These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life.

March 31.

Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented. 

Early, however, I saw the clouds in the west, for my window looks west, suffused with rosy light, but that "flattery” is all forgotten now. How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? 

The expedition in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850 landed at Cape Riley on the north side of Lan caster Sound, and one vessel brought off relics of Franklin, viz. “five pieces of beef, mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of rope, a small rag of can vas, and a chip of wood cut by an ax.”

Richardson says: From a careful examination of the beef bones, I came to the conclusion that they had belonged to pieces of salt-beef ordinarily supplied to the Navy, and that probably they and the other bones had been exposed to the atmosphere and to friction in rivulets of melted snow for four or five summers.

The rope was proved by the ropemaker who examined it to have been made at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subsequent to 1841. The fragment of canvas, which seemed to have been part of a boat's swab, had the Queen's broad arrow painted on it; and the chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not grow on the banks of any river that falls into the Arctic Sea. It had, however, been long exposed to the weather, and was likely to have been cut from a piece of drift-timber found lying on the spot, as the mark of the ax was recent compared to the surface of the wood, which might have been exposed to the weather for a century.” “The grounds of these conclusions were fully stated in a report made to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, myself, and other officers.” 

Is not here an instance of the civilized man detecting the traces of a friend or foe with a skill at least equal to that of the savage? Indeed it is in both cases but a common sense applied to the objects, and in a manner most familiar to the parties. The skill of the savage is just such a science, though referred sometimes to instinct.

March 31. 2023

Perhaps after the thawing of the trees their buds universally swell before they can be said to spring.

Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months.

Woe be to us when we cease to form new resolutions on the opening of a new year! 

A cold, raw day with alternating hail - like snow and rain.

According to Gilpin, a copse is composed of forest trees mixed with brushwood, which last is periodically cut down in twelve or fourteen years.

What Gilpin says about copses, glens, etc., suggests that the different places to which the walker resorts may be profitably classified and suggest many things to be said.

Gilpin prefers the continuous song of the insects in the shade of a copse to the buzzing vagrant fly in the glare of day.

He says the pools in the forest must receive their black hue from clearness. I suppose he means they may have a muddy bottom or covered with dark dead leaves, but the water above must be clear to reflect the trees.

It would be worth the while to tell why a swamp pleases us, what kinds please us, also what weather, etc., etc., - analyze our impressions.

Why the moaning of the storm gives me pleasure.  Methinks it is because it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life's territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy's bugle.

Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander.

What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system.

The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soaking rains reaching into April.

Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy.

The song sparrow and the transient fox colored sparrow, -- have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert's Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree ? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of ? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert's Land before I have appreciated it? 

God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference. 

These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life.

I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings adequately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach myself because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I. 

What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought and a dream? 

I hear late to-night the unspeakable rain, mingled with rattling snow against the windows, preparing the ground for spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 31, 1852

Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented.  See March 17, 1858 ("No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of the spring. “); March 15, 1857 (“An early dawn and premature blush of spring, at which I was not present.”) Compare March 31, 1855 (“ I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodest is suddenly warm, and this amelioration of the weather is incomparably the most important fact in this vicinity.. . . Now you would think that there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth — but not so. I listen in vain to hear a frog or a new bird as yet; only the frozen ground is melting a little deeper, and the water is trickling down the hills in some places. No, the change is mainly in us. We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life.”)

How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? March 22, 1853 ("As soon as these spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser.. . .expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood."); March 31, 1853 (" The robins sing at the very earliest dawn. I wake with their note ringing in my ear.")

Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months. See March 30, 1852 ("Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up."); August 23, 1853 ("Perhaps after middle age man ceases to be interested in the morning and in the spring.")

These migrating sparrows all bear messages that concern my life.  See March 22, 1860 ("About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive [in March], and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds . . . , while apparently the snow bunting, lesser redpoll, shrike, and doubtless several more — as owls, crossbills (?) — leave us."); March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now, — the redpoll, Fringilla hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc."); March 18, 1852 ("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."); April 1, 1852 ("Saw the fox-colored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith's Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

 I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. See February 28, 1852 (" To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten.");  April 13, 1852 ("  I love to hear the wind howl."); April 22, 1852. (" I am soon wet to my skin over half my body. At first, and for a long time, I feel cold and as if I had lost some vital heat by it, but at last the water in my clothes feels warm to me, and I know not but I am dry.");  May 13, 185 2("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty."); August 31, 1852 ("It is worth the while to have had a cloudy, even a stormy, day for an excursion, if only that you are out at the clearing up.");December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); 

Methinks I would share every creature's suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. Cf. December 23, 1856 ("If the writer would interest readers, ...[t]hey must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of ."); February 23, 1860 ("May we measure our lives by our joys")

March 31. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, March 31

Methinks I would share 

each creature's suffering for 

the sake of its  joy.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-520331

The year acquires a grizzly look before the snows of winter.

October 16

 P. M. — Sail up river. 

There is less wind these days than a week or fortnight ago; calmer and more Indian-summer-like days. 

I now fairly begin to see the brown balls of the button-bush (which is about bare) reflected in smooth water, looking black against the sky, also the now withered straw-colored coarse grass (Phalaris); and the musquash-houses rapidly rising of late are revealed by the fall of the button-bush, willows, pontederia, etc. 

In the reflection the button-bushes and their balls appear against the sky, though the substance is seen against the meadow or distant woods and hills; i. e., they appear in the reflection as they would if viewed from that point on the surface from which they are reflected to my eye, so that it is as if I had another eye placed there to see for me. 

Hence, too, we are struck by the prevalence of sky or light in the reflection, and at twilight dream that the light has gone down into the bosom of the waters; for in the reflection the sky comes up to the very shore or edge and appears to extend under it, while, the substance being seen from a more elevated point, the actual horizon is perhaps many miles distant over the fields and hills. In the reflection you have an infinite number of eyes to see for you and report the aspect of things each from its point of view. The statue in the meadow which actually is seen obscurely against the meadow, in the reflection appears dark and distinct against the sky.

The mikania, goldenrods, and Andropogon scoparius have now their November aspect, the former showing their dirty-white pappus, the last its white plumose hairs. The year is thus acquiring a grizzly look before the snows of winter. I see some Polygonum amphibium, front-rank, and hydropiperoides still. 

At Clamshell the large black oaks are brownish and greenish yellow; the swamp white, at a distance, a yellowish green; though many of the last (which are small) are already withered pale-brown with light under sides. 

Willows generally turn yellow, even to the little sage willow, the smallest of all our species, but a foot or two high, though the Salix alba hardly attains to more than a sheeny polish. 

But one willow, at least, the S. cordata, varies from yellow to a light scarlet in wet places, which would be deeper yet were it not for its lighter under sides. This is seen afar in considerable low patches in the meadow. It is remarkable among our willows for turning scarlet, and I can distinguish this species now by this, i. e. part of it, in perhaps the wettest places; the rest is yellow. It is as distinctly scarlet as the gooseberry, though it may be lighter.

The oak sprout-land on the hillside north of Puffer’s is now quite brilliant red. 

There is a pretty dense row of white birches along the base of the hill near the meadow, and their light-yellow spires are seen against the red and set it off remarkably, the red being also seen a little below them, between their bare stems. 

The green white pines seen here and there amid the red are equally important. 

The tupelo by Staples’s meadow is completely bare. 

Some high blueberry is a deep dark crimson. 

In sprout lands you see great mellow yellowish leaves of aspen sprouts here and there. 

See a large flock of grackles steering for a bare elm top near the meadows. As they fly athwart my View, they appear successively rising half a foot or a foot above one another, though the flock is moving straight forward. I have not seen red-wings [for] a long while, but these birds, which went so much further north to breed, are still arriving from those distant regions, fetching the year about.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1858

They appear in the reflection as they would if viewed from that point on the surface from which they are reflected.  See December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”);  October 14, 1857 (“ The reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be . . .[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”);   November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”); November 27, 1857 ("Ruskin is wrong about reflections.");

The mikania, goldenrods, and Andropogon scoparius have now their November aspect. See October 17, 1856 ("Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect"); October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns . . .have acquired their November aspect")
The tupelo by Staples’s meadow is completely bare. See October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”); October 14, 1857 ("Near by [Hubbard;'s Grove] is a tupelo which is all a distinct yellow with a little green.")

A large flock of grackles, fetching the year about. See October 16, 1857 ("I saw some blackbirds, apparently grackles, singing, after their fashion, on a tree by the river.")

A dark and windy night .

October 2. 

A dark and windy night the last. It is a new value when darkness amounts to something positive. Each morning now, after rain and wind, is fresher and cooler, and leaves still green reflect a brighter sheen. 

Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once, and that was Noddle’s Island in the War of 1812. 

The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings. The cat comes in from an early walk amid the weeds. She is full of sparrows and wants no more breakfast this morning, unless it be a saucer of milk, the dear creature. I saw her studying ornithology between the corn-rows.

As I approached Perch Pool the other day, half a dozen frogs leaped into it and buried themselves in the mass of callitriche at the bottom. I stood looking for perch a minute or two, when one after another up came the frogs from out the callitriche, just as a piece of cork would rise by mere buoyancy to the surface; and then, by a distinct effort, they let go all, drop anchor, elevate or let float up their heels, and lie spread out on the surface. They were probably Rana fontinalis.  

Sailed to Baker Farm with a strong northwest wind.

Got a peck of the small long-bunched grapes now turned purple under Lee’s Cliff. One or two vines bear very plentifully. The bunches are about six inches long by one and a half, and quite dense and cylindrical commonly. They are now apparently just in their prime, to judge from color. Considerably later than the Vitis Labrusca, but are not good. [Mother [made] a nice jelly of them afterward.] 

A large chocolate-colored puffball “smokes. ”

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

Each morning now, after rain and wind, is fresher and cooler, and leaves still green reflect a brighter sheen. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night"); September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); ; September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon.")


Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once in the War of 1812. . See March 23, 1854("Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. Aunt said that he had not been ten miles from home since”)  January 8, 1857 ("Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism ");  and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings. See October 4, 1859 (“Birds are now seen more numerously than before, as if called out by the fine weather, probably many migrating birds from the north.”); October 8, 1855 ("Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows . . .”); October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows .”)

You may say it is the first day of autumn.

August 19. 

P. M. — Sail to Baker Farm shore. 

It is cool with a considerable northwesterly wind, so that we can sail to Fair Haven. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. 

You notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets, and the large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore. The P. hydropiperoides fairly begins to show. The front-rank polygonum is now in prime. 

We scare up a stake-driver several times. The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows, and the stake-driver begins to be seen oftener, and as early as the 5th I noticed young summer ducks about; the same of hawks, owls, etc. 

This occurs as soon as the young birds can take care of themselves, and some appear to be very early on the return southward, with the very earliest prospect of fall. Such birds are not only more abundant but, methinks, more at leisure now, having reared their family, and perhaps they are less shy. 

Yes, bitterns are more frequently seen now to lift themselves from amid the pontederia or flags, and take their sluggish flight to a new resting-place, —bitterns which either have got through the labors of breeding or are now first able to shift for themselves.

And likewise blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. 

When I see the first heron, like a dusky blue wave undulating over our meadows again, I think, since I saw them going northward the other day, how many of these forms have been added to the landscape, complete from bill to toe, while, perhaps, I have idled! 

I see two herons. A small bird is pursuing the heron as it does a hawk. Perhaps it is a blackbird and the herons gobble up their young! 

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. There is wont to be just water [sic] enough above the surface to drive it along. 

The heads of the wool-grass are now brown and, in many meadows, lodged. 

The button-bush is about done. Can hardly see a blossom. 

The mikania not yet quite in prime. 

Pontederia has already begun to wane; i. e., the fields of them are not so dense, many seed-vessels having turned down; and some leaves are already withered and black, but the remaining spikes are as fair as ever. 

It chances that I see no yellow lilies. They must be scarce now. 

The water is high for the season. Water cool to bather. 

We have our first green corn to-day, but it is late.

The saw-grass (Paspalum?) of mown fields, not long. 

I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river, though I noticed a few exceptions to my rule. 

It is so cool, some apprehend a frost to-night.

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

The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. See August 19, 1853 ("The first bright day of the fall . . .. The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days.”)

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. September 1, 1852 (“-- a delicate hint of approaching autumn, when the first thistle-down descends on some smooth lake's surface, full of reflections, in the woods, sign to the fishes of the ripening year.”)

Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. See August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here.”); August 14,1859 (" If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there"): August 15, 1852 (“See a blue heron on the meadow.”); August 15, 1860 ("See a blue heron.”); August 16. 1858 ("A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house."); August 21, 1859 ("The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. Are they not more common on our river such [drought] years as this?"); August 24, 1854 (“See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. At a distance before you, only the two waving lines appear, and you would not suspect the long neck and legs.”); August 22, 1854 (“See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up from one of these pools, and a stake-driver from another, and also see their great tracks on the mud, and the feathers they had shed, — some of the long, narrow white neck-feathers of the heron. The tracks of the heron are about six inches long.”); August 26, 1856 (“A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

August 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 19

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 © 2009-2021

I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me.

September 27. 

I am surprised to find that, yesterday having been a sudden very warm day, the peaches have mellowed suddenly and wilted, and I find many more fallen than even after previous rains. Better if ripened more gradually. 

How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one, — in Hindoo literature, for instance, — is the historical fact about it, — the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what precisely it might signify to a sect of worshippers! Any thing that is called history of India — or of the world — is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless.

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff by land. 

Small red maples in low ground have fairly begun to burn for a week. It varies from scarlet to crimson. It looks like training-day in the meadows and swamps. They have run up their colors. A small red maple has grown, perchance, far away on some moist hill side, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faith fully discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its economies, added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth all summer, and is nearer heaven than in the spring, never having gone gadding abroad; and now, in this month of September, when men are turned travellers, hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the lakes, – in this month of travelling, — this modest maple, having ripened its seeds, still with out budging an inch, travels on its reputation, runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, to show that it has finished its summer work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. Thus that modest worth which no scrutiny could have detected when it was most industrious, is, by the very tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the most careless and distant observer. It rejoices in its existence; its reflections are unalloyed. It is the day of thanksgiving with it. At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum. In its hue is no regret nor pining. Its leaves have been asking their parent from time to time in a whisper, “When shall we redden?” It has faith fully husbanded its sap, and builded without babbling nearer and nearer to heaven. Long since it committed its seeds to the winds and has the satisfaction of knowing perhaps that a thousand little well-behaved and promising maples of its stock are already established in business somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. It has afforded a shelter to the wandering bird. Its autumnal tint shows how it has spent its summer; it is the hue of its virtue.

These burning bushes stand thus along the edge of the meadows, and I distinguish them afar upon all the hillsides, here and there. Her virtues are as scarlet. 

The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. 

White birches have fairly begun to yellow, and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood on the grass. 

Bass, too, fairly begun to yellow. 

Solidago nemoralis nearly done. 

I sit on the hillside at Miles Swamp. A woodbine investing the leading stem of an elm in the swamp quite to its top is seen as an erect slender red column through the thin and yellowing foliage of the elm, – a very pretty effect. I see some small woodbine leaves in the shade of a delicate cherry-color, bordering on pink.

As I sit there I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. Perhaps it is both because the young are grown and their food, the small birds, are flying in flocks and are abundant. I need only sit still a few minutes on any spot which overlooks the river meadows, before I see some black circling mote beating along, circling along the meadow's edge, now lost for a moment as it turns edgewise in a peculiar light, now reappearing further or nearer. 

Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. 

Huckleberries are still abundant and quite plump on Conantum, though they have a somewhat dried taste. 

It is most natural, i. e. most in accordance with the natural phenomena, to suppose that North America was discovered from the northern part of the Eastern Continent, for a study of the range of plants, birds, and quadrupeds points to a connection on that side. Many birds are common to the northern parts of both continents. Even the passenger pigeon has flown across there. And some European plants have been detected on the extreme northeastern coast and islands, which do not extend inland. Men in their migrations obey in the main the same law.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1857

How out of all proportion to the value of an idea . . . is the historical fact about it. . . Any thing that is called history . . . is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless. See December 16, 1837 ("Mere accumulators of facts . . . are like those plants growing in dark forests, which 'put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.'"); November 9, 1851 ("I, too, would fain set down something beside facts."); February 18, 1852 ("I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant . . . I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth”)

I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. See September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? . . . I detect the transit of the first by his shadow on the rock, and look toward the sun for him.”); April 29, 1852 (“Discover a hawk over my head by his shadow on the ground.”)

Every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum. See September 27, 1851 ("The maples by the riverside look very green yet, have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost. Not so on the uplands"); September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."); September 27, 1858 ("Red maples now fairly glow along the shore.") See also September 1, 1852 ("Across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three birches diverge, at the point of a promontory next the water, I see two or three small maples already scarlet."); September 1, 1853 ("Some large maples along the river are beginning to redden."); September 12, 1858 ("Some small red maples by water begun to redden."); September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off."); September 20, 1857 ("A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there.")

The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. See September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered."); September 2, 1854 ("The interrupted fern begins to yellow.")

This is the critical season of a river, when it is fullest of life.

April 11. 

Saturday. 8 P. M. —Went to the Head of the River to see them catch smelts. 

The water there is fresh when the tide is out. They use nets five or six feet square, stretched from the ends of crossed semicircular hoops, at the ends of poles about twelve feet long. The net bags down when raised. 

There were twenty or thirty fishermen standing close together, half on each side of the narrow river, each managing one of these nets, while a good part of the village appeared to be collected on the bridge. The tide was then coming in, but the best time is when it is going out. 

A fisherman told me that the smelt run up in the night only. These fishers stood just below a two-arched bridge. The tide was coming up between the arches, while the fresh water which the smelt preferred was running down next the shore on each side. The smelt were ascending in these streams of fresh water on each side. 

The shore for half a dozen rods on each side was lined with fishers, each wielding a single net. This man told me that the smelt had been running up about one month and were now about done. The herring had been seen for a fortnight. They will run this month and all the next. The former leave off when the latter begin. Shad have not been caught yet. They come after herring. Eels, too, are occasionally caught now, going up from the deeper river below. These fishes spawn in the little pond just above the bridge. 

They let the net rest on the bottom and every two ,or three minutes lift it up. They get thirty or many more smelt sometimes at one lift and catch other fish in the same way, even bass, sea perch, pickerel, eels, and sometimes a trout. The shad make a ripple like a harrow, and you know when to raise the net. 

The villagers were talking across the stream, calling each other by their Christian names. Even mothers mingled with the fishermen, looking for their children. 

It suggested how much we had lost out of Concord River without realizing it. This is the critical season of a river, when it is fullest of life, its flowering season, the wavelets or ripples on its surface answering to the scales of the fishes beneath. 

If salmon, shad, and alewives were pressing up our river now, as formerly they were, a good part of the villagers would thus, no doubt, be drawn to the brink at this season. Many inhabitants of the neighborhood of the ponds in Lakeville, Freetown, Fairhaven, etc., have petitioned the legislature for permission to connect Little Quitticus Pond with the Acushnet River by digging, so that the herring can come up into it. 

The very fishes in countless schools are driven out of a river by the improvements of the civilized man, as the pigeon and other fowls out of the air. I can hardly imagine a greater change than this produced by the influence of man in nature. 

Our Concord River is a dead stream in more senses than we had supposed. In what sense now does the spring ever come to the river, when the sun is not reflected from the scales of a single salmon, shad, or alewife? No doubt there is some compensation for this loss, but I do not at this moment see clearly what it is. 

That river which the aboriginal and indigenous fishes have not deserted is a more primitive and interesting river to me. It is as if some vital quality were to be lost out of a man’s blood and it were to circulate more lifelessly through his veins. We are reduced to a few migrating (?) suckers, perchance.

I saw the herring on sticks at the doors of many shops in New Bedford.

I saw the myrtle-bird here about a week ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1857

The very fishes in countless schools are driven out of a river by the improvements of the civilized man, as the pigeon and other fowls out of the air. See March 23, 1856 ("All the great trees and beasts, fishes and fowl are gone.")

The sun is not reflected from the scales of a single salmon, shad, or alewife ... See April 15, 1856 ("First salmon and shad at Haverhill to-day.");April 13, 1853 ("First shad caught at Haverhill to-day.")

Irregular thawing of snow and ice.

March 25

P. M. —To Walden. 

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. 

I have frequently seen the sap of maples flow in warm days in the winter, in warm localities. This was in twigs. Would it in the trunks of large trees? And if not, is not this an evidence that this sap did not come up from the roots? 

The meadow east of the railroad causeway is bare in many spots, while that on the west is completely and deeply covered; yet a few weeks ago it was deepest on the east. I think of no reason for this, except that the causeway may keep off the cold northwest winds from the former meadow. For thirty rods distant there are no bare spots. Why is the eastern slope, now, as every spring, (almost completely) bare, long before the western? 

The road runs north and south, and the sun lies on the one side as long as on the other. Is it more favorable that the frozen snow be acted on by the warmed air before the sun reaches it than after it has left it? Another and second reason is probably that there is less snow on that side or on the west slope of a hill than on the eastern. Snow drifting from the northwest lodges under the west bank. 

So I observe to-day that the hills rising from the north and west (and this seems to give weight to the second reason urged above) sides of Walden are partially bare, while those on the south and east are deeply and completely covered with snow. 

Mr. Bull tells me that his grapes grow faster and ripen sooner on the west than the east side of his house.

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. They probably went further south. 

I now slump from two to four inches into Walden, though there has been no rain since I can remember. I cannot cut through, on account of the water in the softened ice flowing into the hole. At last, in a drier place, I was not troubled with water, till I had cut about a foot, or through the snow ice, when two or three streams of water half an inch or more in diameter spurted up through holes in the disorganized, partly honeycombed clear ice; so I failed to get through. 

Probably the clear ice is thus riddled all over the pond, for this was a drier place than usual. Is it the effect of the melted snow and surface working down? or partly of water pressing up? 

The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches. For about a rod from the shore, on the north and west sides (I did not examine the others), it is comparatively firm and dry, then for two rods you slump four inches or more, then, and generally, only about two. Is that belt the effect of reflection from the hills? 

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin and see it flying over the railroad lengthwise, and afterwards its tut tut at a distance. This and the birds of yesterday have come, though the ground generally is covered deep with snow. They will not only stay with us through a storm, but come when there are but resting-places for them. It must be hard for them to get their living now.

The tallest water andromedas now rise six or eight inches above the snow in the swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1856

The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places. See March 9, 1853 ("The relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed."); March 10, 1853 ("The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows"); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit"); March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore over the cold water,"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy."); March 24, 1856 ("The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap."); March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars. Yesterday proved too cold, undoubtedly, for the willow to open, and unless I learn better, I shall give the poplar the precedence, dating both, however, from to-day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

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.”)

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 March 10, 1856 (" It is hard to believe the records of previous years. I have not seen a tree sparrow, methinks, since January. Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they have migrated further south. There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll."); April 6, 1856 ("Heard there a nuthatch’s faint vibrating tut-tut. . . Anon it answered its mate with a gnah gnah.");  April 16, 1856 ("I have not seen a tree sparrow, I think, since December."); Compare ? February 9, 1855 ("Tree sparrows, two or three only at once, come into the yard, the first I have distinguished this winter.   I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were."); February 10, 1855 (" I hear the faint metallic chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to time, or perchance the mew of a linaria . . . Of the former I see in the winter but three or four commonly at a time; of the latter, large flocks. This in and after considerable snow-storms.");  March 5, 1853 ("Though this [lesser redpoll] is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); March 17, 1855 ("I hear the lesser redpolls yet."); March 20, 1853 ("The red polls are still numerous."); March 25, 1853 ("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");  March 25, 1859 ("I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon?  "); March 28, 1853 ("I saw in Dodd's yard and flying thence to the alders by the river what I think must be the tree sparrow, — a ferruginous crowned, or headed, and partly winged bird, light beneath, with a few of the F . hyemalis in company. It sang sweetly, much like some notes of a canary. One pursued another . . . Perhaps I have seen it before within the month."); March 30, 1854 ("Great flocks of tree sparrows and some F. hyemalis on the ground and trees on the Island Neck");   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

They probably went further south.  See March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date."); also Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

Hear the hurried and seemingly frightened notes of a robin. See March 8, 1855 (“I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years”);. March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first”); March 24, 1858 (“The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress, is also a chip, or call-note to its kind. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the anxious peep of the early robin

Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows.

November 13

In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. I at once heard their clangor and rushed to and opened the window. 

The three harrows were gradually formed into one great one before they were out of sight, the geese shifting their places without slacking their progress. 

P. M. —— To Cardinal Shore. 

Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming, the whole length of his back out. It was a rich brown fur, glowing internally as the sun fell on it, like some ladies’ boas, not black, as it sometimes appears, especially on ice. 

It landed within three rods, showing its long, some what cat-like neck, and I observed was carrying some thing by its mouth, dragging it overland. At first I thought it a fish, maybe an eel, and when it had got half a dozen feet, I ran forward, and it dropped its prey and went into the wall. 

It was a muskrat, the head and part of the fore legs torn off and gone, but the rest still fresh and quite heavy, including hind legs and tail. It had probably killed this muskrat in the brook, eaten so much, and was dragging the remainder to its retreat in the wall. 

A fine clear afternoon after the misty morning and heavy rain of the night. Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences. 

From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape, —including the reddish brown of the oaks, excepting where the winter-rye fields and some low meadows show' their green, the former quite bright, and also the evergreen patches of pines, edged in the northwest by the blue mountain ridges. 

Got the wood thrush’s (?) nest of November 5th. It is about five inches [in] diameter from outside to outside, and two and a half within. Outside of some weedy tufts (beneath), weed stems and stubble (some dry galium stems, small), and lined with a little fine grass and horsehair. I found the egg partly concealed by some dry alder leaves which had fallen into the nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1855

Seventy or eighty geese . . . over the house. See November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night."); See also November 14, 1855 ("Minott hears geese to-day.""); November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering.”); November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

It was a rich brown fur, glowing internally as the sun fell on it, like some ladies’ boas, not black.  See December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge . . . we see a mink, slender, black”); November 27, 1855 ("A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (he says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black.”)

Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences. See November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass . . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”) See also November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”); November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields,”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Now it is a perfect russet November landscape. See November 10, 1858 ("Now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs."); November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. "); November 29, 1852 (".The softness of the sunlight on the russet landscape . . . the sun now getting low in a November day. "); November 29, 1853  ("We have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year."); See also November 28, 1858 ("In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?")

Wood thrush's nest of November 5th: ("A nest made very thick, of grass and stubble, and lined with finer grass and horsehair, as big as a king bird’s, on an alder, within eighteen inches of ground, close to the water, at Cardinal Shore. The alder had been broken down at that height by the ice, and the nest rested-on the stub ends. I took a few dead leaves out and to my surprise found an egg—very pale greenish-blue.”)

Geese in three harrows 

gradually shift to one

now out of sight.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows

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

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