January Thaw

January 7

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind, contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw. 

The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and I hear the pleasant sound of running water. The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air, —how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. 

On the slopes the ground is laid bare and radical leaves revealed, crowfoot, shepherd's-purse, clover, etc., a fresh green, and, in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds, with a bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow saxifrage; and these and the many withered plants laid bare remind me of spring and of botany. 

Still birds are very rare. Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note.

I saw what looked like clay-colored snow-fleas on the under side of a stone.

It is a lichen day. The ground is covered with cetrariee, etc., under the pines. How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark! 

It would not be worth the while to die and leave all this life behind one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1855

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind. . . It is, in fact, a January thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. ");January 7, 1860 ("A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. ")

Here comes a little flock of titmice. See January 7, 1851 ("The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

It is a lichen day. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

It would not be worth 

the while to die and leave all 

this life behind one.

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

You must get your living by loving.

March 13. 

I go to the Cliffs to hear if any new spring birds have arrived, for not only they are more sure to sing in the morning, but it is stiller and you can hear them better then. I hear only crows and blue jays and chickadees lisping. Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still. 

But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch ? Yet I thought it the voice of the bird and not a tapping. It reminds me of the pine warbler (?), if that is it. 

I see some of my little gnats of yesterday in the morn ing sun, somewhat mosquito-like. 

P. M. — No sap flows yet from my hole in the white maple by the bridge. Found on the Great Fields a fragment of Indian soapstone ware, which, judging from its curve and thinness, for a vestige of the rim remains, was a dish of the form and size of a saucer, only three times as thick. 

Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone.

All enterprises must be self-supporting, must pay for themselves. The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. For instance, a poet must sustain his body with his poetry. . . .

You must get your living by loving. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 13, 1853.

But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch? See March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it.. . .It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch")

Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone. See November 17, 1853 ("The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil, or a glass pendant tinkling against its neighbor “);  See also December 5, 1853 (“”See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? ); December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle."); February 18, 1855 ("I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”); March 18, 1858 (“Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides.”)

Turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. See May 10, 1853 ("If I am overflowing with life, rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry...")

The great art of life.

Get your living by loving,

by surplus of soul.

March 13, 1853