Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits.

March 18.

Tree sparrows have warbled faintly for a week.

When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in December, or in midwinter above the snow, my spirits rise as if it were an oasis in the desert.

The very name “sallow” (salix, from the Celtic sallis, near water) suggests that there is some natural sap or blood flowing there.

It is a divining wand that has not failed, but stands with its root in the fountain.

The fertile willow catkins are those green caterpillar like ones, commonly an inch or more in length, which develop themselves rapidly after the sterile yellow ones,which we had so admired are fallen or effete. 

Arranged around the bare twigs, they often form green wands eight to eighteen inches long.

A single catkin consists of from twenty-five to a hundred little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, each of which is closely packed with cotton, in which are numerous seeds so small that they are scarcely discernible by ordinary eyes.

I do not know what they mean who call this the emblem of despairing love! “The willow, worn by forlorn paramour!” It is rather the emblem of love and sympathy with all nature. It may droop, — it is so lithe, supple, and pliant — but it never weeps.

The willow of Babylon blooms not the less hopefully with us, though its other half is not in the New World at all, and never has been. It droops, not to represent David's tears, but rather to snatch the crown from Alexander's head. (Nor were poplars ever the weeping sisters of Phaëton, for nothing rejoices them more than the sight of the Sun's chariot, and little reck they who drives it.) 

Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits.

No wonder its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, take the whole tree, it is not only soft and pliant but tough and resilient (as Pliny says ?), not splitting at the first blow, but closing its wounds at once and refusing to transmit its hurts.

I know of one foreign species which introduced itself into Concord as [a] withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, and has its descendants.

Herodotus says that the Scythians divined by the help of willow rods. I do not know any better twigs for this purpose.




How various are the habits of men ! Mother says that her father - in - law, Captain Minott, not only used to roast and eat a long row of little wild apples, reaching in a semicircle from jamb to jamb under the andirons on the reddened hearth (I used to buy many a pound of Spanish brown at the stores for mother to redden the jambs and hearth with), but he had a quart of new milk regularly placed at the head of his bed, which he drank at many draughts in the course of the night.

It was so the night he died, and my grandmother discovered that he was dying, by his not turning over to reach his milk.

I asked what he died of, and mother answered apoplexy! at which I did not wonder.

Still this habit may not have caused it. I have a cousin, also, who regularly eats his bowl of bread and milk just before going to bed, however late. He is a very stirring man.

You can't read any genuine history — as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede - without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it.

A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.

Your account of foreign parts which you have never seen should by good rights be less interesting.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 18, 1861

Ah, willow! willow! Would that I always possessed thy good spirits. See   February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring,. . . as if all the landscape and all nature shone. T. . . I remember it as a prominent phenomenon affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of her face. "); March 13, 1859 ("The bright catkins of the willow are the springing most generally observed.."); March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins!"); April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day. . . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); May 14, 1852 (“Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow!”)

So each man looks at things from his own point of view.

April 18.

8 a. m. — To the south part of Acton, surveying, with Stedman Buttrick. 

When B. came to see me the other evening, and stood before the door in the dark, my mother asked, 

"Who is it?"

 to which he replied, quite seriously,

 "Left-tenant Stedman Buttrick.” 

B. says that he shot some crossbills which were opening pine cones in the neighborhood of the Easterbrook place some years ago, that he saw two dildees here as much as a month ago at least, and that they used to breed on that island east of his house, — I think he called it Burr's Island. 

He sees the two kinds of telltale here. 

Once shot an eider duck here. Has often shot the pintail (he calls it spindle-tail) duck here. Thinks he has killed four (? !) kinds of teal here. 

Once shot a sheldrake which had a good-sized sucker in its throat, the tail sticking out its bill, so that, as he thought, it could not have flown away with it. It was a full-plumaged male. 

Once, in the fall, shot a mackerel gull on what I call Dove Rock. 

Once shot a whole flock of little ducks not more than two thirds the size of a pigeon, yet full-grown, near the junction of the two rivers. Also got two ducks, the female all white and the male with a long and conspicuous bottle-green crest above the white. looked through Audubon, but could find no account of them. 

Sees two kinds of gray ducks, one larger than a black duck. Has seen the summer duck here carrying its young to the water in her bill, as much as thirty rods. Says that teal have bred here. 

His boy found, one February, as much as a peck of chestnuts in different parcels within a short distance of one another, just under the leaves in Hildreth's chestnut wood, placed there, as he says, by the chip-squirrel, which they saw eating them. 

He has seen the cross fox here. 

I am looking for acorns these days, to sow on the Walden lot, but can find very few sound ones. Those which the squirrels have not got are mostly worm-eaten and quite pulverized or decayed. A few which are cracked at the small [end], having started last fall, have yet life in them, perhaps enough to plant. Even these look rather discolored when you cut them open, but Buttrick says they will do for pigeon-bait. 

So each man looks at things from his own point of view. 

I found by trial that the last or apparently sound acorns would always sink in water, while the rotten ones would float, and I have accordingly offered five cents a quart for such as will sink. You can thus separate the good from the bad in a moment. I am not sure, however, but the germs of many of the latter have been injured by the frost. 

Hear a field sparrow. 

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. 

• He has two minnows from the brook, which I think must be the banded minnow; a little more than an inch long with very conspicuous broad black transverse bars. 

• Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. 

• Also several kinds of larvae in the water, — one very like a dragon fly, with three large feather-like appendages to the tail, small gyrinus, which he says nibbled off the legs of the skater (?), etc., etc., but no dragon fly grubs. 

• Two salamanders, one from Ripple Lake and the other from the pool behind my house that was 

• One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)

• The other two thirds as large, a very handsome bright orange salmon, also with vermilion spots, which must be the true S. symmetrica. Both thickly sprinkled with black dots. The latter's tail comparatively thick and straight-edged. 

Haynes (Heavy) says that trout spawn twice in a year, — once in October and again in the spring. 

Saw snow ice a yard across to-day under the north side of a wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1859


Hear a field sparrow. See April 18, 1855 ("The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool.”); April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow (Fringilla juncorum)

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. See April 29, 1859 (“E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.”)

Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. See April 18, 1858 ("The Rana sylvatica tadpoles have mostly wiggled away from the ova")

This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall. See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back”); see also note to April 21, 1859 (“The vermilion-spotted salamanders are darting at the various grotesque-formed larvae of the lake.”)

He has seen the cross fox here. See note to May 20, 1858 (“This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon”)

So little it need cost to live..

June 8. 

June 8, 2017
Lake Champlain

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

White actaea done there. 

There are two good-sized black walnuts at Cyrus Smith's, by wall, out apparently a day. When I split the twigs they seemed hollowed by a worm or disease, the pith being (as is said of the butternut also) in plates. The fertile flower is probably not obvious yet. That of the butternut is now very distinct with its crimson stigmas. 

Mother was saying to-day that she bought no new clothes for John until he went away into a store, but made them of his father's old clothes, which made me say that country boys could get enough cloth for their clothes by robbing the scarecrows. So little it need cost to live.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 8, 1857

June 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 8

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

At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air.

May 26. 

Pink azalea in garden. 

Mountain-ash a day; also horse-chestnut the same. Beach plum well out, several days at least. 

Wood pewee, and Minott heard a loon go laughing over this morning. 

The vireo days have fairly begun. They are now heard amid the elm-tops. 

Thin coats and straw hats are worn. I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can't eat their break fasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon, — improve the least opportunity to be sick ; — I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment. They are nice, discriminating, experienced in all that relates to bodily sensations. They come to you stroking their wens, manipulating their ulcers, and expect you to do the same for them. Their religion and humanity stick. They spend the day manipulating their bodies and doing no work; can never get their nails clean. 

Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy. 

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. 

The oaks are in the gray, or a little more, and the silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist. At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. 

I see the common small reddish butterflies. 

Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding- oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands, — the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak are particularly interesting. 

The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise. 

Now, at last, all leaves dare unfold, and twigs begin to shoot. 

As I am going down the footpath from Britton's camp to the spring, I start a pair of nighthawks (they had the white on the wing) from amid the dry leaves at the base of a bush, a bunch of sprouts, and away they flitted in zigzag noiseless flight a few rods through the sprout-land, dexterously avoiding the twigs, uttering a faint hollow what, as if made by merely closing the bill, and one alighted flat on a stump. 

On those carpinus trees which have fertile flowers, the sterile are effete and drop off. 

The red choke-berry not in bloom, while the black is, for a day or more at least. 

Roadside near Britton's camp, see a grosbeak, apparently female of the rose-breasted, quite tame, as usual, brown above, with black head and a white streak over the eye, a less distinct one beneath it, two faint bars on wings, dirty-white bill, white breast, dark spotted or streaked, and from time [to time] utters a very sharp chirp of alarm or interrogation as it peers through the twigs at me. 

May 26, 2018

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. 

At Abel Brooks's (or Black Snake, or Red Cherry, or Rye) Hollow, hear the wood thrush. 

In Thrush Alley, see one of those large ant-hills, recently begun, the grass and moss partly covered with sand over a circle two feet in diameter, with holes two to five inches apart, and the dry sand is dark-spotted with the fresh damp sand about each hole. 

My mother was telling to-night of the sounds which she used to hear summer nights when she was young and lived on the Virginia Road, — the lowing of cows, or cackling of geese, or the beating of a drum as far off as Hildreth's, but above all Joe Merriam whistling to his team, for he was an admirable whistler. 

Says she used to get up at midnight and go and sit on the door-step when all in the house were asleep, and she could hear nothing in the world but the ticking of the clock in the house behind her.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 26, 1857

Pink azalea in garden. See May 26, 1860 ("Our pink azalea”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); May 29, 1855("Azalea nudiflora in garden”); May 17, 1854 ("Azalea nudiflora in woods begins to leaf now.");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.”) [Rhododendron periclymenoides , pinxterbloom azalea]

Wood pewee. See note to May 26, 1852 ("I hear the pea-wai, the tender note.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. See May 26, 1855 (“Again a strong cold wind from the north by west, turning up the new and tender pads”); May 26, 1860 (“Overcast, rain-threatening; wind northeast and cool”)

At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. See May 15, 1860 ("At this season there is thus a mist in the air and a mist on the earth.") May 15, 1854 ("The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens."); May 27, 1855 ("How important the dark evergreens now seen through the haze in the distance and contrasting with the gauze-like, as yet thin-clad deciduous trees").

A lady's-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. See May 27, 1852 ("Ladies'-slippers out. They perfume the air.”); May 30, 1856 (“The lady’s-slipper in pitch pine wood-side near J. Hosmer’s Desert, probably about the 27th”).

May 26. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 26

Notes for my biographers

December 27. 

Recalled this evening, with the aid of Mother, the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived and some events of my life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1855

See December 26, 1855 ("In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them.”)

the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived ... Henry's mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau (1787–1872), was born in Keene, New Hampshire. Her mother was widowed, and married Captain Jonas Minott — who owned the farm where Thoreau was later born — in 1798. The Thoreau family moved several times, from Concord to Chelmsford, (in 1818), from Chelmsford back to Concord briefly (in 1821), then to Boston (in 1821), and finally back to Concord permanently (in 1823). After returning to Concord, John Thoreau rented a succession of houses before he could afford to build a home of his own (on Texas Street, now Belknap Street) in 1844. In 1849, John Thoreau bought and renovated a larger home on Main Street (the "Yellow House"), into which the family moved in 1850 and where Henry died in 1862. ~ CliffsNotes