
the Red-wing in Spring
Robins are peeping and flitting about. Am surprised to hear one sing regularly their morning strain. See
April 2, 1852 ("The air is full of the notes of birds, - song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain) ");
April 2, 1854("I heard something which reminded me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs. ") See also
March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”);
March 20, 1858 (“Now first I hear a very short robin's song.”);
March 31, 1852 (“The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear.”);
April 1, 1854 ("The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully. . . .”);
April 1, 1857 (“Already I hear a robin or two singing their evening song.”); See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring
Muskrat-houses have been very scarce indeed the past winter. See April 1, 1860 ("The river was lowest for March yesterday, . . . so low that the mouths of the musquash-burrows in the banks are exposed with the piles of shells before them.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
the Musquash
