Irregular thawing of snow and ice.

March 25

P. M. —To Walden. 

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. 

I have frequently seen the sap of maples flow in warm days in the winter, in warm localities. This was in twigs. Would it in the trunks of large trees? And if not, is not this an evidence that this sap did not come up from the roots? 

The meadow east of the railroad causeway is bare in many spots, while that on the west is completely and deeply covered; yet a few weeks ago it was deepest on the east. I think of no reason for this, except that the causeway may keep off the cold northwest winds from the former meadow. For thirty rods distant there are no bare spots. Why is the eastern slope, now, as every spring, (almost completely) bare, long before the western? 

The road runs north and south, and the sun lies on the one side as long as on the other. Is it more favorable that the frozen snow be acted on by the warmed air before the sun reaches it than after it has left it? Another and second reason is probably that there is less snow on that side or on the west slope of a hill than on the eastern. Snow drifting from the northwest lodges under the west bank. 

So I observe to-day that the hills rising from the north and west (and this seems to give weight to the second reason urged above) sides of Walden are partially bare, while those on the south and east are deeply and completely covered with snow. 

Mr. Bull tells me that his grapes grow faster and ripen sooner on the west than the east side of his house.

There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas. They probably went further south. 

I now slump from two to four inches into Walden, though there has been no rain since I can remember. I cannot cut through, on account of the water in the softened ice flowing into the hole. At last, in a drier place, I was not troubled with water, till I had cut about a foot, or through the snow ice, when two or three streams of water half an inch or more in diameter spurted up through holes in the disorganized, partly honeycombed clear ice; so I failed to get through. 

Probably the clear ice is thus riddled all over the pond, for this was a drier place than usual. Is it the effect of the melted snow and surface working down? or partly of water pressing up? 

The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches. For about a rod from the shore, on the north and west sides (I did not examine the others), it is comparatively firm and dry, then for two rods you slump four inches or more, then, and generally, only about two. Is that belt the effect of reflection from the hills? 

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin and see it flying over the railroad lengthwise, and afterwards its tut tut at a distance. This and the birds of yesterday have come, though the ground generally is covered deep with snow. They will not only stay with us through a storm, but come when there are but resting-places for them. It must be hard for them to get their living now.

The tallest water andromedas now rise six or eight inches above the snow in the swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1856

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. See March 9, 1853 ("The relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed."); March 10, 1853 ("The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows"); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit"); March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water,"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy."); March 24, 1856 ("The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap."); March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I observe to-day that the hills rising from the north and west . . . sides of Walden are partially bare, while those on the south and east are deeply and completely covered with snow. See April 10, 1856 (“We may now say that the ground is bare, though we still see a few patches or banks of snow on the hillsides at a distance, especially on the northeast sides of hills. You see much more snow looking west than looking east. Thus does this remarkable winter disappear at last.”)

There have been few if any small migratory birds the past winter. I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas.  See March 10, 1856 (" It is hard to believe the records of previous years. I have not seen a tree sparrow, methinks, since January. Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they have migrated further south. There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll."); April 6, 1856 ("Heard there a nuthatch’s faint vibrating tut-tut. . . Anon it answered its mate with a gnah gnah.");  April 16, 1856 ("I have not seen a tree sparrow, I think, since December."); Compare ? February 9, 1855 ("Tree sparrows, two or three only at once, come into the yard, the first I have distinguished this winter.   I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were."); February 10, 1855 (" I hear the faint metallic chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to time, or perchance the mew of a linaria . . . Of the former I see in the winter but three or four commonly at a time; of the latter, large flocks. This in and after considerable snow-storms.");  March 5, 1853 ("Though this [lesser redpoll] is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); March 17, 1855 ("I hear the lesser redpolls yet."); March 20, 1853 ("The red polls are still numerous."); March 25, 1853 ("I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward, on the oaks. First heard his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note about grubs as he moved round the tree");  March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon?  "); March 28, 1853 ("I saw in Dodd's yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow, — a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F . hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary. One pursued another . . . Perhaps I have seen it before within the month."); March 30, 1854 ("Great flocks of tree sparrows and some F. hyemalis on the ground and trees on the Island Neck");   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

They probably went further south.  See March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date."); also Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin. See March 8, 1855 (“I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years”);. March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first”); March 24, 1858 (“The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the anxious peep of the early robin

A fog so thick.

February 16 

A thick fog without rain. 

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. 

In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak.  

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond. 

Rattlesnake plantain. January 22, 2017

The ground is more than half bare, especially in open fields and level evergreen woods. It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor, undimmed by the snow, — the Wintergreen, the great leaved pyrola, the shin-leaf, the rattlesnake-plantain, and the lycopodiums. I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen. 

It is pleasant to see elsewhere, in fields and on banks, so many green radical leaves only half killed by the winter.

I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs. They are white with them, some half an inch long and stout in proportion. Perhaps they are apple twigs. 

February 17, 2013

The bark ( and bud, if there was any ) has been entirely digested, leaving the bare, white, hard wood of the twig. Some of the ends of apple twigs looked as if they had been bitten off. It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. 

What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs! Where apple buds are just freshly bitten off they do not seem to have taken so much twig with them. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1855

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. See February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical."); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”); April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, . . . echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. See August 17, 1852 ("Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods."); December 3, 1856 ("The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor,  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

The leavings of the partridges. See February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow. . .and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.");  January 31, 1854 ("Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and between the stems of trees. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 16

February 15, 1855 <<<<<                                                                          >>>>> February 17, 1855

The fog is so thick

we cannot see the engine

almost upon us.

My voice is distinct

under the pines draped with mist –

you hear yourself speak.

Oak leaves show more red

 amid the pines this wet day –

 agreeably so. 

And I feel as if 

I stood a little nearer –

 the heart of nature.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A fog so thick.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550216

Down the railroad. Cloudy but springlike.

March 9.

A warm spring rain in the night. 

3 P.M. - Down the railroad. 

Cloudy but springlike. The earth is now half bare. Yesterday all was tight as a stricture on my breast; to-day all is loosened. It is a different element from what it was. Though cloudy, the air excites me. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man. 


 These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. I have no doubt they serve some such use, as well as to hasten the evaporation of the snow and water. I hear and see bluebirds, come with the warm wind. I am cheered by the sound of running water now down the wooden troughs on each side the cut. Already these puddles on the railroad, relflecting pinewoods, remind me of summer lakes. Again it rains, and I turn about. The sound of water falling on rocks and of air falling on trees are very much alike. The pond is covered with puddles. I see one farmer trimming his tree.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1852

These March winds, which make the woods roar and fill the world with life and bustle, appear to wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and excite the sap to flow. See March 9, 1860 ("You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds"); See also March 6, 1855 ("Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This the third day of wind."); March 18, 1854 ("The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle");

Lighting up of the mist by the sun.

February 27. 

Saw to-day on Pine Hill behind Mr. Joseph Merriam's house a Norway pine, the first I have seen in Concord. Mr. Gleason pointed it out to me as a singular pine which he did not know the name of. It was a very handsome tree, about twenty-five feet high.

E. Wood thinks that he has lost the surface of two acres of his meadow by the ice. Got fifteen cartloads out of a hummock left on another meadow. Blue-joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before. 

Of two men, one of whom knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare  knows that he knows nothing, and the other really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all, — what great advantage has the latter over the former ? which is the best to deal with? 

I do not know that knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. But man cannot be said to know in any higher sense, than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1851

Blue-joint was introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow before. See February 25, 1851 ("The crust of the meadow afloat. . . .When the ice melts or the soil thaws, of course it falls to the bottom, wherever it may be. Here is another agent employed in the distribution of plants.")

It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. See Walking