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.
I feel sympathy
with the pine or oak fringed with
lichens this wet day.
The woods affect me
reflected there in the pond where
opaque ice so long.
Foreglow of the year --
the walker goes home at eve
to dream of summer.
The white caps of the
waves on the flooded meadow
seen from the window.
I now again hear
the song sparrow’s tinkle and
a robin also.
March 18, 1857
The snow is off the
mountains, which seem to have come
again like the birds,
their blue scalloped rim
a deeper and warmer blue
than winter, methinks.
A spring landscape as
impossible a fortnight
ago as birdsong.
The note of each bird
remembered like a dream when
we hear it again.
How happens it that
each new year is always
a pleasing surprise?
March 18, 1858
The honeybee stretches
and goes forth in search of the
earliest flower.
The spring flower too
expects a winged visitor
knocking at its door.
March 18, 1860
March 18, 2017
This morning the ground is again covered with snow, and the storm still continues. This afternoon the woods and walls and the whole face of the country wear once more a wintry aspect, though there is more moisture in the snow and the trunks of the trees are whitened now on a more southerly or southeast side. . . . There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow. The Evernia jubata might now be called even a very dark olive-green. I feel a certain sympathy with the pine or oak fringed with lichens in a wet day. They remind me of the dewy and ambrosial vigor of nature and of man's prime. The pond is still very little melted around the shore.. . . But this snow has not driven back the birds. I hear the song sparrow's simple strain, most genuine herald of the spring, and see flocks of chubby northern birds with the habit of snowbirds passing north. March 18, 1852
The season is so far advanced that the sun, every now and then promising to shine out through this rather warm rain, lighting up transiently with a whiter light the dark day and my dark chamber, affects me as I have not been affected for a long time. I must go forth.How eagerly the birds of passage penetrate the northern ice, watching for a crack by which to enter! Forthwith the swift ducks will be seen winging their way along the rivers and up the coast. They watch the weather more sedulously than the teamster. All nature is thus forward to move with the revolution of the seasons . . . The ice in Fair Haven is more than half melted, and now the woods beyond the pond, reflected in its serene water where there has been opaque ice so long, affect me as they perhaps will not again this year. The sun is now declining, with a warm and bright light on all things, a light which answers to the late afterglow of the year, when, in the fall, wrapping his cloak closer about him, the traveller goes home at night to prepare for winter. This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer. To-day first I smelled the earth. March 18,1853
Very high wind this forenoon; began by filling the air with a cloud of dust. Never felt it shake the house so much; filled the house with dust through the cracks; books, stove, papers covered with it. Blew down Mr. Frost's chimney again. Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods . . . The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit . . .Elms bending and twisting and thrashing the air as if they would come down every moment . . . Two sizable elms by river in Merrick's pasture blown down . . . Old barn blown down on Conantum. It fell regularly, like a weak box pushed over . . .The river was at its height last night. It is very cold and freezing, this wind. The water has been blown quite across the Hubbard's Bridge causeway in some places and incrusted the road with ice. March 18, 1854
Fair in the forenoon, but more or less cloudy and windy in the afternoon . . . Our river is quite low for the season, and yet it is here without freshet or easterly storm. It seems to take this course on its migrations without regard to the state of the waters . . . For the last two or three days very wet and muddy walking, owing to the melting of the snow; which also has slightly swollen the small streams. Notwithstanding the water on the surface, it is easier crossing meadows and swamps than it will be a month hence, on account of the frost in the ground. March 18, 1855
What a solid winter we have had! No thaw of any consequence; no bare ground since December 25th; but an unmelting mass of snow and ice, hostile to all greenness. Have not seen a green radical leaf even, as usual, all being covered up. Nut Meadow Brook is open for a dozen rods from its mouth, and for a rod into the river. Higher up, it is still concealed by a snowy bridge two feet thick. I see the ripples made by some fishes, which were in the small opening at its mouth, making haste to hide themselves in the ice-covered river. This square rod and one or two others like it in the town are the only places where I could see this phenomenon now. Thus early they appear, ready to be the prey of the fish hawk . . . Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun. March 18, 1856
9 A. M. —Up Assebet. A still and warm but overcast morning, threatening rain. I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the riverside, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two. The ground is almost completely bare, and but little ice forms at night along the riverside. I meet Goodwin paddling up the still, dark river on his first voyage to Fair Haven for the season, looking for muskrats and from time to time picking driftwood . . . I land and walk half-way up the hill. A red squirrel runs nimbly before me along the wall, his tail in the air at a right angle with his body; leaps into a walnut and winds up his clock. The reindeer lichens on the pitch pine plain are moist and flacid. I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering to the other, as it were like a vibrating watch-spring. Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker. And now from far southward coming on through the air, the chattering of blackbirds, —probably red-wings, for I hear an imperfect conqueree. Also I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it. March 18, 1857
7 A.M. – By river. Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides. You see them just hopping under the bush or into some other covert, as you go by, turning with a jerk this way and that, or they flit away just above the ground, which they resemble. It is the prettiest strain I have heard yet . . . How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! . . . The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first. The song sparrow is immediately most at home of any that I have named. I see this afternoon as many as a dozen bluebirds on the warm side of a wood . . . The rather warm but strong wind now roars in the wood — as in the maple swamp — with a novel sound. I doubt if the same is ever heard in the winter. It apparently comes at this season, not only to dry the earth but to wake up the trees . . . Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. . . . The voice of nature is always encouraging . . . When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. It is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fortnight ago as the song of birds. March 18, 1858
What a variety of weather! What a difference in the days! Three days ago, the 15th, we had steady rain with a southerly wind, with a clear interval and a brilliant double rainbow at sunset, — a day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain. In the evening it rained again much harder than before. The next day it was clear and cool, with a strong northwest wind, and the flood still higher on the meadows; the dry russet earth and leather-colored oak reflected a flashing light from far; the tossing blue waves with white crests excited the beholder and the sailer. In short, the tables were completely turned; snow and ice were for the most part washed and blown away from both land and water. Yesterday it was very warm, without perceptible wind, with a comparatively lifeless [air], yet such as invalids like, with no flashing surfaces, but, as it were, an in visible mist sobering down every surface; and the water, still higher than before, was perfectly smooth all day. This was a weather-breeder. To-day comes a still, steady rain again, with warm weather and a southerly wind, which threatens to raise the river still higher, though it had begun to fall. March 18, 1859
Examining the skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell, I hear the hum of honeybees in the air, attracted by this flower. They circle about the bud at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spadix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower! The first sunny and warmer day in March the honeybee leaves its home, probably a mile off, and wings its way to this warm bank. There is but one flower in bloom in the town, and this insect knows where to find it. You little think that it knows the locality of early flowers better than you. You have not dreamed of them yet. Yet it knows a spot a mile off under a warm bank-side where the skunk-cabbage is in bloom. No doubt this flower, too, has learned to expect its winged visitor knocking at its door in the spring. March 18, 1860
When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in December, or in midwinter above the snow, my spirits rise as if it were an oasis in the desert. The very name “sallow” (salix, from the Celtic sallis, near water) suggests that there is some natural sap or blood flowing there. It is a divining wand that has not failed, but stands with its root in the fountain. The fertile willow catkins are those green caterpillar like ones, commonly an inch or more in length, which develop themselves rapidly after the sterile yellow ones, which we had so admired are fallen or effete. Arranged around the bare twigs, they often form green wands eight to eighteen inches long. A single catkin consists of from twenty-five to a hundred little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, each of which is closely packed with cotton, in which are numerous seeds so small that they are scarcely discernible by ordinary eyes. . . . Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits. March 18, 1861
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Song Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red-wing in Spring
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March 18, 2018
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. |
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
