A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: The Eaves Begin to Run

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

It is so long since I have heard it, that the steady,

soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel.

It seems like a distant forerunner of spring.

February 15, 1855

January 4.  It thaws all day; the eaves drip as in a rain. January 4, 1854

January 7. You hear (in the house) the unusual sound of the eaves running. January 7, 1860

February 1. The eaves have scarcely run at all. It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter." February 1, 1856

February  8. The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks. February 8, 1856

February 11. It is now fairly thawing, the eaves running; and puddles stand in some places. February 11, 1856

February 12. The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance. February 12, 1855

February 12.. Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42° . . . How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . . I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. February 12, 1856

February 15. It is so long since I have heard it, that the steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. It is because I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. The sound soaks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed and drink up the rain as fast as it falls. February 15, 1855

February 15. Then the gentle, spring-like rain begins, and we turn about. The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves . . . is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. February 15, 1859

February 16. I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance. February 16, 1856

February 23. I have seen signs of the spring. February 23, 1857

March 21. Warm rain, April-like, the first of the season . . . 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. March 21, 1858

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last.
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

  <<<<< Signs of Spring                                                           Early Spring >>>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring;

 The Eaves Begin to Run

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 ©  2009-2026

As long as there is a spark of love remaining.

February 15

Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible, that he has prejudices. He is, then, only prejudiced in our favor. What is the value of his esteem who does not justly esteem another? Alas! Alas! when my friend begins to deal in confessions, breaks silence, makes a theme of friendship (which then is always something past), and descends to merely human relations! 

February 15, 2022

As long as there is a spark of love remaining, cherish that alone. Only that can be kindled into a flame. 

I thought that friendship, that love was still possible between [us]. I thought that we had not withdrawn very far asunder. But now that my friend rashly, thoughtlessly, profanely speaks, recognizing the distance between us, that distance seems infinitely increased. 

Of our friends we do not incline to speak, to complain, to others; we would not disturb the foundations of confidence that may still be.

Why should we not still continue to live with the intensity and rapidity of infants? 

Is not the world, are not the heavens, as unfathomed as ever? 

Have we exhausted any joy, any sentiment? 

The author of Festus well exclaims:

          "Could we but think with the intensity

          We love with, we might do great things, I think."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1851

Should we not continue to live with intensity? See May 24, 1857 ("We want no[t] completeness but intensity of life.")

Recognizing the distance between us, that distance seems infinitely increased. See e.g. January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had,"); February 8, 1857 ("I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded.")

The author of Festus.  Philip James Bailey. See Festus: A Poem, p. 320

As long as there is 

a spark of love remaining,

cherish that alone.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

As long as there is a spark of love remaining

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 ©  2009-2026

tinyurl.com/hdt-510215

Thorer Hund

February 15. 

Perhaps I am descended from that North man named "Thorer the Dog-footed." Thorer Hund – "he was the most powerful man in the North” to judge from his name belonged to the same family. 

Thorer is one of the most, if not the most, common name in the chronicles of the Northmen. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1852

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon.

 February 15. 

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps. 

A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it. 

How eloquent she can be with her tail! 

Its sudden swellings and vibrations  She jumps into a chair and then stands on her hind legs to look out the window; looks steadily at objects far and near, first turning her gaze to this side then to that, for she loves to look out a window as much as any gossip. Ever and anon she bends back her ears to hear what is going on within the room, and all the while her eloquent tail is reporting the progress and success of her survey by speaking gestures which betray her interest in what she sees. 

Then what a delicate hint she can give with her tail! passing perhaps underneath, as you sit at table, and letting the tip of her tail just touch your legs, as much as to say, I am here and ready for that milk or meat, though she may not be so forward as to look round at you when she emerges. 

Only skin-deep lies the feral nature of the cat, unchanged still. I just had the misfortune to rock on to our cat’s leg, as she was lying playfully spread out under my chair. Imagine the sound that arose, and which was excusable; but what will you say to the fierce growls and flashing eyes with which she met me for a quarter of an hour thereafter? 

No tiger in its jungle could have been savager.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1861

February 14. February 15. February 16

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. See  February 23, 1860 ("About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow "); March 8, 1854 ("Lightning this evening, after a day of successive rains."); March 16, 1854 (“ It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.”)

Skate to Bound Rock.

February 15.

As in the expression of moral truths we admire any closeness to the physical fact which in all language is the symbol of the spiritual, so, finally, when natural objects are described, it is an advantage if words derived originally from nature, it is true, but which have been turned (tropes) from their primary signification to a moral sense, are used, i. e., if the object is personified. 

The one who loves and understands a thing the best will incline to use the personal pronouns in speaking of it. To him there is no neuter gender. Many of the words of the old naturalists were in this sense doubly tropes. 

P. M. — About 30° at 2 P. M. 

Skated to Bound Rock. 

Frequently, the same night that it first freezes, or perhaps in the morning, the ice over the thread of the river will be puffed up for many rods a foot or more, evidently by expanding vapors beneath, and also over the channel of some warm spring emptying in. Also at Walden where it is very shallow or the ice rests on a bar between the pond and a bay. 

When lately the open parts of the river froze more or less in the night after that windy day, they froze by stages, as it were, many feet wide, and the water dashed and froze against the edge of each successive strip of ice, leaving so many parallel ridges. 

The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places; in others the ice slants from the shore for a rod or two to the water; and on the meadows for the most part there is no water under the ice, and it accordingly rumbles loudly as I go over it, and I rise and fall as I pass over hillocks or hollows.

From the pond to Lee's Bridge I skated so swiftly before the wind, that I thought it was calm, for I kept pace with it, but when I turned about I found that quite a gale was blowing. 

Occasionally one of those puffs (making a pent-roof of ice) runs at right angles across the river where there is no spring or stream emptying in. A crack may have started it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1860

February 14. February 15. February 16

It is an advantage if words derived originally from nature, it is true, but which have been turned (tropes) from their primary signification to a moral sense, are used, i. e., if the object is personified. See February 23, 1860 ("Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.");  May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life.  . . I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant."); May 6, 1854 ("There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective.")

Bound Rock.  See A Week on the Concord and Merrimak Rivers ("Bound Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord.")

The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places. See February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old."); February 15, 1859 ("there are two of those ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.") See also January 1, 1857 ("I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze"); January 16, 1857("As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. . . . The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north.”); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight.")

From the pond to Lee's Bridge I skated so swiftly before the wind. See January 14, 1855 ("Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling . . . like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. . . . There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.")

We walk through almost invisible puddles, in which we see the trees reflected.

February 15. 

P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond.

I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath.

I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. 

I see some remarkable overflowed ice. Here is one shield of an oval form, some twenty feet long, very regularly and interestingly mottled with yellowish or dead leaf color, the stain of the mead, which by some law has been regularly distributed through the white, yet so delicately shaded off that it almost makes you dizzy to look at it. 

It reminds me of the beginning of a higher organization, or bony structure in a molluscous fish. The overflow must have been from the centre, where it burst up and flowed each way. 

In the proper light I am surprised to detect very fine and perfectly regular curving rays within the ice, just like the veins of some leaves, only finer and more regular, bilateral, perhaps a trace of the water as it flowed, — say like the lines of a cowry shell. It is but imperfectly suggested in the drawing. 

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. 

• The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.
• A distant white birch, erect on a hill against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede a crawling up to heaven. 
• The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish. 

Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one in my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice. 

So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring like rain begins, and we turn about. 

The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. 

We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. 

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1859

We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. See January 13, 1854 ("Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees"); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist. ”)

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.  See  February 16, 1860 ("I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it.") Compare October 31, 1858 ("Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under."); November 1, 1858 ("Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season.")

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts. See February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.") and note to February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places")

February 14. February 15. February 16

A tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

February 15. 

To Cambridge and Boston. 

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains. It looked much like a monstrous gray cat standing on stilts, with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

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

February 14. February 15. February 16

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx . . .with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.  See September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago."); October 20, 1857 ("It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . . From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx . . . I measured the stuffed skin carefully . . . Tail stout and black at the abrupt end, 5 inches . . . tuft on ear ( black and thin ) , 1½ inches . . .Ears, without  broadly edged with black half an inch or more wide  the rest being a triangular white. There was but a small muffler, chiefly a triangular whitish and blackish tuft on the sides of the face or neck, not noticeably under the chin."); September 13, 1860 ("They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx."); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.") 

Lee House, circa 1650, burns

February 15.

About the 1st of January, when I was surveying the Lee farm, Captain Elwell, the proprietor, asked me how old I thought the house was. I looked into Shattuck's History and found that, according to him, "Henry Woodhouse, or Woodis, as his name was sometimes written, came to Concord from London, about 1650, freeman 1656. His farm, estimated at three hundred and fifty acres, lay between the two rivers, and descended to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, whose posterity successively held it for more than one hundred years. . . . He d. June 16, 1701." (Vide page 389.) 

Shattuck says that the principal sachem of our Indians, Tahattawan, lived "near Nahshawtuck hill." Shattuck (page 28) says that the celebrated Waban originally lived in Concord, and he describes Squaw Sachem and John Tahattawan, son of Tahattawan, as Musketaquid Indians. In 1684 " Mantatukwet, a Christian Indian of Natick, aged 70 years or there abouts," according to the Register at Cambridge, de posed "that about 50 years since he lived within the bounds of that place which is now called Concord, at the foot of an hill, named Nahshawtuck, now in the possession of Mr. Henry Woodis," etc. (page 7). A vote of Henry Woodies in 1654 is mentioned. Under date 1666, Shattuck finds in the South Quarter, among the names of the town at that time, "Henry Woodhouse 1 [lot] 360 [acres]," etc. 

When I returned from Worcester yesterday morning, I found that the Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up the evening before, i. e. the 13th, while I was lecturing in Worcester. (It took fire and came near being destroyed in the night of the previous December 18th, early in morning. I was the first to get there from town.) In the course of the forenoon of yesterday I walked up to the site of the house, whither many people were flocking, on foot and in carriages. There was nothing of the house left but the chimneys and cellar walls. The eastern chimney had fallen in the night. 

On my way I met Abel Hunt, to whom I observed that it was perhaps the oldest house in town. "No," said he, "they saw the date on it during the fire, — 1707." 

When I arrived I inquired where the date had been seen, and read it for myself on the chimney, but there was too much smouldering fire to permit of my approaching it nearly. I was interested in the old elm near the southeast corner of the house, which I found had been a mere shell a few years since, now filled up with brick. Flood, who has lived there, told me that Wheeler asked his advice with regard to that tree, — whether he could do better than lay the axe at its root. F. told him that he had seen an ash in the old country which was in the same condition, and is a tenderer tree than an " elum,"  preserved by being filled up, and with masonry, and then cemented over. 

So, soon after, the mason was set to work upon it under his directions, Flood having scraped out all the rotten wood first with a hoe. The cavity was full three feet wide and eight or ten high commencing at the ground. The mason had covered the bricks and rounded off with mortar, which he had scored with his trowel so that [one] did not observe but it was bark. It seemed an admirable plan, and not only improved the appearance but the strength and durability of the tree. 

This morning (the 15th), it having rained in the night, and thinking the fire would be mostly out, I made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. By laying down boards on the bricks and cinders, which were quite too hot to tread on and covered a smothered fire, I was able to reach the chimney. 

The inscription was on the east side of the east chimney (which had fallen), at the bottom, in a cupboard on the west side of the late parlor, which was on a level with the ground on the east and with the cellar on the extreme west and the cellar kitchen on the north. There was a narrow lower (milk) cellar south and southeast of it, and an equally lower and narrower cellar east of it, under the parlor. This side of the chimney was perhaps fifteen feet from the east side of the house and as far from the north side. The inscription was in a slight recess in the chimney three feet four inches wide and a little more in height up and down, as far as I could see into the pile of bricks, thus : —

It appeared to have been made by the finger or a stick, in the mortar when fresh, which had been spread an inch to an inch and a quarter thick over the bricks, and, where it was too dry and hard, to have been pecked with the point of a trowel. The first three words and the " 16 " were perfectly plain, the " 5 " was tolerably plain, though some took it for a three, but I could feel it yet more distinctly. The mortar was partly knocked off the rest, apparently by this fire, but the top of some capital letter like a "C," and the letters "netty" were about as plain as represented, and the rest looked like " Henry " (Woodhouse ?) or " l (t ?) kinry " ( ?) the " y " ( ?) at end being crowded for want of room next the side. These last two words quite uncertain. 

The surface of this recess was slightly swelling or bulging, somewhat like the outside of an oven, and above it the chimney was sloped and rounded off to the narrower shaft of it. The letters were from two and one half to three inches long and one eighth to one half inch deep. This chimney, as well as the more recent westerly one, had been built chiefly with clay mortar, and I brought away a brick, of a soft kind, eight and seven eighths inches — some nine — long, four and one fourth plus wide, varying one fourth, and two and one half thick, though there were some much smaller near it, probably not so old. The clay (for mortar) was about as hard as mortar on it. The mortar in which the inscription was made contained considerable straw (?) and some lumps of clay, now crumbling like sand, with the lime and sand. The outside was white, but the interior ash-colored. 

I discovered that the mortar of the inscription was not so old as the chimney, for the bricks beneath it, over which it was spread, were covered with soot, uniformly to the height of seven or eight feet, and the mortar fell off with an eighth of an inch thickness of this soot adhering to it, as if the recess had been a fireplace mortared over. 

I have just been reading the account of Dr. Ball's sufferings on the White Mountains. Of course, I do not wonder that he was lost. I should say: Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass; salt pork and hard-bread and salt; fish-hooks and lines; a good jack-knife, at least, if not a hatchet, and perhaps a gun; matches in a vial stopped water-tight; some strings and paper. 

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion, though in the midst of cities, else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. 

HOW TO CATCH A PIG 

If it is a wild shoat, do not let him get scared; shut up the dogs and keep mischievous boys and men out of the way. Think of some suitable inclosure in the neighborhood, no matter if it be a pretty large field, if it chances to be tightly fenced; and with the aid of another prudent person give the pig all possible opportunities to enter it. Do not go very near him nor appear to be driving him, only let him avoid you, persuade him to prefer that inclosure. If the case is desperate and it is necessary, you may make him think that you wish him to anywhere else but into that field, and he will be pretty sure to go there. Having got him into that inclosure and put up the fence, you can contract it at your leisure. When you have him in your hands, if he is obstinate, do not try to drive him with a rope round one leg. Spare the neighbors' ears and your pig's feelings, and put him into a cart or wheelbarrow. 

The brick above described appears to be of the same size with those of Governor Craddock's house in Medford, said to have been built in 1634 and measured by Brooks. (Vide Book of Facts.) It is remarkable that though Elwell, the last occupant of this house, never has seen this inscription, it being in this obscure nook in the cellar, the inscriber's purpose is served, for now nothing stands but the other chimney and the foundation of this, and the inscription is completely exposed to the daylight and to the sun, and far more legible even a rod or two off than it could have been when made. 

There it is, staring all visitors in the face, on that clear space of mortar just lifted above the mouldering ruins of the chimney around it. Yesterday you could not get within a rod of it, but distinctly read it over the furnace of hot bricks and coals. I brought away a brick and a large flake of the mortar with letters on it, but it crumbled in my hands, and I was reminded of the crumbling of some of the slabs of Nineveh in the hands of Layard as soon as brought to light, and felt a similar grief because I could not transport it entire to a more convenient place than that scorching pile, or even lay the crumbling mass down, without losing forever the outlines and the significance of those yet undeciphered words. But I laid it down, of necessity, and that was the end of it. 

There was our sole Nineveh slab, perhaps the oldest engraving in Concord. [No; some gravestones are undoubtedly older.] 

Webster prided himself on being the first farmer in the south parish of Marshfield, but if he was the first they must have been a sorry set, for his farming was a complete failure. It cost a great deal more than it came to. He used other people's capital, and was insolvent when he died, so that his friends and relatives found it difficult to retain the place, if indeed they have not sold it. How much cheaper it would have been for the town or county to have maintained him in the alms house than as a farmer at large! How many must have bled annually to manure his broad potato-fields, who without inconvenience could have contributed sufficient to maintain him in the almshouse!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1857

February 14. February 15. February 16

The Lee house, of which six weeks ago I made an accurate plan, had been completely burned up . . . tI made haste to the ruins of the Lee house to read that inscription. See February 16, 1857 ("To Lee house site again . . .The fire still glowing among the bricks in the cellar. Richard Barrett says he remembers the inscription and the date 1650,"); February 17, 1857 ("The bricks of the old [Lee]chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick . . .E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house."); February 27, 1857 ("I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house!")

historical assessmetnt form Tanglewood drive ( this land with a long history with the Woodis and Lee families going back to the 1660s.  The Lee farm and nearby Conant farm were favorite spots of Thoreau, who visited in all seasons to view the landscape from Conantum and Fairhaven Hill and to walk “Lee’s Cliff” where he had gone as a boy for picnics with his family. Thoreau named the area Conantum in about 1845, while living on Walden Pond and writing the first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He wrote, “There is a pleasant track on the bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my mind; -- the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard,--places where one may have many thoughts and not decide anything.”)

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. Indeed, you must have been living all your life in some such methodical and assured fashion. . . else you will be lost in spite of all this preparation. See January 9, 1855 ("Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow."); March 29, 1853 ("We are constantly steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, though we are not conscious of it, . . .Every man has once more to learn the points of compass as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or from any abstraction. In fact, not till we are lost do we begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations. ")

A Book of the Seasons: February 15.

February 15.


As long as there is 

a spark of love remaining, 

cherish that alone.

February 15, 1851

The steady rushing
musical sound of rain soaks
into my spirit.
February 15, 1855

The steady, soaking,
rushing, musical sound of rain
is soothing to me.
February 15, 1855

The trees reflected

in invisible puddles –

a walk on the ice

February 15, 1859

I feel the first drop --

gentle spring-like rain begins.

Sounds just like the wind.  

February 15, 1859

We rejoice to be wet --

the smell of wet woollen clothes

exhilarates us. 

February 15, 1859

I feel the first drop –

gentle spring-like rain begins

and we turn about. 

February 15, 1859

Spring-like rain begins --

its pattering on oak leaves

sounds just like the wind. 

Countless dimples in
the puddles then the gentle
spring-like rain begins.
February 15, 1859

*****

Commenced a fine half snow half rain yesterday afternoon. February 15, 1855

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. February 15, 1855

Do not take a dozen steps which you could not with tolerable accuracy protract on a chart. I never do otherwise. February 15, 1857

Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one in my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice. So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring-like rain begins, and we turn about. The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. 

February 15, 1859

All rain and harder in the night, and now quite a thaw, still raining finely, with great dark puddles amid the snow, and the cars detained by wet rails. February 15, 1855

Does not a thaw succeed that blue atmosphere observed on the 11th? — a thaw, as well as warmer nights and hoar frosts? February 15, 1855

All day a steady, warm, imprisoning rain carrying off the snow.  not unmusical on my roof. February 15, 1855

It is a rare time for the student and reader who cannot go abroad in the afternoon, provided he can keep awake, for we are wont to be drowsy as cats in such weather. February 15, 1855

Without, it is not walking but wading. February 15, 1855

It is so long since I have heard it that the steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. February 15, 1855

It is because I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. February 15, 1855

The sound soaks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed and drink up the rain as fast as it falls. February 15, 1855

I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. February 15, 1859

I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath. February 15, 1859

I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. February 15, 1859

There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. February 15, 1859

We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. February 15, 1859

About 30° at 2 P. M. February 15, 1860

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps. February 15, 1861

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct.  February 15, 1859

• The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.
• A distant white birch, erect on a hill against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede a crawling up to heaven. 
• The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish. 

 February 15, 1859

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

*****

February 15, 2022

. 

February 16, 1855 ("The drooping oak leaves show more red amid the pines this wet day, - agreeably so, — and I feel as if I stood a little nearer to the heart of nature")

February 14. February 15. February 16

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 © 2009-2019

The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical.

February 15

Commenced a fine half snow half rain yesterday afternoon. 

All rain and harder in the night, and now quite a thaw, still raining finely, with great dark puddles amid the snow, and the cars detained by wet rails. 

Does not a thaw succeed that blue atmosphere observed on the 11th? — a thaw, as well as warmer nights and hoar frosts? 

All day a steady, warm, imprisoning rain carrying off the snow.  not unmusical on my roof. 

It is a rare time for the student and reader who cannot go abroad in the afternoon, provided he can keep awake, for we are wont to be drowsy as cats in such weather. Without, it is not walking but wading. 

It is so long since I have heard it that the steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. 

February 15, 2015

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. 

It is because I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. The sound soaks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed and drink up the rain as fast as it falls.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1855

February 14. February 15. February 16

The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. See February 15, 1859 ("the gentle, spring like rain begins. . .We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. "); See also  February 8, 1857 ("Youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the wind and rain and running water . . . I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Eaves Begin to Run

The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. See February 18, 1854 ("I begin to think that my wood will last."); February 18, 1857 (“Thermometer at 1 P.M., 65. . . I sit all this day and evening without a fire, and some even have windows open.”); Compare February 3, 1856 (“The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”) See also Walden ("One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in . . . the days have grown sensibly longer and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood pile for large fires are no longer necessary I am on the alert for the first signs of spring.")

The musical sound 

of  rain on the shingles soaks 

into my spirit.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain 

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 © 2009-2025

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