Walking in the Rain.

April 4.

Last night, a sugaring of snow, which goes off in an hour or two in the rain. Rains all day.

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly in such an atmosphere, and makes a small angle with the earth. It is low, perhaps, for the same reason that the clouds are.

The robins sang this morning, nevertheless, and now more than ever hop about boldly in the garden in the rain, with full, broad, light cow-colored breasts.

P. M. -- Rain, rain.

To Clematis Brook via Lee's Bridge.

Again I notice that early reddish or purplish grass that lies flat on the pools, like a warm blush suffusing the youthful face of the year.

A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.

We go abroad with a slow but sure contentment, like turtles under their shells. We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. Our comfort is positive then. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. Now we seem to hear the ground a-soaking up the rain, and not falling ineffectually on a frozen surface. We, too, are penetrated and revived by it.

Robins still sing, and song sparrows more or less, and blackbirds, and the unfailing jay screams.

How the thirsty grass rejoices! It has pushed up so visibly since morning, and fields that were completely russet yesterday are already tinged with green. We rejoice with the grass.

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. Instead of ripples there are a myriad dimples on the stream.

The lichens remember the sea to-day. The usually dry cladonias, which are so crisp under the feet, are full of moist vigor.

The rocks speak and tell the tales inscribed on them.Their inscriptions are brought out. I pause to study their geography.

At Conantum End I saw a red-tailed hawk launch, a heavy flier, flapping even like the great bittern at first,-heavy forward.

After turning Lee's Cliff I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather, --

• tree sparrows, whose song has the character of the canary's,
• F. hyemalis's, chill-lill,
• the sweet strain of the fox-colored sparrow,
• song sparrows,
• a nuthatch,
• jays,
• crows,
• bluebirds,
• robins, and
• a large congregation of blackbirds. 

They suddenly alight with great din in a stubble-field just over the wall, not perceiving me and my umbrella behind the pitch pines, and there feed silently; then, getting uneasy or anxious, they fly up on to an apple tree, where being reassured, commences a rich but deafening concert, o-gurgle-ee-e, o-gurgle-ee-e, some of the most liquid notes ever heard, as if produced by some of the water of the Pierian spring, flowing through some kind of musical water-pipe and at the same time setting in motion a multitude of fine vibrating metallic springs. Like a shepherd merely meditating most enrapturing glees on such a water-pipe. A more liquid bagpipe or clarionet, immersed like bubbles in a thousand sprayey notes, the bubbles half lost in the spray.

When I show myself, away they go with a loud harsh charr-r, charr-r. At first I had heard an inundation of blackbirds approaching, some beating time with a loud chuck, chuck, while the rest played a hurried, gurgling fugue.

Saw a sucker washed to the shore at Lee's Bridge, its tail gone, large fins standing out, purplish on top of head and snout. Reminds me of spring, spearing, and gulls.

A rainy day is to the walker in solitude and retirement like the night.
Few travellers are about, and they half hidden under umbrellas and confined to the highways. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. It is somewhat like the dark day; it is a light night. How cheerful the roar of a brook swollen by the rain, especially if there is no sound of a mill in it! 

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved.

A clustering of small narrow leaves somewhat cone-like on the shrub oak.

Some late, low, remarkably upright alders (serrulata), short thick catkins, at Clematis Brook.

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.

A little willow (Salix Muhlenbergiana?) nearly ready to bloom, not larger than a sage willow. All our early willows with catkins appearing before the leaves must belong to the group of “The Sallows. Cinereæ. Borrer," and that of the "Two-colored Willows. Discolores. Borrer," as adopted by Barratt; or, in other words, to the first § of Carey in Gray.

The other day, when I had been standing perfectly still some ten minutes, looking at a willow which had just blossomed, some rods in the rear of Martial Miles's house, I felt eyes on my back and, turning round suddenly, saw the heads of two men who had stolen out of the house and were watching me over a rising ground as fixedly as I the willow. They were study the cheapest of the two.

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1853

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly. . . and makes a small angle with the earth. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. See April 2, 1852 (" The rain was soothing, so still and sober, gently beating against and amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks. . . . The hour is favorable to thought"); April 19, 1852 (" To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth."); May 13, 1852("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty."); August 4, 1852("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this"); . August 7, 1853 (" It is worth the while to walk in wet weather;. . .The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts"); November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . . The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, . . . My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. . . . This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling."); See also January 27, 1858("It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring,")

A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.  See  March 21, 1858 ("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. ")

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. See June 14, 1855 ("  It is very pleasant to  . . .see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble; the rain seemed much heavier for it")

I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather. See April 4, 1855 ("A fine morning, still and bright, with smooth water and singing of song and tree sparrows and some blackbirds. "). and note to April 4, 1860("The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages")

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved. See June 15, 1851 ("A solitary woodcock in the shade goes off with a startled, rattling, hurried note.")

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.  See   March 27, 1853 ("It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.. . .The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring,"):.  March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen"):  April 1, 1853 ("The hazel stigmas now more fully out , curving over and a third of an inch long , that the catkins begin to shed pollen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day. See April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning. . .Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Some hickories are yellow.

September 24.

According to Emerson, Lonicera hirsuta, hairy honeysuckle, grows in Sudbury.

Some hickories are yellow. 

Hazel bushes a brownish red. 

Most grapes are shrivelled.

Pasture thistle still.

The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long.

The fruit of the thorn trees on Lee's Hill is large, globular, and gray-dotted, but I cannot identify it certainly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1852

Some hickories are yellow. See note to October 4, 1858 ("The hickories on the northwest side of this hill are in the prime of their color, of a rich orange; some intimately mixed with green, handsomer than those that are wholly changed") and  October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow."); October 10, 1857 ("Generally speaking, chestnuts, hickories, aspens, and some other trees attain a fair clear yellow only in small specimens in the woods or sprout-lands, or in their lower leaves.");October 15, 1858 ("Small hickories are the clearest and most delicate yellow in the shade of the woods.")

The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long. [Zizania aquatica var. aquatica ( Annual wild rice)] See July 22, 1854 ("Zizania, a day, with a handsome light-green panicle a foot or more long, a long slender stem, and corn-like leaves frequently more than an inch wide"); August 14, 1859 ("The zizania now makes quite a show along the river."); August 18, 1854  ("The zizania on the north side of the river near the Holt, or meadow watering-place, is very conspicuous and abundant."); August 24, 1858 ("The zizania is the greater part out of bloom; i. e., the yellowish-antlered (?) stamens are gone; the wind has blown them away"); September 3, 1858 ("Zizania still."); September 16, 1860 ("See no zizania seed ripe, or black, yet, but almost all is fallen."); September 25, 1858 ("The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it?")

The fruit of the thorn trees on Lee's Hill is large, globular, and gray-dotted, but I cannot identify it certainly. See September 23, 1852 ("I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day."); September 24, 1859 ("Those thorns by Shattuck's barn, now nearly leafless, have hard green fruit as usual.");  September 25, 1856  ("The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome."); September 25, 1856 ("the Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line between Tarbell and T. Wheeler beyond brook are smaller, stale, and not good at all. “); See also   May 21, 1853 ("There are, apparently, two kinds of thorns close together on Nawshawtuct,"); June 6, 1857 ("There is a thorn now in its prime. . .with leaves more wedge-shaped at base than the Cratcegus coccinea; apparently a variety of it, between that and Crus-Galli."); September 4, 1853 ("The scarlet thorn is in many places quite edible and now a deep scarlet."); September 13, 1859("Some haws of the scarlet thorn are really a splendid fruit to look at now and far from inedible. "); October 5, 1857 ("I see many haws still green and hard, though their leaves are mostly fallen. Do they ever turn red and edible?")

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice.

April 11. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

The hills are now decidedly greened as seen a mile off, and the road or street sides pretty brightly so. 

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. 

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out, some killed by frost; probably a day or two at least. 

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. 

The early willow still in prime. Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? 

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). 

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. 

April 11, 2020

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days (not yet quite generally), the highest only two inches, is probably Carex umbellata.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1860

The hills are now decidedly greened. See  April 10, 1855 ("There is the slightest perceptible green on the hill now."); April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones.");April 17, 1856 ("There is a quite distinct tinge of green on the hillside seen from my window now."); April 22, 1855 ("The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and butter cups."); April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like."); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now. . . .during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet") See also April 2, 1855 ("Green is essentially vivid, or the color of life, and it is therefore most brilliant" when a plant is moist or most alive. . . . The word, according to Webster, is from the Saxon grene, to grow, and hence is the color of herbage when growing. ")

I have not seen any lingering heel of a snow-bank since April came in. See March 6, 1860 ("I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window")

Acer rubrum west side Deep Cut, some well out. See April 11, 1853 ("The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning"); see also  April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); April 6, 1853 ("Notice a white maple with almost all the staminate flowers above or on the top, most of the stamens now withered, before the red maple has blossomed. "); April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open."); April 13, 1854 ('The red maple in a day or two. I begin to see the anthers in some buds. So much more of the scales of the buds is now uncovered that the tops of the swamps at a distance are reddened."); April 18, 1856 ("Red maple stamens in some places project considerably, and it will probably blossom to-morrow if it is pleasant. "); April 22, 1855 ("Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge."); April 23, 1856 ("The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, — the 23d."); April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ");April 24, 1857 ("I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems."); April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. “); April 26, 1860 ("Red maples are past prime. I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. They are especially handsome when seen between you and the sunlit trees."); April 28, 1855 ("The red maples, now in bloom, are quite handsome at a distance over the flooded meadow beyond Peter’s. The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”); April 29, 1856 ("Sat on the knoll in the swamp, now laid bare. How pretty a red maple in bloom (they are now in prime), seen in the sun against a pine wood, like these little ones in the swamp against the neighboring wood, they are so light and ethereal, not a heavy mass of color impeding the passage of the light, and they are of so cheerful and lively a color."); April 29, 1859 ("Those red maples are reddest in which the fertile flowers prevail.")

The early willow still in prime. See  April 12, 1852 (“See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun.”); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far. I notice that the sterile blossoms of that large-catkined early willow begin to open on the side of the catkin, like a tinge of golden light, gradually spreading and expanding over the whole surface and lifting their anthers far and wide.").

Salix humilis abundantly out, how long? See April 9, 1858 ("The staminate Salix humilis in the path in three or four days. Possibly it is already out elsewhere, if, perchance, that was not it just beginning on the 6th on the Marlborough road. The pistillate appear more forward. It must follow pretty close to the earliest willows.")

Hazels there are all done; were in their prime, methinks, a week ago at least. See April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday. . . . You thread your way amid the rustling oak leaves on some warm hillside sloping to the south . . . when, glancing along the dry stems, in the midst of all this dryness, you detect the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth, and perchance a few catkins are dangling loosely in the zephyr and sprinkling their pollen on the dry leaves beneath.") See also April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet." ) ; April 9, 1856 ("The stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 13, 1855 ("Many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig."). Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel.

Epigæa abundantly out (probably 7th at least). See April 4, 1859 ("The flower-buds are protected by the withered leaves, oak leaves, which partly cover them, so that you must look pretty sharp to detect the first flower"); April 13, 1858 ("Epigaea abundantly out, maybe four or five days.")/ See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Stow's cold pool three quarters full of ice. See April 16, 1855 ('Stow’s cold pond-hole is still full of ice though partly submerged, —the only pool in this state that I see.")

My early sedge, which has been out at Cliffs apparently a few days is probably Carex umbellata. See April 7, 1854 ("On the Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard amid the dry blades and few green ones, — the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. );  April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger."); April 22, 1852 ("The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i.e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.");

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom.

April 3. 

Saturday.


Nothing is more saddening than an ineffectual and proud intercourse with those of whom we expect sympathy and encouragement. I repeatedly find myself drawn toward certain persons but to be disappointed. No concessions which are not radical are the least satisfaction. By myself I can live and thrive, but in the society of incompatible friends I starve. To cultivate their society is to cherish a sore which can only be healed by abandoning them. I can not trust my neighbors whom I know any more than I can trust the law of gravitation and jump off the Cliffs. 

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, — thinner than the paper on which it is printed, — then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. 

No fields are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything but get nothing. In their neighborhood I experience a painful yearning for society, which cannot be satisfied, for the hate is greater than the love. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. I get close to them and witness a great commotion and half hopping, half swimming, about, with their heads out, apparently in pursuit of each other, — perhaps thirty or forty within a few square yards and fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is not only the incessant lively croaking of many together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, squirming, screwing kind of croak, perhaps from the other sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and bury themselves in the grass at the bottom; only one or two remain outstretched on the surface, and, at another step, these, too, conceal themselves. 

Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue — while looking at it in a direction diagonal to this, i. e. northeast, it was nearly slate-colored. 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. 

Evidently you must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower, such is the advantage of position, and when you have postponed a flower for a week and are turning away, a little further search may reveal it.

Some flowers, perhaps, have advantages one year which they have not the next. This spring, as well as the past winter, has been remarkably free from snow, and this reason, and the plant being hardy withal, may account for its early blossoming.

With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. This faced the southeast, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock, of buds in the least above the level of its projecting, calyx-like leaves. It was shelter within shelter. The blasts sweep over it. Ready to shoot upward when it shall be warm. The leaves of those which have been more exposed are turned red. It is a very pretty, snug plant with its notched leaves, one of the neatest and prettiest leaves seen now. 

A blackberry vine which lay over the rock was beginning to leave out, as much or more than the gooseberry in the garden, such was the reflected heat. The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden. 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation. 

The male P. grandidentata's a little further west are nearly out.

I should have noticed the fact that the pistillate flower of the hazel peeps forth gradually.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1853

I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. See March 31, 1857 (" As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes . . ..  How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal.. . . The shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.");  April 1, 1860 (" I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. "); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time."); 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, —and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular."); April 4, 1857 (“Caught a croaking frog in some smooth water in the railroad gutter. Above it was a uniform (perhaps olive?) brown, without green, and a yellowish line along the edge of the lower jaws. . . What frog can it be?”); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,"); April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

 Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue. See  April 4, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue."); April 5, 1856 ("We overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. "); April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. "); April 9, 1859 ("For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish." See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring

 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. under a projecting rock. See April 6, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock . . .but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging.");  April 10, 1855 ("As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

You must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower. See April 17, 1855 ("undoubtedly an insect will have found the first flower before you"); April 2, 1856 ("It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower"); February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower, 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male See March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 3

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 © 2009-2022

The colors of the world.

April 24. 

April 24, 2017

6 a. m. — Water has fallen an inch and a half since last night, — which is at a regular rate. 

Now that the sun shines and the sky is blue, the water is a dark blue which in the storm was light or whitish. It follows the sky's, though the sky is a lighter blue.

The lilac buds have looked as forward as any for many weeks. 

2 p. m. — To Carlisle Bridge via Flint's Bridge, bank of river, rear of Joel Barrett's, returning by bridle-road. 

The elms are now fairly in blossom. 

It is one of those clear, washing days, — though the air is cold, — such as succeed a storm, when the air is clear and flowing, and the cultivated ground and the roads shine. 

Passed Flint's road on the wall. 

Sorrel is well under weigh, and cinquefoil. 

White oaks still hold their leaves. 

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored.

Sitting by the road beyond N. Barrett's, the colors of the world are: 

• overhead a very light blue sky, darkest in the zenith, lightest in the horizon, with scattered white clouds seeming thickest in the horizon;

• all around the undulating earth a very light tawny color, from the dead grass, with the reddish and gray of forests mingled with evergreen;

• and, in the lap of earth, very dark blue rippled water, answering to the light blue above; 

• the shadows of clouds flitting over all below;

• the spires of woods fringing the horizon on every side, and, nearer, single trees here and there seen with dark branches against the sky. T

• this tawny ground divided by walls and houses, white, light slate, and red sprinkled here and there. 

Ball's Hill and the rest are deep sunk in the flood. 

The level water-line appears to best advantage when it appears thus to cut the trees and hills. It looks as if the water were just poured into its basin and simply stood so high. No permanent shore gives you this pleasure.

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins by the roadside (such as I described April 23d), with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. With these flowers, then, come bees. Is there honey in staminate flowers? 

The innocent odor of spring flowers, flavorless, as a breakfast. They will be more spiced by and by.

Went over the cladonia hills toward Tarbell's.

A small tree, an oak for instance, looks large on a bare hilltop. 

The farmers, whom the storm has delayed, are busily plowing and overhauling their manure. 

Observed the ants at work on a large ant-heap. They plainly begin as soon as the snow is off and the ground thawed. 

Gold-thread, an evergreen, still bright in the swamps.

The rattlesnake-plantain has fresh leaves. 

A wall running over the top of a rocky hill, with the light seen through its chinks, has a pretty effect. 

The sparrows, frogs, rabbits, etc., are made to resemble the ground for their protection; but so is the hawk that preys on them; but he is of a lighter color beneath, that creeping things over which he hovers may confound him with the sky. The marsh hawk is not easily distinguished from the meadow or the stems of the maples. 

The water is still over the causeway on both sides of Carlisle Bridge for a long distance. It is a straight flood now for about four miles. Fortunately for the bridge the wind has not been very high since the flood was at its height. 

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. 

On the bridle-road observed the interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel, the catkins being now more yellowish. 

This is a singular and interesting part of Concord, extensive and rather flat rocky pastures without houses or cultivated fields on any but this unused bridle-road, from which I hear the frogs peep. These are Channing's "moors." He went in on this road to chop, and this is the scene of his "Woodman." 

Heard again (in the village) that vetter-vetter-vetter- vetter-vef, or tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi-tchi' very rapidly repeated, which I heard April 23d, and perhaps the same that I saw April 17th (described April 18th). I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. 

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1852

The pitch pine is a cheerful tree at this season, with its lively yellow-green in the sunshine, , while the landscape is still russet and dead-grass colored. See April 24, 1857 ("Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape.")See also April 11, 1852 ("The light of the setting sun on the pitch pines on Fair Haven and Bear Hill lights them up warmly.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.

The leaves of the hardhack, curled up, show their white under sides. See April 24, 1860 ("The meadow-sweet and hardhack have begun to leaf.”)

Saw the honey-bees on the staminate flowers of the willow catkins . . . with little bottles of the yellow pollen, apparently, as big as pin-heads on their thighs. See April 9, 1853 (“Bees also in the female willows, of course without pellets. It must be nectar alone there.”); April 17, 1855 (“A bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet, —one perhaps a honey-bee, — so intent on its sweets or pollen that they do not dream of flying. Various kinds of bees — some of the honey bees — have little yellow masses of pollen on their thighs; some seem to be taking it into their mouths”) 

Willows now in bloom 

resound with the hum of bees 

this warm afternoon. 

April 28, 1860

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

The interesting light-crimson star-like flowers of the hazel. See April 9, 1856 ("the stigmas already peep out, minute crimson stars"); April 11, 1856 ("the crimson stigmas of the hazel, like little stars peeping forth") April 13, 1855 ("many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig.")

I am pretty sure it is the pine warbler, yellow beneath, with faint olivaceous marks on the sides, olivaceous above, tail forked, about the size of a yellow-bird. See April 9, 1856 ("Its bright yellow or golden throat and breast, etc., are conspicuous at this season, — a greenish yellow above, with two white bars on its bluish-brown wings. It sits often with loose-hung wings and forked tail.");  August 18, 1856 ("Clear-yellow throat and breast, greenish-yellow head, conspicuous white bar on wings, white beneath, forked tail, bluish legs. Can it be pine warbler? The note, thus faint, is not like it.")

I have not seen the fox-colored sparrow for some weeks. See April 24, 1855 ("Have not seen the F. hyemalis for a week.,"); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone"). See also   A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

Thought I saw a loon on Walden yesterday. See October 8, 1852 ("At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged unearthly howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain.")

The first object I saw on approaching this planet in the spring.

October 27. 

6.30 a. m. — To Island by boat. 

The river still rises, — more than ever last night, owing to the rain of the 24th (which ceased in the night of the 24th). It is two feet higher than then. 

I hear a blackbird in the air; and these, methinks, are song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast. 

Now it is time to look out for walnuts, last and hardest crop of the year?

I love to be reminded of that universal and eternal spring when the minute crimson-starred female flowers of the hazel are peeping forth on the hillsides, — when Nature revives in all her pores.  

Some less obvious and commonly unobserved signs of the progress of the seasons interest me most, like the loose, dangling catkins of the hop-hornbeam or of the black or yellow birch. I can recall distinctly to my mind the image of these things, and that time in which they flourished is glorious as if it were before the fall of man. I see all nature for the time under this aspect. 

These features are particularly prominent; as if the first object I saw on approaching this planet in the spring was the catkins of the hop-hornbeam on the hillsides. As I sailed by, I saw the yellowish waving sprays.

See nowadays concave chocolate-colored fungi passing into dust on the edges, close on the ground in pastures.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1853

Song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast. See October 26, 1855 (“The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush.”); November 1, 1853 ("I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. ")

Now it is time to look out for walnuts, last and hardest crop of the year? See October 27, 1855 ("It is high time we came a-nutting,")  See alao  October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.”);  October 28, 1852 ("The boys are gathering walnuts.”); November 9, 1852 ("Fore part of November time for walnutting"); and note to December 10, 1856 ("Gathered this afternoon quite a parcel of walnuts on the hill.")  Also  October 11, 1860 ("The acorns are now in the very midst of their fall. . . .The best time to gather these nuts is now.”); October 22, 1857 ("Now is just the time for chestnuts.”); November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. “); November 18, 1858 (" Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.”)

I love to be reminded of that universal and eternal spring. See   October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.”); October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! ")

I can recall distinctly to my mind the image of . . . the catkins of the hop-hornbeam on the hillsides. See May 7, 1853 ("The catkins of the hop-hornbeam, yellow tassels hanging from the trees, which grow on the steep bank of the Assabet, give them a light, graceful, and quite noticeable appearance.")

Chocolate-colored fungi passing into dust on the edges. See October 5, 1856 (“This before they are turned to dust. Large chocolate-colored ones have long since burst and are spread out wide like a shallow dish”)

The indistinct trail of wild animals — foxes, etc. — and sportsmen.

September 19

Sunday. P. M. -— To Cassandra Ponds. 

We go through Sedge Hollow. See a small hole, perhaps a skunk’s, in that hollow, and, about the mouth, fragments of a hornets’ or wasps’ nest. I knew that foxes were said to tear in pieces these nests for the sake of the grubs or old hornets left in them. Perhaps the skunk does. 

These dry, sedgy hollows are peculiar and interesting to me. The fine, thick sedge makes a soft bed to recline on, and is recurved and lodging like a curly head. These dry hollows, side by side with the deeper and wet ones, are surrounded by hazel bushes and panicled andromeda instead of alders and willows. There is this sort of analogy to the wet ones, or ponds. In the lowest part, even here, I perceive that a different and coarser kind of sedge grows. 

Along the middle and bottom of the hollows is the indistinct trail of wild animals — foxes, etc. — and sportsmen. C. thinks this might be called Fox Path.

As I stand on the shore of the most westerly Cassandra Pond but one, I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun. These may be allied to the winter gnat of Kirby and Spence. Do they not first appear with cooler and frosty weather, when we have had a slight foretaste of winter? Then in the clear, cool air they are seen to dance. These are about an eighth of an inch long, with a greenish body and two light-colored plumes in front; the wings not so long as the body. So I think they are different from those over the river in the spring. I see a dozen of these choirs within two or three rods, their centres about six feet above the surface of the water andromeda. These separate communities are narrow horizontally and long vertically, about eighteen inches wide and densest in the middle, regularly thinning to nothing at the edges. These individuals are constantly gyrating up and down, cutting figures of 8 like the water-bug, but keeping nearly about the same place. It is to me a very agreeable reminder of cooler weather. 

Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately. In spring it makes its due impression, and for a long time will not have done echoing, as it were, through our minds. It is even as if the atmosphere were in an unfavorable condition for this kind of music. Every musician knows how much depends on this. 

Going through low woods I see a white, dusty or mealy-looking mildew on the leaves, — oaks, etc., — the effects of the dog-days or mould season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1858

These dry, sedgy hollows are peculiar and interesting to me. Surrounded by hazel bushes and panicled andromeda there is this sort of analogy to the wet ones, or ponds. See November 24, 1857 ("You have clear open water, but shallow; then, in course of time, a shallow lake with much sedge standing in it; then, after a while, a dense andromeda bed with blueberry bushes and perhaps a wet border of sedge (as here at present); and finally, a maple swamp.")

I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun. These may be allied to the winter gnat. See October 19, 1856 ("I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes,. . .Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter? "); March 19, 1858 ("Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! See September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year.")

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out.

April 2.

P. M. – To yew and R. W. E.'s Cliff. 

April 2, 2018

At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre.

It is too windy, and the surface of the croaker pool is too much ruffled, for any of the croakers to be lying out, but I notice a large mass of their spawn there well advanced.

At the first little sluiceway just beyond, I catch a large Rana halecina, which puffs itself up considerably, as if it might be full of spawn. I must look there for its spawn. It is rather sluggish; cannot jump much yet. It allows me to stroke it and at length take it up in my hand, squatting still in it.

Who would believe that out of these dry and withered banks will come violets, lupines, etc., in profusion?

At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake. It is a large one with a white stripe down the dorsal ridge between two broad black ones, and on each side the last a buff one, and then blotchy brown sides, darker toward tail; beneath, greenish-yellow. This snake generally has a pinkish cast.

There is another, evidently the same species but not half so large, with its neck lying affectionately across the first, — I may have separated them by my approach, – which, seen by itself, you might have thought a distinct species. The dorsal line in this one is bright-yellow, though not so bright as the lateral ones, and the yellow about the head; also the black is more glossy, and this snake has no pink cast.

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out. The first notice I had of them was a slight rustling in the leaves, as if made by a squirrel, though I did not see them for five minutes after. The biggest at length dropped straight down into a hole, within a foot of where he lay. They allowed me to lift their heads with a stick four or five inches without stirring, nor did they mind the flies that alighted on them, looking steadily at me without the slightest motion of head, body, or eyes, as if they were of marble; and as you looked hard at them, you continually forgot that they were real and not imaginary.

The hazel has just begun to shed pollen here, perhaps yesterday in some other places. This loosening and elongating of its catkins is a sufficiently pleasing sight, in dry and warm hollows on the hillsides. It is an unexpected evidence of life in so dry a shrub.

On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, turning my glass to each sparrow on a rock or tree. At last I see one, which flies right up straight from a rock eighty [or] one hundred feet and warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, after the manner of the skylark, methinks, and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain.

See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that.

The yew shows its bundles of anthers plainly, as if it might open in four or five days.

Just as I get home, I think I see crow blackbirds about a willow by the river.

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing. It appears to me that the wisest philosophers that I know are as foolish as Sancho Panza dreaming of his Island. Considering the ends they propose and the obstructions in their path, they are even. One philosopher is feeble enough alone, but observe how each multiplies his difficulties, – by how many unnecessary links he allies himself to the existing state of things. He girds himself for his enterprise with fasting and prayer, and then, instead of pressing forward like a light-armed soldier, with the fewest possible hindrances, he at once hooks himself on to some immovable institution, as a family, the very rottenest of them all, and begins to sing and scratch gravel towards his objects. Why, it is as much as the strongest man can do decently to bury his friends and relations without making a new world of it. But if the philosopher is as foolish as Sancho Panza, he is also as wise, and nothing so truly makes a thing so or so as thinking it so.

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. It has probably been here as long as I said before.

Returning, I saw a sparrow-like bird flit by in an orchard, and, turning my glass upon it, was surprised by its burning yellow. This higher color in birds surprises us like an increase of warmth in the day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1858

A woodchuck waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose. See April 2, 1856 ("A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.”)

A bay wing warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain. Close by I see another, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain. See  April 13, 1856 (“I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind”); See also April 8, 1859 (“ See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet.”); April 12, 1857 (“I think I hear the bay-wing here.”); April 13, 1855(“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing”);  April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear”). See April 13, 1854 ("Did I see a bay-wing?"); May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. See  May 23, 1853 (“The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”)

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. See April 2, 1853 ("The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler