A Book of the Seasons: the Osier in Winter and Early Spring

 

The brightening of the willows or osiers –

that is a season in the spring  . . .  a prominent phenomenon 

affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face.

You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, 

and when there has been no change in them.  

Henry Thoreau, February 24, 1855 

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 2, 1860

The blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter

and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. 

March 17, 1859

Willows near Mill Brook

surprise me at a distance –

green, yellowish, red!

March 25, 1854

March 25, 2017

November 14. The willow twigs on the right of the Red Bridge causeway are bright greenish-yellow and reddish as in the spring. November 14, 1854

November 18,  I do not detect any peculiar brightness whatever in the osiers on the Hubbard causeway November 18, 1855

November 18. Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. November 18, 1858

December 5. On the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. December 5, 1858

January 3. Now, when all the fields and meadows are covered deep with snow, the warm-colored shoots of osiers, red and yellow, rising above it, remind me of flames. January 3, 1856

January 9. And the wet willow bark is a brighter yellow. January 9, 1858

January 19. The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark. January 19, 1856

January 24. The clear red osiers, [attract us] too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side. January 24, 1856

January 26. It is a very pleasant and warm day, and when I came down to the river and looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season. January 26, 1859

February 6. The woods, especially wooded hillsides half a mile or more distant, have a rich, hoary, frosted look, still and stiff, yet it is not so thick but that the green of the pines and the yellow of the willow bark and the leather-color of oak leaves show through it. These colors are pleasantly toned down.   February 6, 1857

February 23. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857 

February 24.  The brightness of the willow's bark. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality.  February 24, 1852

February 24. The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring, showing that the dormant sap is awakened . . .  I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them. February 24, 1855

March 2. Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. 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 2, 1860

March 5. Was pleased with the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden willow, and the red of the cornel, now colors are so rare. March 5, 1853 

March 10. It must be that the willow twigs, both the yellow and green, are brighter-colored than before. I cannot be deceived. March 10, 1853

March 14. As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,—for I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river, — the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — and I fancy the sap fast flowing in their pores. 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 14, 1856

March 16. There is, at any rate, such a phenomenon as the willows shining in the spring sun, however it is to be accounted for. March 16, 1856

March 17. When I am opposite the end of the willow - row, seeing the osiers of perhaps two years old all in a mass, they are seen to be very distinctly yellowish beneath and scarlet above. They are fifty rods off. Here is the same chemistry that colors the leaf or fruit, coloring the bark. It is generally, probably always the upper part of the twig, the more recent growth, that is the higher - colored and more flower or fruit like. So leaves are more ethereal the higher up and further from the root . In the bark of the twigs, indeed, is the more permanent flower or fruit. The flower falls in spring or summer, the fruit and leaves fall or wither in autumn, but the blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the pleasure of late November, of winter or of early spring walks to look into these mazes of twigs of different colors. March 17, 1859

March 20. When I get opposite the end of the willow - row, the sun comes out and they are very handsome, like a rosette, pale - tawny or fawn - colored at base and a rich yellow or orange yellow in the upper three or four feet. This is, methinks, the brightest object in the landscape these days. Nothing so betrays the spring sun. I am aware that the sun has come out of a cloud first by seeing it lighting up the osiers. Such a willow-row, cut off within a year or two, might be called a heliometer, or measure of the sun's brightness. March 20, 1859

March 22. C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow.   March 22, 1854

March 22. The phenomena of an average March. . . Vegetation fairly begins, – conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc., — and gradually many early herbaceous plants start . . .  willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright . . . alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated. March 22, 1860

March 24. I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly brighter yet. March 24, 1855

March 25. Willow osiers near Mill Brook mouth I am almost certain have acquired a fresher color; at least they surprise me at a distance by their green passing through yellowish to red at top. March 25, 1854

March 27. There is an abundance of low willows whose catkins are now conspicuous, rising four to six or seven feet above the water, thickly placed on long wand-like osiers. They look, when you look from the sun, like dead gray twigs or branches (whose wood is exposed) of bushes in the light, but, nearer, are recognized for the pretty bright buttons of the willow. We sail by masses of these silvery buttons two or three rods long, rising above the water. March 27, 1859

April 3. The osiers look bright and fresh in the rain and fog, like the grass. Close at hand they are seen to be beaded with drops from the fog. There seems to be a little life in the bark now, and it strips somewhat more freely than in winter. What a lusty growth have these yellow osiers! Six feet is common the last year, chiefly from the summit of the pollards, —but also from the sides of the trunk,—filling a quadrant densely with their yellow rays. April 3, 1856

April 4. The osier bark now, as usual, looks very yellow when wet, and the wild poplar very green. April 4, 1859

April 19. These osiers to my eye have only a little more liquid green than a month ago. April 19, 1855

April 24. The willow osiers require to be seen endwise the rows, to get an intense color. April 24, 1857

April 27. I am at length convinced of the increased freshness (green or yellow) of the willow bark in the spring. Some a clear yellow, others a delightful liquid green. April 27, 1854

May 4. Notice the white willows on Hubbard's Bridge causeway, - quite a mass of green when seen aslant from this side, and have been two or three days, but as yet no bloom there nor hum of bees. Also their freshest osiers are very bright, yet I think most of it is due to the height at which the sun runs. They are priests of the sun, report his brightness, — heliometers . We do not realize how much more light there is in the day than in winter. If the ground should be covered with snow, the reflection would dazzle us and blister our faces This willow begins to be green before the aspens, say five or six days ago. May 4, 1859

May 14. Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow!  These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat. May 14, 1852

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also :

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Salix cordata (heartleaf willow)

and  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:

• A Change in the Air
• A Sunny Nook in Spring
• Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
• Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
• Bright Blue Water
• Buzzing Flies
• Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
• Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
• Geese Overhead
• Greening Grasses and Sedges
• I begin to think that my wood will last
• Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
• Listening for the Bluebird
• March is famous for its Winds
• Mosses Bright Green
• My Greatcoat on my Arm
• Perla-like Insects Appear
• Red Maple Sap Flows
• Ripples made by Fishes
• Skunks Active
• The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
• The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows
• The Days have grown Sensibly Longer
• The Eaves Begin to Run
• The Gobbling of Turkeys
• The Grackle Arrives
• The Hawks of March
• The New Warmth of the Sun
• The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
• The Red-Wing Arrives
• The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
• The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
• The Song Sparrow Sings
• The Spring Note of the Chickadee
• The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
• The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
• The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
• The Woodchuck Ventures Out
• Walking without Gloves
• Woodpeckers Tapping

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

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/HDTOsier

March 25. Willows near Mill Brook surprise me at a distance-- green, yellowish, red!

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.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside, Journal, March 25, 1853

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. See March 22, 1859 (" I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow. . .. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. "); March 23, 1852 ("I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.")

Several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower"); March 23, 1853 ("The alder catkins, just burst open, are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one revolution in the length of the catkin."); March 26, 1853 ("There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day."); March 26, 1857 ("The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water. See March 2, 1860 ("At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome."): March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); March 4, 1859 ("I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up, and lie just above the surface of the water. . . (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, signs of spring: mosses bright green

I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then. See July 25, 1853 ("I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually"); August 5, 1855 ("It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks")

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. See March 27 and 28, 1860 ("Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago."); March 24, 1859 ("C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside.  See March 28, 1852 ("The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds."); April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); 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. "); April 13, 1854 ('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 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 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days.."); 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, . . .and they are of so cheerful and lively a color.")

  

Cold and windy, Journal, March 25, 1854

White maple buds bursting, making trees look like some fruit trees with blossom-buds. See March 23, 1853 (“The white maple . . . has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky.”)

Still cold and blustering, Journal, March 25, 1855

Still cold and blustering. See March 25, 1854 (" Too cold and windy almost for ducks. ") See also March 11, 1860 ("It is cold and blustering walking in the wind, though the thermometer is at 40; i. e., though the temperature is thus high, the strong and blustering northwest winds of March make this notorious March weather, which is worse to bear than severe cold without wind."); March 28, 1855 ("I run about these cold and blustering days, on the whole perhaps the worst to bear in the year."); April 7, 1858 ("A cold and gusty, blustering day. We put on greatcoats again.")

Irregular thawing of snow and ice, Journal, March 25, 1856

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.”)

A poet away from home, Journal, March 25, 1858

I hear a very clear and sweet whistling strain. See March 28, 1854 ("The fox-colored sparrow sings sweetly also.”)

The whole flock is moving along pretty steadily. See April 9, 1856 (“A flock of them - rapidly advancing, flying before one another, through the swamp.”)

How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun, Journal, March 25, 1859

I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker. See note to 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!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

I do not know a better name for this (when wet) yellowish brown than "tawny." The wet brings out an agreeable yellow light, as if the sun were shining through a mist on it. When wet, the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens and the mosses. See March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . .. The latter part is dry, the whitish-tawny pastures being parded with brown and green mosses and pale-brown lecheas, which mottle it very pleasingly. This dry whitish-tawny or drab color of the fields - withered grass lit by the sun - is the color of a teamster's coat. It is one of the most interesting effects of light now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines brightly on it. It is the fore-glow of the year"); March 16, 1859 ("This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time.")

To speak of the general phenomena of March and its days, Journal, March 25, 1860

By the 2d, ice suddenly softens and skating ends. See March 3, 1855 ("Day before yesterday there was good skating, and it was a beautiful warm day for it. Yesterday the ice began to be perceptibly softened. To-day it is too soft for skating.")

The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. See February 21, 1860 ("It is a spring phenomenon. The water . . .producing countless regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples. . . .When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring.")

The 8th, it is clear again, but a very cold and blustering day, yet the wind is worse than the cold. You calculate your walk beforehand so as to take advantage of the shelter of hills and woods. See March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere.")

Perchance it is suddenly cold, water frozen in your chamber, and plants even in the house; the strong draft consumes your fuel rapidly, though you have but little left. See March 5, 1857 ("This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter.")

14th. This morning it snows . . ., three or four inches deep, — and winter is fairly back again. See note to March 24, 1852 ("The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground.")

16th. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream. See February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat.");. March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it.");. March 9, 1855 ("Painted the bottom of my boat"); March 15, 1854 (Paint my boat""); March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind"); March 17, 1857 ("Launch my boat");. March 19, 1855 (". Launch my boat"). March 19, 1858 ("Painted my boat afternoon"); March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold. ");. March 22, 1858 ("Launch my boat and row down stream")

29th. See a pellet frost in the morning, – or snow. Fair Haven Pond is open. See March 22, 1860 ("Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! - but melts about as fast as it falls."); March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later""); March 29, 1854 (" Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun."); March 29, 1855 (" Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.")

March 25.

Willows near Mill Brook

surprise me at a distance--

green, yellowish, red!

March 25, 1854

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 © 2009-2016

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and the riverside.

March 25.

I forgot to say yesterday that several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. One in Trillium Woods was a favorite because it was so dense and regular, its outline rounded as if it were a moss bed; and another more than two miles from this, at Dugan's, which I went to see yesterday, was then being cut, like the former, to supply charcoal for powder. Dugan does most of this work about the town. The willow hedges by causeways are regularly trimmed and peeled. The small wood brings eight dollars a cord. Alders, also, and poplars are extensively used.

6 A. M. To Brister's Hill.

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. Sitting near together on an oak or pine in the woods or an elm in the village, they keep up a very pleasant, enlivening, and incessant jingling and twittering chill-lill-lill, so that it is difficult to distinguish a single bird's note, – parts of it much like a canary.

This sound advances me furthest toward summer, unless it be the note of the lark, who, by the way, is the most steady singer at present. Notwithstanding the raw and windy mornings, it will sit on a low twig or tussock or pile of manure in the meadow and sing for hours, as sweetly and plaintively as in summer.

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.

I thought I heard the note of a robin and of a bluebird from an oak. It proceeded from a small bird about as big as a bluebird] which did not perch like a woodpecker, uttering first some notes robin-like or like the golden robin, then perfect bluebird warbles, and then it flew off with a flight like neither. [Was it not the fox-colored sparrow?] From what I saw and heard afterward I suspected it might be a downy woodpecker.

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water.

When I saw the fungi in my lamp, I was startled and awed, as if I were stooping too low, and should next be found classifying carbuncles and ulcers. Is there not sense in the mass of men who ignore and confound these things, and never see the cryptogamia on the one side any more than the stars on the other? Underfoot they catch a transient glimpse of what they call toad stools, mosses, and frog-spittle, and overhead of the heavens, but they can all read the pillars on a Mexican quarter.

They ignore the worlds above and below, keep straight along, and do not run their boots down at the heel as I do. 

How to keep the heels up I have been obliged to study carefully, turning the nigh foot painfully on side-hills.

I find that the shoemakers, to save a few iron heel-pegs, do not complete the rows on the inside by three or four, — the very place in the whole boot where they are most needed, — which has fatal consequences to the buyer. I often see the tracks of them in the paths. It is as if you were to put no underpinning under one corner of your house.

I have managed to cross very wet and miry places dry-shod by moving rapidly on my heels. I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then.

The various lights in which you may regard the earth, e.g. the dry land as sea bottom, or the sea bottom as a dry down.

Those willow cones appear to be galls, for, cutting open one of the leafy ones, I found a hard core such as are often seen bare, the nucleus of the cone, and in it a grub. This gall had completely checked the extension of the twig, and the leaves had collected and over flowed it as the water at a dam. Perchance when the twig is vigorous and full of sap the cone is leafy; other wise a hard cone.


11 A. M. – To Framingham.

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday.

Measured a white oak in front of Mr. Billings's new house, about one mile beyond Saxonville,-twelve and one twelfth feet in circumference at four feet from the ground (the smallest place within ten feet from the ground), fourteen feet circumference at ground, and a great spread.

Frank's place is on the Concord River within less than ten miles of Whitehall Pond in Hopkinton, one of [the sources], perhaps the principal source, of the river. I thought that a month hence the stream would not be twenty feet wide there.

Mr. Wheeler, auctioneer, of Framingham, told me that the timber of the factory at Saxonville was brought by water to within about one mile of where the mill stands. There is a slight rapid.

Brown says that he saw the north end of Long Pond covered with ice the 22d, and that R. W. E. saw the south end entirely open.

March 25, 2024

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside.

The winter rye greens the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1853

The Fringilla hyemalis sing most in concert of any bird nowadays that I hear. See March 22, 1859 (" I hear the lively jingle of the hyemalis and the sweet notes of the tree sparrow. . .. Both species in considerable numbers, singing together as they flit along, make a very lively concert. They sing as loud and full as ever now. "); March 23, 1852 ("I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jingling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott's hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward"); March 28, 1854 ("A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, — thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.");  April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. 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 Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

I see the white-breasted nuthatch, head downward . . . his rapid and, as it were, angry gnah gnah gna, and a faint, wiry creaking note See March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker."); March 25, 1856 (“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 also note to 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!. . . It is the spring note of the nuthatch”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring :The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

Several little groves of alders on which I had set my eye had been cut down the past winter. See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower"); March 23, 1853 ("The alder catkins, just burst open, are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one revolution in the length of the catkin."); March 26, 1853 ("There is a large specimen of what I take to be the common alder by the poplar at Egg Rock, five inches in diameter. It may be considered as beginning to bloom to-day."); March 26, 1857 ("The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I see fine little green beds of moss peeping up at Brister's Spring above the water. See March 2, 1860 ("At Brister Spring the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome."):  March 7 , 1855 ("At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact."); March 4, 1859 ("I find near Hosmer Spring in the wettest ground, which has melted the snow as it fell, little flat beds of light-green moss, soft as velvet, which have recently pushed up, and lie just above the surface of the water.  . . (And there are still more and larger at Brister's Spring.) They are like little rugs or mats and are very obviously of fresh growth, such a green as has not been dulled by winter, a very fresh and living.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, At Brister's Spring

I always use leather strings tied in a hard knot; they untie but too easily even then. See July 25, 1853 ("I have for years had a great deal of trouble with my shoe-strings, because they get untied continually . . . One shoemaker sold us shoe strings made of the hide of a South American jack ass, which he recommended; or rather he gave them to us and added their price to that of the shoes we bought of him. But I could not see that these were any better than the old."); August 5, 1855 ("It seems that I used to tie a regular granny’s knot in my shoe-strings, and I learned of myself —rediscovered—to tie a true square knot, or what sailors sometimes call a reef-knot. It needed to be as secure as a reef-knot in any gale, to withstand the wringing and twisting I gave it in my walks.")

A Lincoln man heard a flock of geese, he thinks it was day before yesterday. See March 24, 1859 ("C. sees geese go over again this afternoon. How commonly they are seen in still rainy weather like this!"); March 27 and 28, 1860 ("Louis Minor tells me he saw some geese about the 23d."); March 27, 1857 ("Farmer says that he heard geese go over two or three nights ago.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Geese Overhead

The red maple buds already redden the swamps and riverside. See March 28, 1852 ("The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds."); April 1, 1860 ("The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness."); 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."); April 13, 1854 ('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 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 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days.."); 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, . . .and they are of so cheerful and lively a color.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

The red maple buds 

already redden the swamps 

and the riverside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The red maple buds redden the swamps

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530325

  

To speak of the general phenomena of March and its days.

March 25. 

Cold and blustering. 2 P . M . — 35º . 

To Well Meadow and Walden. See first cloud of dust in street. 

One early willow on railroad, near cowcatcher , just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward. 

I notice on hillside in Stow's wood-lot on the west of the Cut what looks like a rope or hollow semicylinder of sawdust around a large white pine stump, just over its instep. There are two or three mouse - holes between the prongs, and the mice have evidently had a gallery through this dust . Much of it is very coarse and fibry [sic], — fibres of wood an inch or more long mixed with finer. This is probably the work of the mice in the winter on the roots below, making rooms for themselves. Some of the fine dust is formed into a pellet a quarter of an inch wide and flat, of a regular form, half as thick as wide. If not so large you might think they had passed through the creature. The ring of this dust or chewings is not more than two inches wide, and yet it is a hollow semicylinder, more or less regular. 

I think that I can explain it thus: The mice — of course deer mice — had a gallery in the snow around the stump, from hole to hole. When they began to gnaw away the stump underground they brought up their gnawings, and, of course, had no place to cast them but in the gallery through which they ran . Can it be that they eat any of this wood? The gnawings and dust were abundant and fresh, while that made by worms under the bark was old and dirty and could not have been washed into this position, though some of it might have been made by worms beneath the ground. 

At Well Meadow I notice, as usual, that the common cress has been eaten down close, and the uncertain coarse sedge there, etc. 

The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds have just begun to appear, but not yet any hellebore. 

The senecio is considerably grown, and I see many little purplish rosettes of Viola pedata leaves in sandy paths well grown. 

One Caltha palustris flower, just on the surface of the water, is perfectly out. [None out at Second Division Brook the next day, or 26th.] 

See no ducks on Fair Haven Pond, but, sailing over it and at length hovering very long in one place with head stretched downward, a fish hawk. 

It is hard descending steep north hillsides as yet, because the ground is yet frozen there and you cannot get a hold by sinking your heels into it. 

The grass is dense and green as ever, and the caltha blooms in sheltered springy places, being protected from frosts in the night, probably, by a vapor arising from the warm water. 

Though the meadow flood is low, methinks they [the meadows] must be covered with a sweet grass which has lately grown under water (parts of them at least), so much the more accessible to such ducks as feed on shore. Probably many ducks as well as geese do feed on shore in the night. 

Windy as it is, you get along comfortably enough in the woods, and see the chill-lills and cinnamon sparrows flitting along from bush to bush. Methought on the 18th, a warm day, that the chill-lills and tree sparrows haunted rather the shaded and yet snowy hollows in the woods. 

The deep some thirty rods behind where I used to live is mostly covered with ice yet, but no doubt such are generally open now, - - Ripple Lake, for example. 

To speak of the general phenomena of March: 

When March arrives, a tolerably calm, clear, sunny, spring like day, the snow is so far gone that sleighing ends and our compassion is excited by the sight of horses laboriously dragging wheeled vehicles through mud and water and slosh. We shall no longer hear the jingling of sleigh bells. 

The sleigh is housed, or, perchance, converted into a wheeled vehicle by the travelling peddler caught far from home. The wood-sled is perhaps abandoned by the roadside, where the snow ended, with two sticks put under its runners, — there to rest, it may be, while  the grass springs up green around it, till another winter comes round. It may be near where the wagon of the careless farmer was left last December on account of the drifted snow. 

As March approaches, at least, peddlers will do well to travel with wheels slung under their sleighs, ready to convert their sleighs into wheeled vehicles at an hour's warning. 

Even the boy's sled gets put away by degrees, or when it is found to be in the way, and his thoughts are directed gradually to more earthy games. There are now water privileges for him by every roadside. 

The prudent farmer has teamed home, or to market, his last load of wood from the lot, nor left that which was corded a year ago to be consumed by the worms and the weather . He will not have to sell next winter oak wood rotted an inch deep all round, at a reduction in the price if he deals with knowing customers. He has hauled his last logs to mill. 

No more shall we see the sled-track shine or hear the sled squeak along it. The boy's sled gets put away in the barn or shed or garret, and there lies dormant all summer, like a wood chuck in the winter. It goes into its burrow just before woodchucks come out, so that you may say a wood chuck never sees a sled, nor a sled a woodchuck, — unless it were a prematurely risen woodchuck or a belated and unseasonable sled . Before the woodchuck comes out the sled goes in . They dwell at the antipodes of each other. Before sleds rise woodchucks have set. The ground squirrel too shares the privileges and misfortunes of the woodchuck. The sun now passes from the constellation of the sled into that of the woodchuck.

The snow-plow, too, has now nothing more to do but to dry-rot against another winter, like a thing whose use is forgotten, incredible to the beholder, its vocation gone. I often meet with the wood-sled by the path  care fully set up on two sticks and with a chip under the cop to prevent its getting set, as if the woodman had waited only for another snow-storm to start it again, little thinking that he had had his allowance for the year. And there it rests, like many a human enterprise postponed, sunk further than he thought into the earth after all, its runners, by which it was to slide along so glibly, rotting and its ironwork rusting. You question if it will ever start again. 

If we must stop, says the schemer, leave the enter prise so that we can start again under the best possible circumstances. But a scheme at rest begins at once to rust and rot  though there may be two sticks under the runner and a chip under the cop. The ineradicable [?] grass will bury it  and when you hitch your forces to it a year hence it is a chance if it has not lost its cohesion. Examine such a scheme, and see if it rests on two sticks and can be started again  Examine also its joints, and see if it will cohere when it is started . You can easily find sticks and chips, but who shall find snow to put under it? There it slumbers, sinking into the ground, willingly returning to the earth from which it came. Mortises and tenons and pins avail not to withhold it. 

The sleighing, the sledding, or sliding, is gone. We now begin to wheel or roll ourselves and commodities along  which requires more tractile power . The pon derous cart and the spruce buggy appear from out their latebræ like the dusty flies that have wintered in a crevice, and we hear the buzzing of their wheels . The high-set chaise, the lumbering coach like wasps and gnats and bees come humming forth. The runners have cut through to the earth; they go in search of the snow into the very gutters  or invade the territory of the foot-passenger. 

The traveller, when he returns the hired horse to his stable, concludes at last that it is worse sleighing than wheeling. To be sure , there was one reach where he slid along pretty well under the north side of a wood, but for the most part he cut through, as when the cook cuts edgings of dough for her pies, and the grating on the gravel set his teeth on edge. You see where the teamster threw off two thirds his load by the roadside, and wonder when he will come back for it. 

Last summer I walked behind a team which was ascending the Colburn Hill, which was all dripping with melting ice, used to cool the butter which it held. In January, perchance I walk up the same hill behind a sled-load of frozen deer between snow-drifts six feet high .

To proceed with March: 

Frost comes out of warm sand-banks exposed to the sun, and the sand flows down in the form of foliage. But I see still adhering to the bridges the great chandelier icicles formed in yesterday ' s cold and windy weather. 

By the 2d, ice suddenly softens and skating ends. This warmer and springlike day, the inexperienced eagerly revisit the pond where yesterday they found hard and glassy ice, and are surprised and disappointed to find it soft and rotten. Their aching legs are soon satisfied with such sport. Yet I have in such a case found a strip of good skating still under the north side of a hill or wood. I was the more pleased because I had foreseen it. Skates, then, have become useless tools and follow sleds to their winter quarters. They are ungratefully parted with, not like old friends surely. They and the thoughts of them are shuffled out of the way, and you will probably have to hunt long before you find them next December. 

It is too late to get ice for ice-houses, and now, if I am not mistaken, you cease to notice the green ice at sunset and the rosy snow, the air being warmer and softer. Yet the marks and creases and shadings and bubbles, etc., in the rotting ice are still very interesting. 

If you walk under cliffs you see where the melted snow which trickled down and dripped from their perpendicular walls has frozen into huge organ-pipe icicles. The water going down, you notice, perchance, where the meadow-crust has been raised and floated off by the superincumbent ice, i. e., if the water has been high in the winter, — often successive layers of ice and meadow-crust several feet in thickness. The most sudden and greatest revolution in the condition of the earth's surface, perhaps, that ever takes place in this town. 

The air is springlike. The milkman closes his ice house doors against the milder air. 

By the 3d, the snow-banks are softened through to earth. Perchance the frost is out beneath in some places, and so it melts from below upward and you hear it sink as it melts around you as you walk over it. It is soft, saturated with water, and glowing white. 

The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. It glances and shines like burnished silver. If you walk to sandy cliffs you see where new ravines have formed and are forming. An east wind to-day, and maybe brings rain on — 

The 5th, a cold mizzling rain, and, the temperature falling below zero, it forms a thin glaze on your coat, the last glaze of the year. 

The 6th, it clears off cold and windy. The snow is chiefly gone ; the brown season begins. The tawny frozen earth looks drier than it is. The thin herd's or piper-grass that was not cut last summer is seen all slanting southeast, as the prevailing wind bent it before the snow came, and now it has partly sprung up again. The bleached grass white. 

The 7th is a day of misty rain and mistling , and of moist brown earth into which you slump as far as it is thawed at every step . Every now and then the mist thickens and the rain drives in upon you from one side .

Now you admire the various brown colors of the parded earth, the plump cladonias, etc., etc. Perchance you notice the bæomyces in fruit and the great chocolate colored puffball still losing its dust, and, on bare sandy places, the Lycoperdon stellatum, and then your thoughts are directed to arrowheads and you gather the first Indian relics for the season. The open spaces in the river are now long reaches, and the ice between is mackerelled, and you no longer think of crossing it except at the broadest bay. It is, perhaps, lifted up by the melted snow and the rain. 

The 8th, it is clear again, but a very cold and blustering day, yet the wind is worse than the cold. You calculate your walk beforehand so as to take advantage of the shelter of hills and woods; a very slight elevation is often a perfect fence. If you must go forth facing the wind, bending to the blast, and sometimes scarcely making any progress, you study how you may return with it on your back. Perchance it is suddenly cold, water frozen in your chamber, and plants even in the house; the strong draft consumes your fuel rapidly, though you have but little left. You have had no colder walk in the winter. So rapidly is the earth dried that this day or the next perhaps you see a cloud of dust blown over the fields in a sudden gust. 

The 9th, it is quite warm, with a southwest wind. The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening. It is a dark night. 

The 10th, you first notice frost on the tawny grass. The river-channel is open, and you see great white cakes going down the stream between the still icy  meadows, and the wind blows strong from the north west, as usual. The earth begins to look drier and is whiter or paler-brown than ever, dried by the wind. The very russet oak leaves mixed with pines on distant hills look drier too. 

The 11th is a warmer day and fair, with the first considerable bluish haze in the air. It reminds you of the azure of the bluebird, which you hear, which per haps you had only heard of before . 

The morning of the 12th begins with a snow- storm, snowing as seriously and hard as if it were going to last a week and be as memorable as the Great Snow of 1760, and you forget the haze of yesterday and the bluebird. It tries hard but only succeeds to whiten the ground, and when I go forth at 2 P. M. the earth is bare again. It is much cooler and more windy than yesterday, but springlike and full of life. It is, however, warm in the sun, and the leaves already dry enough to sit on. Walden is melted on the edge on the northerly side. As I walk I am excited by the living dark-blue color of the open river and the meadow flood (?) seen at a distance over the fields, contrasting with the tawny earth and the patches of snow. In the high winds in February, at open reaches in the river it was positively angry and black; now it is a cold, dark blue, like an artery. The storm is not yet over. The night sets in dark and rainy, - the first considerable rain, taking out the frost. I am pleased to hear the sound of it against the windows, for that copious rain which made the winter of the Greeks and Romans is the herald of summer to us.

The 13th, the ways are getting settled in our sandy village. The river is rising fast. I sit under some sheltering promontory and watch the gusts ripple the meadow flood. 

14th. This morning it snows again, and this time it succeeds better, is a real snow-storm, — by 2 o'clock, three or four inches deep, — and winter is fairly back again. The early birds are driven back or many of them killed. The river flood is at its height, looking dark amid the snow. 

15th. The ice is all out of the river proper and the meadow, except ground ice or such as lies still at the bottom of the meadow, under water. 

16th. The ice of the night fills the river in the morning, and I hear it go grating downward at sunrise. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream  on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half. I taste a spring cranberry, save a floating rail, feel the element fluctuate beneath me, and am tossed bodily as I am in thought and sentiment  Than longen folk to gon on voyages. The water freezes on the oars. I wish to hear my mast crack and see my rapt [ ? ] boat run on her side , so low her deck drinks water and her keel plows air. My only competitors or fellow-voyagers are the musquash hunters. To see a dead sucker washing on the meadows! The ice has broken up and navigation commenced. We may set sail for foreign parts or expect the first arrival any day. To see the phenomena of the water and see the earth from the water side, to stand outside of it on another element, and so get a pry on it in thought at least, that is no small advantage. I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. Every musquash-shooter has got his boat out ere this. Some improvident fellows have left them out , or let them freeze in , and now find them in a leaking condition . But the solid ice of Fair Haven as yet bars all progress in that direction. I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat . 

17th . The last night, perhaps, we experience the first wind of the spring that shakes the house. Some who sleep in attics expect no less than that the roof will be taken off. They calculate what chance there is for the wind to take hold of the overlapping roof or eaves. You hear that your neighbor's chimney is blown down. The street is strewn with rotten limbs, and you notice here and there a prostrate pine on the hills. The frozen sidewalks melt each morning  When you go to walk in the afternoon, though the wind is gone down very much, you watch from some hilltop the light flashing across some waving white pines. The whole forest is waving like a feather in the wind. Though the snow is gone again here, the mountains are seen to be still covered, and have been ever since the winter. With a spy-glass I can look into such a winter there as it seems to me I have only read of . No wonder the northwest wind is so cold that blows from them to us. 

18th. A warm day. I perceive, on some warm wooded hillsides half open to the sun, the dry scent of the withered leaves, gathered in piles here and there by the wind. They make dry beds to recline on, and remind me of fires in the woods that may be expected ere long.

The 19th, say 56 or 60 and calm, is yet warmer, a really warm day. Perhaps I wear but one coat in my walk, or sweat in two. The genial warmth is the universal topic. Gnats hum; the early birds warble. Especially the calmness of the day is admirable. The wind is taking a short respite ,locked up in its cave somewhere. We admire the smoothness of the water, the shimmering over the land. All vegetation feels the influence of the season. Many first go forth to walk and sit outdoors awhile. The river falling , I notice the coarse wrack left along the shore, dotted with the scarlet spring cranberries. Before night a sudden shower, and some hear thunder, a single low rumble. 

The 21st is warm too by the thermometer, but more windy. 

The 23d, a channel is worn through Fair Haven Pond . 24th. The winds are let out of their cave, and have fairly resumed their sway again, with occasional flurries of snow which scarcely reach the earth. Gusty electric clouds appear here and there in the sky, like charges of cavalry on a field of battle. It is icy cold, too, and you need all your winter coats at least. The fresh spray, dashed against the alders and willows, makes rake and horn icicles along the causeways. 

25th. Colder yet. Considerable ice forms. The river skims over along the side. The river is down again, lower than any time this month. 

26th. Warm again. The frost is at length quite out 229 of early gardens. A few begin to plow, and plant peas and rye, etc. In the afternoon a thick haze conceals the mountains and wreathes the woods, the wind going east. 

27th. Steady, pattering, April-like rain, dimpling the water, foretold by the thick haze of yesterday, and soaked up by the ground for the most part, the frost being so much out. 

28th. Some sit without a fire in afternoon, it is so warm. I study the honeycombed black ice of Fair Haven Pond. 

29th. See a pellet frost in the morning, – or snow. Fair Haven Pond is open. 

30th. You see smokes rising above the woods in the horizon this dry day, and know not if it be burning brush or an accidental fire. 

31st. The highways begin to be dusty, and even our minds; some of the dusty routine of summer even begins to invade them. A few heels of snow may yet be discovered, or even seen from the window.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1860


By the 2d, ice suddenly softens and skating ends. See March 3, 1855 ("Day before yesterday there was good skating, and it was a beautiful warm day for it. Yesterday the ice began to be perceptibly softened. To-day it is too soft for skating.")

The 4th is very wet and dirty walking; melted snow fills the gutters, and as you ascend the hills, you see bright braided streams of it rippling down in the ruts. See  February 21, 1860  ("It is a spring phenomenon. The water . . .producing countless regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples. . . .When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. ")

The 8th, it is clear again, but a very cold and blustering day, yet the wind is worse than the cold. You calculate your walk beforehand so as to take advantage of the shelter of hills and woods. See March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere.")

Perchance it is suddenly cold, water frozen in your chamber, and plants even in the house; the strong draft consumes your fuel rapidly, though you have but little left. See March 5, 1857 ("This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter.")

14th. This morning it snows . . ., three or four inches deep, — and winter is fairly back again. See note to March 24, 1852 ("The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground.")

16th. As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream. See February 26, 1857 ("Paint the bottom of my boat.");. March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it.");. March 9, 1855 ("Painted the bottom of my boat"); March 15, 1854 (Paint my boat""); March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine clear weather and a strong northwest wind"); March 17, 1857 ("Launch my boat");. March 19, 1855 (". Launch my boat"). March 19, 1858 ("Painted my boat afternoon"); March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven. Still very cold. ");. March 22, 1858 ("Launch my boat and row down stream")

29th. See a pellet frost in the morning, – or snow. Fair Haven Pond is open. See March 22, 1860 ("Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! - but melts about as fast as it falls.");  March 26, 1860 ("Fair Haven Pond may be open by the 20th of March, as this year [1860], or not till April 13 as in '56, or twenty-three days later""); March 29, 1854 (" Fair Haven half open; channel wholly open. Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun."); March 29, 1855 (" Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river.")\

Launch my boat and make 

my first voyage for the year 

up or down the stream.