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.
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.
February 25, 1859
The only bare ground is the railroad track . . . The crust still bears, and I leave the railroad at Andromeda Ponds and go through on crust to Fair Haven. February 25, 1856
The crust of the meadow afloat . . . another agent employed in the distribution of plants. February 25, 1851
Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. February 25, 1856
Felled my bee tree. February 25, 1856
The thermometer is at 65° at noon. February 25, 1857
The flies buzz out of doors February 25, 1857
That mildew, or gossamer-like scum, of the 18th is still visible . . . like very thin and frail isinglass. February 25, 1857
Ice at Walden eleven inches thick. February 25, 1858
I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street. I think that they are heard oftener and again at the approach of spring, just as the phoebe note of the chickadee is; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring. February 25, 1859
I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. February 25, 1859
For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. February 25, 1860
The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind. February 25, 1860
It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice." February 25, 1860
I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. February 25, 1860
I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. February 25, 1860
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February 25, 2024
(avesong)
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September 30, 1852 ("Custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree ") February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually") February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove.") February 8, 1858 (“I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker.”) February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust. They had evidently come forth from their hive (perhaps in a large hemlock on the bank close by), and had fallen on the snow chilled to death. Their bodies extended from the tree to about three rods from it toward the pond. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey.") February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. ")
February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? ")
February 16, 1856 (“Wild says it is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December, when the thermometer stood at 50°. To-day it is at 44.”) February 16, 1857 (“A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.”) February 18, 1857 (". . . as if the fairies had dropped their veils or handkerchiefs after a midnight revel, rejoicing at the melting of the snow. What can it be? Is it animal or vegetable? I suspect it is allied to mould; or is it a scum? . . .a thin and tender membrane that envelops the infant earth in earliest spring.”) February 18, 1858 (“I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th”) e spring”)
February 24, 1854 (“Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”) February 24, 1854 "The other day I thought that I smelled a fox very strongly, and went a little further and found that it was a skunk.”) February 24, 1857 (“Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore.”)
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.”)
February 27, 1851("Blue-joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before.") February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.") March 2, 1860 ("I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.")
March 4, 1852 (" I cut my initials on the bee tree") March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. . . . It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. . . . This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark.")
March 6, 1854 (“I see the skunk- cabbage started about the spring at head of Hubbard's Close, amid the green grass, and what looks like the first probing of the skunk.”) March 10, 1854 ("See a skunk in the Corner road, which I follow sixty rods or more. . . . It is a slender black (and white) animal, with its back remarkably arched, standing high behind and carrying its head low; runs, even when undisturbed, with singular teeter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow; I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has a long tail, which it regularly erects when I come too near and prepares to discharge its liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, and the hind head and a line on the front of the face, — the rest black, except the flesh-colored nose (and I think feet). . . . I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter?") March 17, 1857(“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring") March 29, 1852 ("The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind.") April 9, 1856 (“The thermometer at 5 P. M. is 66°+, and it has probably been 70° or more; and the last two days have been nearly as warm.”) April 25, 1859 (" I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.") June 22, 1859 ("One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on.”) June 22, 1860 (“[T]he thermometer 60° only at 12.30 P.M. and 65 at 5 P.M. But it is remarkably cold in the wind, and you require a thick coat. 65° now, with wind, is uncomfortably cold.”) August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.”)
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/hdt25feb
