A Book of the Seasons: February 28. (The westering sun, arctic scenes, cakes of ice, bluebirds and robins, pine cones, nature's impressions)

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 28

February 28, 2017

The westering sun

reflected from their edges

makes them shine finely.

February 28, 1855

A pleasant morning. February 28, 1854

Nearly two inches of snow in the night. February 28, 1857

The snow lies on the ice in large but very shallow drifts . . . broad crescents (apparently) convex to the northwest. February 28, 1857

Ever since the 23d inclusive a succession of clear but very cold days in which, for the most part, it has not melted perceptibly during the day. February 28, 1855

Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. February 28, 1855

Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.  February 28, 1855

Many great cakes have lodged on a ridge of the meadow west of the river here, and suggest how such a ridge may be growing from year to year. February 28, 1855

This is a powerful agent at work. February 28, 1855

The westering sun reflected from their edges makes them shine finely. February 28, 1855

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. February 28, 1856

Around the shore ice is covered with water and rests on the bottom, while the middle is raised with the water, and hence a ridge is heaved up where the two ices meet. February 28, 1854

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond.  February 28, 1857

To-day it snows again, covering the ground. February 28, 1852

The snow finally turns to a drenching rain. February 28, 1852

2 P. M. — Thermometer 52; wind easterly. February 28, 1860

One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. February 28, 1860

One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck.  February 28, 1860

Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day.  February 28, 1858

C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.   February 28, 1860

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season.  February 28, 1860

Air full of bluebirds as yesterday.  February 28. 1861

I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about. February 28, 1860

Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin . . .The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life.  February 28, 1860

I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow.  February 28, 1857

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted

by muskrats or minks. February 28, 1857

Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? February 28, 1857

A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created. . . and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.  February 28, 1856

I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine.   February 28, 1858

I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. February 28, 1860 

Saw a mackerel in the market. The upper half of its sides is mottled blue and white like the mackerel sky, as stated January 19th.  February 28, 1859

At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. February 28, 1857

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. February 28, 1857

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it.  February 28, 1856

It is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.  February 28, 1860 

To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten,– so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men. February 28, 1852

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Earliest Flower

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Goldeneye (Whistler)

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring

*****

November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")

November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it .")

December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”)

December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”)

January 3, 1860 ("[Melvin] speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow.")

January 8, 1860 ("When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.]") 

January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”)

January 10, 1859 ("The middle of the river where narrow . . . is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly.")

January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . . similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")

January 22, 1856 ("I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. . . They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. ")

January 31, 1856 ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.") 

February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. ")

February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.")

February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see")

February 18, 1857 ("The bluebird does not come till the air consents.")

February 21, 1861 ("Plucking and stripping a pine cone")

February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”)

February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more —arctic enough to look at.”)

February 24, 1857 ("A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.")

February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”)

Morning snow turns to

fine freezing rain with a glaze

changing to pure rain.

February 26, 1854

February 25, 1859 ("I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago.")

February 26, 1855 ("Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.")

February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.”) 

February 27, 1857 ("Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.")

February 27, 1861 (" Mother hears a robin to-day.") 

February 27, 1853 ("The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.")

February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes.")

Snows again to-day

covering the ground then turns

to a drenching rain.

To get the value of the storm we must be out long and travel far.

February 28, 1852

March 1, 1856 ("It is remarkable that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter . . .Coombs should (as he says) have killed two sheldrakes at the falls by the factory, a place which I had forgotten, some four or six weeks ago. Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening . . . If there is a crack amid the rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.")

March 8, 1859 ("If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure.")

March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")

March 15, 1852 ("A mild spring day. The air is full of bluebirds . . . liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity.") 

March 17, 1858 ("The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill.") 

March 23, 1856 ("I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me.") 

March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”)

March 23, 1859 ("As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head.")

 March 27, 1858 ("Among them [sheldrakes], or near by, I at length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, having a white spot on the head, a black back, and altogether less white, and also keeping more or less apart and not diving when the rest do.") 

March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open.")

March 29, 1855 ("Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.") 

March 30, 1852 ("From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, – which is in fact thus only revealed . . . I never knew before exactly where the channel was.")

April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”)

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.”)

Apirl 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.")

April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)

April 29, 1855 ("See his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly.")

May 30, 1859 ("Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears.")

June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”)

August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”)

August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")

September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”)

October 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are.")

February 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 

 February 27   <<<<<  February 28  >>>>> February 29

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 28 

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

tinyurl.com/hdt28feb

Air full of bluebirds.

February 28. 

P. M. Down Boston road under the hill. 

Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. 

The sidewalk is bare and almost dry the whole distance under the hill. 

Turn in at the gate this side of Moore's and sit on the yellow stones rolled down in the bay of a digging, and examine the radical leaves, etc., etc. 

Where the edges of grassy banks have caved I see the fine fibrous roots of the grass which have been washed bare during the winter extending straight downward two feet (and how much further within the earth I know not), -- a pretty dense grayish mass. 

The buttonwood seed has apparently scarcely begun to fall yet — only two balls under one tree, but they loose and broken. [Almost entirely fallen March 7th, leaving the dangling stems and bare receptacles.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28. 1861

Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. See February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird. I stop and listen to hear it again, but cannot tell whither it comes."); see also February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard."); February 18, 1857 ("The bluebird does not come till the air consents"); February 24, 1857 ("A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air."); March 15, 1852 ("A mild spring day.  The air is full of bluebirds. . . .  liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity. ") March 17, 1858 ("The air is full of bluebirds. I hear them far and near on all sides of the hill.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

A dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 28. 

2 P. M. — Thermometer 52; wind easterly. To Conantum. 

I am surprised to see how my English brook cress has expanded or extended since I saw it last fall to a bed four feet in diameter, as if it had grown in the water, though it is quite dirty or muddied with sediment. Many of the sprigs turn upwards and just rest on the water at their ends, as if they might be growing. It has also been eaten considerably by some inhabitant of the water. I am inclined to think it must grow in the winter. 

What is that bluish bulb now apparently beginning to shoot in the water there, floating loose (not the water purslane )?

I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about. 

Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents' care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and round, big enough, you would say, for the boy's father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. 

As if he put his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear. 

As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian's calabash. Not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside. 

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season. 

I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. 

C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. 

One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck. 

It suggests from what point of view Gesner (or his translator) describes an animal, — how far he takes into account man's relation to it, — that he commonly gives the “epithets” which have been applied to it. He deals in description, and epithets are a short description. And the translator says to the reader, “All these rows and ranks of living four-footed beasts are as letters and midwives to save the reverence which is due to the Highest (that made them ) from perishing within you.” 

I hear this account of Austin: An acquaintance who had bought him a place in Lincoln took him out one day to see it, and Austin was so smitten with the quiet and retirement and other rural charms that he at once sold his house in Concord, bought a small piece of rocky pasture in an out-of-the way part of this out-of-the-way town and with the funds raised by the sale of his old house built him a costly stone house upon it. Now he finds that this retirement (or country life) is the very thing which he does not want, but, his property being chiefly invested in the house, he is caught in a trap, as it were, for he cannot sell it, though he advertises it every year.

As for society, he has none; his neighbors are few and far between, and he never visits them nor they him. They can do without him, being old settlers, adscripti glebae. 

He found one man in the next town who got his living by sporting and fishing, and he has built him a little hut and got him to live on his place for society and help fulness. He cannot get help either for the outdoor or indoor work. There are none thereabouts who work by the day or job, and servant-girls decline to come so far into the country. Surrounded by grain-fields, he sends to Cambridge for his oats, and, as for milk, he can scarcely get any at all, for the farmers all send it to Boston, but he has persuaded one to leave some for him at the depot half a mile off.

As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do. For our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed up with error than our sympathies are. 

As I go down the Boston road, I see an Irishman wheeling home from far a large damp and rotten pine log for fuel. He evidently sweats at it , and pauses to rest many times. He found, perhaps, that his wood-pile was gone before the winter was, and he trusts thus to contend with the remaining cold. I see him unload it in his yard before me and then rest himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I see in other yards do not interest me at all, but this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think of it. He will now proceed to split it finely, and then I fear it [will] require almost as much heat to dry it, as it will give out at last. 

How rarely we are encouraged by the sight of simple actions in the street! We deal with banks and other institutions, where the life and humanity are concealed, — what there is. I like at least to see the great beams half exposed in the ceiling or the corner.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1860


I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about See January 8, 1860 ("When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.]")

The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life,  -- his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done.See May 30, 1859 ("Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears."); April 29, 1855 ("See his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly.")

C. saw a dozen robins to-day. See February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 25, 1859 ("I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago."); February 27, 1857 ("Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.")

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season.C. saw a dozen robins to-day.One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th See . March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")

Says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck .See March 1, 1856 ("It is remarkable that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter,. . . Coombs should (as he says) have killed two sheldrakes at the falls by the factory, a place which I had forgotten, some four or six weeks ago. Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening,. . .If there is a crack amid the rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up."); February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

It is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.SeeOctober 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are."); November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it ."); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see");

Like the mackerel sky

February 28. 

To Cambridge and Boston. 

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

Saw a mackerel in the market. The upper half of its sides is mottled blue and white like the mackerel sky, as stated January 19th, 1858 [sic].

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1859

See January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)

Twenty-four pitch pine cones

February 28.


P. M. — To White Pond. 

I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine in a field, evidently gnawed off by a squirrel, but not opened. 

Rice says he saw a whistler (?) duck to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1858

I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch pine. See February 28, 1860 ("I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base."); see also January 22, 1856 ("I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine there are more than twenty, and a well-worn track from this to a fence post three rods distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales. . . . They have gnawed off the cones which were perfectly closed. ")

Rice says he saw a whistler. See March 23, 1859 ("As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head.")  March 27, 1858 ("Among them [sheldrakes], or near by, I at length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, having a white spot on the head, a black back, and altogether less white, and also keeping more or less apart and not diving when the rest do.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,,the Goldeneye (Whistler)

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.

February 28. 

February 28

Nearly two inches of snow in the night. 

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow. It was following up this rill, often not more than thrice as wide as itself, and sometimes its precise locality concealed under ice and snow, yet he kept exactly above it on the snow through all its windings, where it was open occasionally taking to the water and sometimes swimming under the ice a rod or two. 

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? 

At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. 

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. 

It is a singular infatuation that leads men to become clergymen in regular, or even irregular, standing. I pray to be introduced to new men, at whom I may stop short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I seem to see some in distinct scheme hovering about, to which he has lent himself, to which he belongs. It is a very fine cob web in the lower stratum of the air, which stronger wings do not even discover. Whatever he may say, he does not know that one day is as good as another. Whatever he may say, he does not know that a man's creed can never be written, that there are no particular expressions of belief that deserve to be prominent. He dreams of a certain sphere to be filled by him, something less in diameter than a great circle, maybe not greater than a hogshead. All the staves are got out, and his sphere is already hooped. What's the use of talking to him? When you spoke of sphere-music he thought only of a thumping on his cask. If he doesn't know something that nobody else does, that nobody told him, then he 's a telltale. What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of? In course of time they will abolish the one form of servitude, and, not long after, the other. I do not see the necessity for a man's getting into a hogshead and so narrowing his sphere, nor for his putting his head into a halter. Here 's a man who can't butter his own bread, and he has just combined with a thousand like him to make a dipped toast for all eternity! 

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. The snow lies on the ice in large but very shallow drifts, shaped, methinks, much like the holes in ice, broad crescents (apparently) convex to the northwest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1857

The track, apparently of a muskrat (?) , — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail . . . Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? See February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. “); January 3, 1860 (“Melvin . . . speaks of the mark of the [muskrat] tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow, — as if made by a case-knife.”); January 31, 1856 ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.") See also January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . .similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")

It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. See February 28, 1856 ("A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created. . .; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it.")

It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers. See January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”); April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower.”); 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.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Earliest Flower

Nearly one third the channel is open in Fair Haven Pond. See March 30, 1852  ("From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, - which is in fact thus only revealed,. . . I never knew before exactly where the channel was.");  March 29, 1854 ("Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open.");  March 29, 1855 ("Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.");

A Book of the Seasons: February 28.

February 28.

The westering sun
reflected from their edges
makes them shine finely.
February 28, 1855

Snows again to-day,
covering the ground, then turns
to a drenching rain.
February 28, 1852

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 © 2009-2016

The pond is like a weight wound up.

February 28.

P. M. —To Nut Meadow. 

How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than a minnow, an other extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. 

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. 

The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice, which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken. The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick, which here and there has fallen in, showing the shrunken stream far below. The surface of the snow melts into a regular waved form, like raised scales. 

Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works. 

What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! He calls it the sulphur from the pond. It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill. A powerful smelling-bottle.

How pleasant are the surroundings of a mill! Here are the logs (pail stuff), already drawn to the door from a neighboring hill before the mill is in operation. The dammed-up meadow, the melted snow, and welling springs are the serf he compels to do his work. He is unruly as yet, has lately broken loose, filled up the flume, and flooded the fields below. He uses the dam of an old mill which stood here a hundred years ago, which now nobody knows anything about. The mill is built of slabs, of the worm-eaten sap-wood. The old dam had probably been undermined by muskrats. It would have been most prudent to have built a new one. Rude forces, rude men, and rude appliances.   

That strong gun-wash scent from the mill-pond water was very encouraging. I who never partake of the sacrament make the more of it. 

How simple the machinery of the mill! Miles has dammed a stream, raised a pond or head of water, and placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet of water on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw by a few cog wheels and simple gearing, and, throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. 

A weight of water stored up in a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it. So simple is a sawmill. A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created, in which, at length, fishes of various kinds are found; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it. The pond is like a weight wound up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 28, 1856

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. ... Compare:

August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”);

August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.");

September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”);

March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”);

June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”);

December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”);

Apirl 8, 1856 (" Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.");

April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)