March 24
P. M. — Up Assabet by boat.
A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground.
I see a painted tortoise at the bottom moving slowly over the meadow. They do not yet put their heads out, but merely begin to venture forth into their calmer element. It is almost as stationary, as inert, as the pads as yet.
Passing up the Assabet, by the Hemlocks, where there has been a slide and some rocks have slid down into the river, I think I see how rocks come to be found in the midst of rivers.
Rivers are continually changing their channels, -eating into one bank and adding their sediment to the other, - so that frequently where there is a great bend you see a high and steep bank or bill on one side, which the river washes, and a broad meadow on the other.
As the river eats into the hill, especially in freshets, it undermines the rocks, large and small, and they slide down, alone or with the sand and soil, to the water’s edge. The river continues to eat into the hill, carrying away all the lighter parts of the sand and soil, to add to its meadows or islands somewhere, but leaves the rocks where they rested, and thus in course of time they occupy the middle of the stream and, later still, the middle of the meadow, perchance, though it may be buried under the mud.
But this does not explain how so many rocks lying in streams have been split in the direction of the current. Again, rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them.
Time is cheap and rather insignificant.
It matters not whether it is a river which changes from side to side in a geological period or an eel that wriggles past in an instant.
The scales of alders which have been broken by the ice and are lying in the water are now visibly loosened, as you look endwise at the catkins, and the catkins are much lengthened and enlarged. The white maple buds, too, show some further expansion methinks.
The last four days, including this, have been very cold and blustering.
The ice on the ponds, which was rapidly rotting, has somewhat hardened again, so that you make no impression on it as you walk. I crossed Fair Haven Pond yesterday, and could have crossed the channel there again.
The wind has been for the most part northwesterly, but yesterday was strong southwesterly yet cold. The northwesterly comes from a snow—clad country still, and cannot but be chilling.
We have had several flurries of snow, when we hoped it would snow in earnest and the weather be warmer for it.
It is too cold to think of those signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far are the maple sap, the willow catkins, grass on south banks, and perhaps cowslip in sheltered places. Alder catkins loosened, and also white maple buds loosened.
I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1855
A cold and blustering afternoon after a flurry of snow which has not fairly whitened the ground. See March 24, 1852 ("The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground."); March 24, 1869 ("Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow ")
The northwesterly comes from a snow—clad country still, and cannot but be chilling. See March 24, 1858 ("A cold north-by-west wind, which must have come over much snow and ice. ")
The earliest signs of spring in vegetation noticed thus far. See note to February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple.”)
Signs of spring which I find recorded under this date last year. See March 24, 1854 ("Great flocks of hyemalis . . . ducks under Clamshell Hill . . . The elm buds . . . expanded . . .Goose Pond half open.")
; See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring,
the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward;
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring,
Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow;
March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . white maple and elm buds expand and open "); March 23, 1851 ("For a week past the elm buds have been swollen."); March 20, 1853 ("Goose Pond is wholly open.");March 21, 1855 ("Crossed Goose Pond on ice.")
I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet. See February 24, 1855 ("You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them"); March 2, 1860 ("This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations,is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season"); March 14, 1856 ("They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year,. . . Yet I think that on a close inspection I should find no change. Nevertheless, it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen."); March 16, 1856 ("There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for."); March 22, 1854 ("C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow."); March 25, 1854 ("I am almost certain osiers have acquired a fresher color."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring
It is too cold to
think of those signs of spring I
recorded last year.
