A little green hemisphere of moss.

December 1

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. 

December 1, 2025

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. 

When I broke it up, it appeared as if the annual growth was marked by successive layers half an inch deep each. The lower ones were quite rotten, but the present year's quite green, the intermediate white. I counted fifteen or eighteen. 

It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed. There was a darker line separating the growths, where I thought the surface had been exposed to the winter. 

It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1850

It is quite mild and pleasant to-day.  See December 2, 1850 ("If there is a little more warmth than usual at this season, then the beautiful air which belongs to winter is perceived and appreciated.") See also  November 29, 1852 ("November 29, 30, and December 1 have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in.”); December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)

I saw a little green hemisphere of moss. See February 7, 1858 ("Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground."); February 8, 1857  ("It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again."); April 25, 1857 ("The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

December 1. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 1

Hemisphere of moss 

looks as if covers a stone – 

yet nothing but moss.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A little green hemisphere of moss.

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/hdt-501201

Mosses at low water.

August 5. 

See many yellowed peach leaves and butternut leaves, which have fallen in the wind yesterday and the rain to-day.

The lowest dark-colored rocks near the water at the stone bridge (i. e. part of the bridge) are prettily marked with (apparently) mosses, which have adhered to them at higher water and now withered and bleached on, — in fact are transferred, — and by their whitish color are seen very distinctly on the dark stone and have a very pretty effect. They are quite like sea mosses in their delicacy, though not equally fine with many. These are very permanently and closely fastened to the rock. This is a phenomenon of low water. Also see them transferred to wood, as pieces of bridges.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1859

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

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

The air and sun of summer, over snow and ice,

March 10. 

6 a. m. - To Hill. 

I see near the stone bridge where the strong northwest wind of last night broke the thin ice just formed, and set the irregular triangular pieces on their edges quite perpendicular and directed northwest and southeast and pretty close together, about nine inches high, for half a dozen rods, like a dense fleet of schooners with their mainsails set. 

And already, when near the road, I hear the warble of my first Concord bluebird, borne to me from the hill through the still morning air, and, looking up, I see him plainly, though so far away, a dark speck in the top of a walnut. 

When I reach the Assabet above the Hemlocks, I hear a loud crashing or brattling sound, and, looking through the trees, see that it is the thin ice of the night, half an hour after sunrise, now swiftly borne down the stream in large fleets and going to wreck against the thick old ice on each side. This evidently is a phenomenon of the morning. 

The river, too, has just waked up, and, no doubt, a river in midsummer as well as in winter recognizes the advent of the morning as much as a man or an animal does. They retire at night and awake in the morning. Looking northeast over Hosmer's meadow, I see still the rosy light reflected from the low snow-spits, alternating with green ice there. Apparently because the angles of incidence and excidence are equal, there fore we see the green in ice at sundown when we look aslant over the ice, our visual ray making such an angle with it as the yellow light from the western horizon does in coming to it.

 P. M. — To Witherell Vale. 

There are some who never do nor say anything, whose life merely excites expectation. Their excellence reaches no further than a gesture or mode of carrying themselves. They are a sash dangling from the waist, or a sculptured war-club over the shoulder. They are like fine-edged tools gradually becoming rusty in a shop-window. I like as well, if not better, to see a piece of iron or steel, out of which many such tools will be made, or the bush-whack in a man's hand. 

When I meet gentlemen and ladies, I am reminded of the extent of the inhabitable and uninhabitable globe; I exclaim to myself, Surfaces! surfaces! If the outside of a man is so variegated and extensive, what must the inside be? You are high up the Platte River, traversing deserts, plains covered with soda, with no deeper hollow than a prairie-dog hole tenanted also by owls and venomous snakes. 

As I look toward the woods (from Wood's Bridge), I perceive the spring in the softened air. This is to me the most interesting and affecting phenomenon of the season as yet. Apparently in consequence of the very warm sun, this still and clear day, falling on the earth four fifths covered with snow and ice, there is an almost invisible vapor held in suspension, which is like a thin coat or enamel applied to every object, and especially it gives to the woods, of pine and oak intermingled, a softened and more living appearance. They evidently stand in a more genial atmosphere than before. 

Looking more low, I see that shimmering in the air over the earth which betrays the evaporation going on. Looking through this transparent vapor, all surfaces, not osiers and open waters alone, look more vivid. The hardness of winter is relaxed. 

There is a fine effluence surrounding the wood, as if the sap had begun to stir and you could detect it a mile off. Such is the difference between an object seen through a warm, moist, and soft air and a cold, dry, hard one. Such is the genialness of nature that the trees appear to have put out feelers by which our senses apprehend them more tenderly. 

I do not know that the woods are ever more beautiful, or affect me more. 

I feel it to be a greater success as a lecturer to affect uncultivated natures than to affect the most refined, for all cultivation is necessarily superficial, and its roots may not even be directed toward the centre of the being. 

Rivers, too, like the walker, unbutton their icy coats, and we see the dark bosoms of their channels in the midst of the ice. Again, in pools of melted snow, or where the river has risen, I look into clear, placid water, and see the russet grassy bottom in the sun.  Look up or down the open channel now, so smooth, like a hibernating animal that has ventured to come out to the mouth of its burrow. One way, perhaps, it is like melted silver alloyed with copper. It goes nibbling off the edge of the thick ice on each side. 

Here and there I see a musquash sitting in the sun on the edge of the ice, eating a clam, and the clamshells it has left are strewn along the edge. Ever and anon he drops into the liquid mirror, and soon reappears with another clam. 

This clear, placid, silvery water is evidently a phenomenon of spring. Winter could not show us this. 

A broad channel of water separates the dry land from the ice, and the musquash-hunter finds it hard to reach the game he has shot on the ice. 

Fine red-stemmed mosses have begun to push and bud on Clamshell bank, growing in the Indian ashes where surface taken off. Carpenter says, "The first green crust upon the cinders with which the surface of Ascension Island was covered, consisted of minute mosses.” 

We sit in the sun on the side of Money-Diggers' Hill, amid the crimson low blueberry shoots and the withered Andropogon scoparius and the still erect Solidago arguta (var. the common) and the tall stubble thickly hung with fresh gleaming cobwebs. There are some grayish moths out, etc.; some gnats. 

I see the bridge far away over the ice resting on its black piers above the ice which is lifted around it. 
It is short-legged now. This level or horizontal line resting on perpendicular black ones is always an interesting sight to me. 

As we sit in this wonderful air, many sounds — that of woodchopping, for one — come to our ears agree ably blunted or muffled, even like the drumming of a partridge, not sharp and rending as in winter and recently. If a partridge should drum in winter, probably it would not reverberate so softly through the wood and sound indefinitely far. 

Our voices, even, sound differently and betray the spring. We speak as in a house, in a warm apartment still, with relaxed muscles and softened voices. The voice, like a wood-chuck in his burrow, is met and lapped in and encouraged by all genial and sunny influences. There may be heard now, perhaps, under south hillsides and the south sides of houses, a slight murmur of conversation, as of insects, out of doors.

These earliest spring days are peculiarly pleasant. We shall have no more of them for a year. I am apt to forget that we may have raw and blustering days a month hence. 

The combination of this delicious air, which you do not want to be warmer or softer, with the presence of ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet portions, the south hillsides, of the earth, this is the charm of these days. It is the summer beginning to show itself like an old friend in the midst of winter. 

You ramble from one drier russet patch to another. 

These are your stages. You have the air and sun of summer, over snow and ice, and in some places even the rustling of dry leaves under your feet, as in Indian-summer days. 

The bluebird on the apple tree, warbling so innocently to inquire if any of its mates are within call, — the angel of the spring! Fair and innocent, yet the offspring of the earth. The color of the sky above and of the subsoil beneath. Suggesting what sweet and innocent melody (terrestrial melody) may have its birthplace between the sky and the ground. 

Two frogs (may have been Rana fontinalis; did not see them) jumped into Hosmer's grassy ditch. 

See in one place a small swarm of insects flying or gyrating, dancing like large tipulidae. The dance within the compass of a foot always above a piece of snow of the same size in the midst of bare ground. 

The most ornamental tree I have seen this spring was the willow full of catkins now showing most of their down, in front of Puffer's house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 10, 1859

The strong northwest wind of last night broke the thin ice just formed, and set the irregular triangular pieces on their edges quite perpendicular and directed northwest and southeast and pretty close together, about nine inches high, for half a dozen rods, like a dense fleet of schooners with their mainsails set.  See February 12, 1851 ("thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river, — where for a dozen rods the flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats.”)

See in one place a small swarm of insects flying or gyrating, dancing like large tipulidae. The dance within the compass of a foot always above a piece of snow of the same size in the midst of bare ground. See March 19, 1858 (“I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats in the air.. . . Sometimes a globular swarm two feet or more in diameter, suggesting how genial and habitable the air is become”)

Two frogs (may have been Rana fontinalis; did not see them) jumped into Hosmer's grassy ditch. See February 18, 1857 (“When I approached the bank of a ditch this after noon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom.”);  February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the surface as he leapt in”); March 13, 1855 ("I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris.”); March 26, 1857 (“Though it is rather cool and windy in exposed places, I hear a faint, stertorous croak from a frog in the open swamp; at first one faint note only, which I could not be sure that I had heard”);  March 26, 1860 (“The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in '56,”); March 28, 1852 ("In Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season."); ); March 28, 1858 ("Cleaning out the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I find a small frog, apparently a bullfrog, just come forth, which must have wintered in the mud there. “); March 30, 1858 (“The frogs are now heard leaping into the ditches on your approach”);  March 31, 1857 (“As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes and the tut tut of croaking frogs from the west of the Hill.”)  and note to May 6, 1858 (the frogs of Massachusetts). Compare March 28, 1855 (“I run about these cold and blustering days, on the whole perhaps the worst to bear in the year, — partly because they disappoint expectation, — looking almost in vain for some animal or vegetable life stirring. The warmest springs hardly allow me the glimpse of a frog’s heel as he settles himself in the mud”); March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes.. . .I listen in vain to hear a frog”)

The most ornamental tree I have seen this spring was the willow full of catkins now showing most of their down See March 10, 1855 (“I am not aware of growth in any plant yet, unless it be the further peeping out of willow catkins. They have crept out further from under their scales, and, looking closely into them, I detect a little redness along the twigs even now”); March 10, 1853 (“Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins . . .the willow twigs, both the yellow and green, are brighter-colored than before. I cannot be deceived. They shine as if the sap were already flowing under the bark; a certain lively and glossy hue they have. ”)

What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow!

March 4. 

Began to snow last evening, and it is now (early in the morning) about a foot deep, and raining. 

P. M. — To E. Hosmer Spring. 

Down Turnpike and back by E. Hubbard's Close. We stood still a few moments on the Turnpike below Wright's (the Turnpike, which had no wheel-track beyond Turtle's and no track at all beyond Wright's), and listened to hear a spring bird. 

We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the cawing of a crow. What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow! If you stand perfectly still anywhere in the outskirts of the town and listen, stilling the almost incessant hum of your own personal factory, this is perhaps the sound which you will be most sure to hear rising above all sounds of human industry and leading your thoughts to some far bay in the woods where the crow is venting his disgust. This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge. It sees a race pass away, but it passes not away. It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature. 

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. They are scattered about in the old decayed trough. (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, perhaps slightly glaucous, green. 

The myosotis and bitter cress are hardly clean and fresh enough for a new growth. 

The radical leaves of the Ranunculus repens are conspicuous, but the worse for the wear; but the golden saxifrage has in one or two places decidedly and conspicuously grown, like the cowslip at Well Meadow and still more, rising in dense beds a half to three quarters of an inch above the water, the leaves, like those of the cowslip, only partly concealed and flatted out. This distinguishes the fresh-springing leaves of these two. 

Probably there is more of the chrysosplenium thus advanced in Concord than of the caltha. I see none of the last here. 

The surface of the snow thus rapidly melting and sinking (there are commonly some inches of water under it, the rain having soaked through), though still very fresh and pure white, is all cracked, as it were, like that of some old toadstools. It has sunk so much that every inequality in the surface of the ground be neath is more distinctly shown than when bare. 

The ruts of old wood-paths are represented in the surface a foot above, and the track of the man and of the dog that ran by the side of the team (in the old snow), — the thread, in short, of every valley. 

The surface of the snow, though so recent, is therefore, on account of the rain, very diversified. On steep slopes it is regularly furrowed, apparently by water that has flowed down it. 

In the brook in Hubbard's Close I see the grass pushing up from the bottom four or five inches long and waving in the current, which has not yet reached the surface. 

C. thinks this is called a sap snow, because it comes after the sap begins to flow. 

The story goes that at the Social Club the other night Cyrus Stow, hearing that the lecture before the Lyceum by Alger was to be on "The Sophistry of Ennui " and not knowing what that was, asked in good faith if it went by wind or water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1859

We listened to hear a spring bird. We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the cawing of a crow. See February 18, 1855 ("I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes."); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds.");  March 1, 1855 ( "We go listening for bluebirds, but only hear crows and chickadees."); December 11, 1854 ("I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.") . See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The golden saxifrage has in one or two places decidedly and conspicuously grown. See March 4, 1852 ("The snow is melting on the rocks; the water trickles down in shining streams; the mosses look bright; the first awakening of vegetation at the root of the saxifrage.”); March 15. 1857 ("As usual at this date and earlier, there are a few square rods of green grass tufts at Brister’s springs, like a green fire under the pines and alders, and in one place an apparent growth of golden saxifrage"); March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even,. . .These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development.")
.
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. See  February 18, 1852 ("The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes.");  March 3, 1859 ("The mossy bank along the south side of Hosmer's second spring ditch is very interesting. There are many coarse, hair-like masses of that green and brown moss on its edge, hanging over the ditch, alternating with withered-looking cream-colored sphagnum tinged with rose-color, in protuberances, or mammae, a foot across on the perpendicular side of the ditch"); 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."); April 2, 1853 (" See the fine moss in the pastures with beautiful red stems even crimsoning the ground. This is its season."); April 2, 1856 (" There are beds of fresh green moss in the midst of the shallow water."):; April 18, 1856 ("That pretty, now brown-stemmed moss with green oval fruit"); April 25, 1857 ("The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions.") 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

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

The distant cawing –

aboriginal nature

this voice of the crow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, a perfectly New England sound 

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

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science.

February 18

I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, — perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, — I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all. 

P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill. 

One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. 

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. 

The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes. 

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. The poet's second love may be science, not his first, — when use has worn off the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a condition of mind at which others arrive in middle age by the decay of their poetic faculties.

H. D Thoreau, Journal,  February 18, 1852

The most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry . See May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. ”); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)

I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. See December 25, 1851 ("I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing.")  September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”)

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. See note to  February 11, 1855 (“The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard”)

 This must be one of the spring signs.  See  February 18, 1854 (“It does not take so much fuel to keep us warm of late. I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring.”); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . . I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau., signs of spring: mosses bright green

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. See February 13, 1852 ("Color, which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline or pencil sketches and become men of science."); February 16, 1852 ("Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. . . .By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.");  November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”); February 28, 1860 ("As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.")

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

February 7

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe, and I can correct or add to my account of January 23d. She says that she was only three or four years old, and that she went to school, with Aunt Elizabeth and one other child, to a woman named Turner, somewhere in Boston, who kept a spinning-wheel a-going while she taught these three little children.

She remembers that one sat on a lignum-vitae mortar turned bottom up, another on a box, and the third on a stool; and then repeated the account of Jennie Burns bringing her little daughter to the school, as before.

I observed yesterday in that oak stump on the ditch bank by Trillium Wood (which I counted the rings of once) that between the twentieth and twenty-seventh ' rings there was only about three sevenths of an inch, though before and after this it grew very fast and seven spaces would make nearly two inches. The tree was growing lustily till twenty years old, and then for seven years it grew only one fourth or one fifth part as fast as before and after. I am curious to know what happened to it.

P. M. —To Cliffs through Wheeler’s pasture on the hill.

This new pasture, with gray stumps standing thickly in the now sere sward, reminds me of a graveyard. And on these monuments you can read each tree’s name, when it was born (if you know when it died), how it throve, and how long it lived, whether it was cut down in full vigor or after the infirrnities of age had attacked it.

I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot, i. e. the large wood. It extends a rod or so and is probably earlier there than where I have found it before. Some of the buds show a very little color. The leaves have lately been much eaten, I suspect by partridges.

Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground.

If possible, come upon the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through woods, and then see off from it to the distant earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you can see directly down it, i. e. bringing its own near top against the distant landscape.

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. 

The bark of the Populus grandidentata there is a green clay-color.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 7, 1858

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe.  See January 23, 1858 ("Mrs. William Monroe told Sophia last evening that she remembered her (Sophia’s) grandfather very well,")

Epigaea repens: trailing arbutus. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata: big-tooth aspen. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)

In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. See April 2, 1859 ("I see the small botrychium still quite fresh in the open pasture, only a reddish or leathery brown, — some, too, yellow. It is therefore quite evergreen and more than the spleenworts.")

Yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. Compare October 25, 1853 ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.")

Little mounds of truth,

yellowish or golden moss:

sunlight on the ground.

zphx

I see large mosses on the beach, crimson and lighter.

June 13. 

I see large mosses on the beach, crimson and lighter, already spread on the sand. 

See children going a-flagging and returning with large bundles, for the sake of the inmost tender blade. They go miles for them here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1857

The ring of the toad.

May 1. 

Friday. 2 p.m. — First notice the ring of the toad, as I am crossing the Common in front of the meeting-house. 

There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most, as the mill-brook empties into the river and the voyager cannot tell if he is above or below its mouth. The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but none heard this older and more universal bell, rung by more native Americans all the land over. It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind, taken into the lungs instead of being heard by the ears. It comes from far over or through the troughs of the aerial sea, like a petrel, and who can guess by what pool the singer sits? whether behind the meeting-house horse-sheds, or from over the burying- ground hill, or from the riverside? 

A new reign has commenced. Bufo the First has ascended to his throne, the surface of the earth, led into office by the south wind. Bufo the Double-chinned inflates his throat. Attend to his message. Take off your greatcoats, swains! and prepare for the summer campaign. Hop a few paces further toward your goals. The measures I shall advocate are warmth, moisture, and low-flying insects. 

White-throated sparrow in shrub oaks by Walden road. 

Is that moss with little green pendulous fruit on reddish stems Bryum pyriform? 

Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path. How they ransack the paths these nights ! The ground is spotted with their probings. 

Plucked the Arum triphyllum, three inches high, with its acrid corm (solid bulb), from the edge of Saw Mill Brook. 

It is foolish for a man to accumulate material wealth chiefly, houses and land. Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount of thought which we have had, which we have thought out. The ground we have thus created is forever pasturage for our thoughts. I fall back on to visions which I have had. What else adds to my possessions and makes me rich in all lands? If you have ever done any work with these finest tools, the imagination and fancy and reason, it is a new creation, independent on the world, and a possession forever. You have laid up something against a rainy day. You have to that extent cleared the wilderness. Is a house but a gall on the face of the earth, a nidus which some insect has provided for its young?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1857

Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path. See July 31, 1856 ("Another short-tailed shrew dead in the wood-path."); July 12, 1856 (“I have found them thus three or four times before. . . .Have I not commonly noticed them dead after rain?”)

Plucked the Arum triphyllum, three inches high, with its acrid corm. See May 19, 1851 ("Find the Arum triphyllum and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant's Swamp.")

A sudden and decided progress in the season.

April 29. 

Purple finch sings on R. W. E.'s trees. 

P. M. — To Dugan Desert. 

At Tarbell's watering-place, see a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It is thus I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season. 

On the pitch pines beyond John Hosmer's, I see old cones within two feet of the ground on the trunk, — sometimes a circle of them around it, — which must have been formed on the young tree some fifteen years ago. 

Sweet-fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp. 

A partridge there drums incessantly. C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast. 

I find that that clayey-looking soil on which the baeomyces grows is a very thin crust on common sand only. 

I have seen that pretty little hair-cap moss (Pogonatum brevicaule?) for a fortnight out at least; like little pine trees; the staminate pretty, cup-shaped and shorter. 

A steel-blue-black flattish beetle, which, handled, imparted a very disagreeable carrion-like scent to fingers. 

Miles's Pond is running off. The sweet-gale, willows, etc., which have been submerged and put back, begin to show themselves and are trying to catch up with their fellows. 

I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot. 

A little snow still lies in the road in one place, the relic of the snow of the 21st.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 29, 1857

See a dandelion, its conspicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. See April 29, 1852 ("F. Wheeler, Jr., saw dandelions in bloom the 20th of April. Garfield's folks used them for greens . They grew in a springy place behind Brigham' s in the Corner.") April 29, 1855 ("Dandelions out yesterday, at least.");April 29, 1859 ("First observe the dandelion well out in R. W. E.'s yard"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast. See April 25, 1854 ("The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate.”)

Wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath..

April 25.

Saturday. P. M. — Down Turnpike to Smith's Hill and return by Goose Pond. 

Saw a large old hollow log with the upper side [gone], which [made] me doubt if it was not a trough open at the ends, and suggested that the first trough was perhaps such a hollow log with one side split off and the ends closed. 

It is cool and windy this afternoon. 

Some sleet falls, but as we sit on the east side of Smith's chestnut grove, the wood, though so open and leafless, makes a perfect lee for us, apparently by breaking the force of the wind. A dense but bare grove of slender chestnut trunks a dozen rods wide is a perfect protection against this violent wind, and makes a perfectly calm lee. 

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark, at this season at least, when the sap is running, to carry a moss or other thing in safely. I have only to make three cuts and strip off a piece from a clear space some ten inches long, and then, rolling it up wrong side outward, as it naturally curls backward as soon as taken off (the dry side shrinking, the moist swelling) and so keeps its place, I bend or fold the ends back on it, as if it were paper, and so close them, and, if I please, tie it round with a string of the same bark. This is resilient or elastic, and stands out from a plant, and also is not injured by moisture like paper. When the incision is made now, the crystalline drops of sap follow the knife down the tree. This box dries yellow or straw-colored, with large clouds of green derived from the inner bark. 

The inner bark of the Betula populifolia just laid bare is green with a yellow tinge; that of the B. papyracea is buff. The undermost layer of the outer bark of the last, next to the inner bark, is straw-colored and exceedingly thin and delicate, and smoother to the lips than any artificial tissue. 

Bluets numerous and fully out at the Smith hillside between trough and Saw Mill Brook Falls. 

Got to-day unquestionable Salix humilis in the Britton hollow, north of his shanty, but all there that I saw (and elsewhere as yet) [are] pistillate. It is apparently now in prime, and apparently the next to bloom after the various larger and earlier ones, all which I must call as yet S. discolor. This S. humilis is small-catkined and loves a dry soil. 

A correspondent of the Tribune of April 24th, 1857, who signs "Lyndeborough, N. H., April 15, 1857. J. Herrick," says that he taps his sugar maples four feet from the ground so that cattle may not disturb the buckets, and that the sap will run as freely from the topmost branch as from a root. 

"Any one may learn this fact from the red squirrel, who, by the way, is a famous sugar maker, and knows when to tap a tree and where to do it. He performs his tapping in the highest perpendicular limbs or twigs, and leaves the sun and wind to do the evaporating, and in due season and pleasant weather you will see him come round and with great gusto gather his sirup into his stomach." 

The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions. 

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath. The wind is so strong that the thin drops fall on you in the sunshine when the cloud has drifted far to one side. 

The air is peculiarly clear, the light intense, and when the sun shines slanting under the dark scud, the willows, etc., rising above the dark flooded meadows, are lit with a fine straw-colored light like the spirits of trees. 

I see winkle fungi comparatively fresh, whose green and reddish-brown and pale-buff circles above turn to light and dark slate and white, and so finally fade all to white. 

The beds of fine mosses on bare yellow mouldy soil are now in fruit and very warmly red in the sun when seen a little from one side. 

No pages in my Journal are so suggestive as those which contain a rude sketch. 

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs! What sense we should have to explore the swamps with!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1857

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark . . . See April 13, 1857 ("I peeled a white birch, getting a piece of bark about ten inches long. I noticed that the birch sap was flowing. This bark at once curled back so as to present its yellow side outward. I . . . tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature, which would not be injured by moisture, far better than any paper, . . .")

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet.  See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap. See April 16, 1857 ("Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch. ")

Would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads. See  January 4, 1853 ("This is like a fair, flaxen haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets."); February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open."); January 26, 1858 ("The yellow birch . . .might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. ")

The first pleasant days of Spring

March 7

March 7, 2025

A raw east wind and rather cloudy. 

Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. 

Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? 

The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle. 

Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss (forming a firm bed about an inch high, like little pines, surmounted by a fine red stem with a green point, in all three quarters of an inch high), which they had fed on to a great extent, evidently when it was covered with snow, shearing it off level.  They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter. 

It is now difficult getting on and off Walden. 

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. 

I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs. At his bridge over the brook it must have been a trout I saw glance,—rather dark, as big as my finger. 

To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet. 

The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone. It is more or less branched. 

Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. 

We were walking along the sunny hillside on the south of Fair Haven Pond (on the 4th), which the choppers had just laid bare, when, in a sheltered and warmer place, we heard a rustling amid the dry leaves on the hillside and saw a striped squirrel eying us from its resting-place on the bare ground. It sat still till we were within a rod, then suddenly dived into its hole, which was at its feet, and disappeared. The striped squirrel spring: We listen for the bluebird but we hear him not.

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

Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. See  March 4, 1860 ("I see a bush of the early willow . . . whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off . . . The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look."); March 21, 1855 ("This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March . . . It would be well to observe them once a fortnight through the winter. It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? See March 2, 1860 ("See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, — the first migration of them, — without cawing. "); March 5, 1854 (“See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks.”);   March 5, 1859 ("I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement.")

The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle. See note to March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still, half a dozen rods off. It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice.") 

Abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss. See  March 14, 1855 ("At one of the holes under the stump of March 7th, caught a Mus leucopus (deer mouse). So this was the kind, undoubtedly, that fed on the moss, ")  See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

At Brister’s Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss. See 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. They are scattered about in the old decayed trough. (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, perhaps slightly glaucous, green. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green

I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen . . . earlier than frogs. See  February 18, 1857  ("When I approached the bank of a ditch this afternoon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom. "): March 7, 1853  ("What is the earliest sign of spring? The motion of worms and insects? The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds? . . . –– Or are there earlier signs in the water? - the tortoises, frogs, etc.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring 

To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig. See February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring . . . I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Red Maple Sap Flows

 Picked up a very handsome white pine cone . . . perfectly blossomed.  See February 25, 1860 (''The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.'): March 5, 1860 ("White pine cones half fallen. ");   March 21, 1859 ("I see several white pine cones in the path by Wheildon's which appear to have fallen in the late strong winds, but perhaps the ice in the winter took them off. Others still hold on.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Plucking and Stripping a Pine Cone.

The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again. See March 4, 1855 ("May not this season of springlike weather between the first decidedly springlike day and the first blue bird...be 

called the striped squirrel spring -- In which we go listening for the blue bird, but hear him not.")

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

"The first pleasant days 

of spring come out like a squirrel 

and go in again."

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first pleasant days of 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/hdt-550707

***

We had a cold winter, perhaps the coldest February yet. Below zero many mornings. Temperature averages around 7° (?). 50 days without going above freezing, So today is a warm day in the 20s. 

We hike without snowshoes to the double chair via the upper view walking in our old tracks so as not to sink in. It is up to my knees off the trail. Just south of the lower view we hear an owl make, first, that who-cooks-for-you song, and then some strange noises. It is late afternoon. 

At the view I hear chickadees and at the double chair a woodpecker tapping. This is the only bird life but the woods are full of deer. Many many deer beds and tracks -- in fact I use the deer trails to get up Prichard.

Jane shows me where a bobcat has walked in her tracks. 

Coming down we go over the cliff and I have to slide on my heels. Jane is invigorated and we veer off trail past the pink rock. The snow is sugar-like and easy to go downhill sliding in a mini avalanche. We stay out a little longer going around the house clockwise, and come in just before needing a headlamp

Avoiding deep snow

a bobcat walks in her tracks.

I use the deer trails.

March 7, 2015 zphx