Early flowers, leaves and birds.

 

May 1. 

May 1, 2021

 Sunday.

A cold northwest wind.

Now, on my return to Concord, I am struck by the increased greenness of the country, or landscape.

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here, probably nearly in the following order, these plants, including those I saw in Haverhill: 

• dandelion, 
• field horse-tail, 
• Antennaria plantaginifolia, 
• sweet-gale, 
• epigæa, 
• Populus grandidentata, 
• Salix tristis, 
• Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), 
• Potentilla Canadensis, 
• comptonia, 
• Thalictrum anemonoides, 
• Anemone nemorosa, 
• V. blanda, 
• P. balsamifera, 
• Aquilegia Canadensis, 
• Hedyotiscærulea, 
• andromeda, 
• Fragaria Virginiana (?) (distinguished from the other species in fruit),
• Salix alba, 
• benzoin, 
• Amelanchier Canadensis var. Botryapium.

Peach, cultivated cherry, and the following apparently just begun: 

• Viola pedata, 
• Ostrya Virginica, 
• V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook).

And Rumex Acetosella shows red and is eight inches high on Columbine Cliff.

The expanding leaves of the sugar maples now make small crosses against the sky.

Other conspicuous green leaves are 

• the gooseberry, 
• currant, 
• elder, 
• the willows just beginning,
•  and alder, 
• and apple trees 
• and high blackberry, 
• amelanchier, 
• meadow-sweet,
•  beside many herbaceous plants.

Drosera (round leaved) leaves now.

Sedge-grass (early sedge) very abundant still.

The Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum is just ready to bloom and also the vacillans nearly.

These things observed on way To Cliffs.

The oak leaves on the plain are fallen.

The colors are now: 

• light blue above (where is my cyanometer? Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels); 
• landscape russet and greenish,
•  spotted with fawn-colored plowed lands, 
• with green pine and gray or reddish oak woods intermixed, and 
• dark-blue or slate-colored water here and there.

It is greenest in the meadows and where water has lately stood, and a strong, invigorating scent comes up from the fresh meadows.

It is like the greenness of an apple faintly or dimly appearing through the russet.

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg at the spring-house; nest of mud, lined with grass and edged with hypnum.

Channing has seen a robin's nest and eggs.

I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink.

The shrub oaks are well budded.

The young ivy leaves are red on Cliffs.

Oaks and hickory buds just ready to open.

How aromatic the balm-of-Gilead buds now! 

The large woolly ferns and others stand up a foot on banks.

The skunk-cabbage leaves green the warm, springy meads.

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? [Vide May 10th.] Apparently black, brown striped, with a yellow rump and also yellow wing, shoulders, and sides of breast, with a large black spot on breast; size of phæbe nearly; note somewhat like yellowbird. Yet I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird.

Columbine Cliff a place to look for early rue anemones and nemorosa and dandelions.

The columbines have been out some days.

How ornamental to these dark-colored perpendicular cliffs, nodding from the clefts and shelves! 

The barn swallow is about.

Have we the Viola lanceolata?  [Yes. Vide Hubbard's] 

Is not the Botryapium our earliest variety of amelanchier, and what difference in the fruit? 

Channing says he has heard the wood thrush, brown thrasher, and stake-driver (?), since I have been gone.

This and last page for birds which I find come in the interval.

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1853

I find that since I left Concord, April 11th, there have blossomed here.  See April 8, 1859 ("The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata.")

Dandelion: See April 18, 1860 ("Melvin has seen a dandelion in bloom."); April 29, 1857 ("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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Sweet-gale.  See  April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars.")

Epigæa. See April 9, 1853 ("The epigæa will not be out for some days."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Epigaea

Populus grandidentata. See April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen

Early violets: Viola ovata (Ellen Emerson found it April 20th), V. cucullata (Ellen Emerson says she saw it the 30th ult.; it is to be looked for at Depot Field Brook). See  April 19, 1858 ("Viola ovata on bank above Lee's Cliff. Edith Emerson found them there yesterday.");. April 23, 1858 (" Saw a Viola blanda in a girl's hand");   May 5, 1859  ("V. blanda and cucullata are. . .rather rare; V. pedata and lanceolata rarer yet, or not seen");  May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata ");  May 20, 1852 ("The Viola ovata is of a deep purple blue, is darkest and has most of the red in it; the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections; the cucullata is more decidedly blue, slaty-blue, and darkly striated."); May 19, 1858 (“There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (?), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circumference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue.”); May 16, 1852 (“I observe some very pale blue Viola cuculata in the meadows. ”); May 31, 1858 (“I saw . . . to-day a white V. cucullata. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Saussure invented one, and Humboldt used it in his travels. See May 4, 1853 ("He used Saussure's cyanometer even to measure the color of the sea.")

A phoebe's nest and one cream-colored white egg. See June 20, 1856 (" A phoebe nest, second time, with four cream-white eggs. . . . The second brood in the same nest.")

Was it not the black and yellow or spotted warbler I saw by the Corner Spring? . . . I think it much too dark for the myrtle-bird. See May 4, 1853 ("The myrtle-bird, which makes me think the more that I saw the black and yellow warbler on Sunday."); May 10, 1853 ("I hear , and have for a week , in the woods , the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow bird's . What is it ? Is it the redstart ? I now see one of these . The first I have distinguished . And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May 1st was this."); May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males. ")

American Redstart

Did I not see the oven-bird yesterday? See May 1, 1852 ("I think I heard an oven-bird just now, - wicher wicher whicher wich. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird

Surprised how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods

April 2. 

Cold and windy. 

April 2, 2018

2 P. M. — Thermometer 31°, or fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. 

I had expected rain to succeed the thick haze. It was cloudy behind the haze and rained a little about 9 P. M., but, the wind having gone northwest (from southwest), it turned to snow.

The shrubs whose buds had begun to unfold yesterday are the spiræa, gooseberry, lilac, and Missouri currant, — the first much the most forward and green, the rest in the order named. 

Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st. I smelled the burnt ground a quarter of a mile off. It was a very severe burn, the ground as black as a chimney-back. The fire is said to have begun by an Irishman burning brush near Wild' s house in the south part of Acton, and ran north and northeast some two miles before the southwest wind, crossing Fort Pond Brook. I walked more than a mile along it and could not see to either end, and crossed it in two places. A thousand acres must have been burned. 

The leaves being thus cleanly burned, you see amid their cinders countless mouse-galleries, where they have run all over the wood, especially in shrub oak land, these lines crossing each other every foot and at every angle. You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods, out of the way of cold and of hawks. The fire has burned off the top and half-way down their galleries. 

Every now and then we saw an oblong square mark of pale-brown or fawn-colored ashes amid the black cinders, where corded wood had been burned. In one place, though at the north edge of a wood, I saw white birch and amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire, for none of their kind is so forward elsewhere. 

This fire ran before the wind, which was southwest, and, as nearly as I remember, the fires generally at this season begin on that side, and you need to be well protected there by a plowing or raking away the leaves. Also the men should run ahead of the fire before the wind, most of them, and stop it at some cross-road, by raking away the leaves and setting back fires. 

Look out for your wood-lots between the time when the dust first begins to blow in the streets and the leaves are partly grown. 

The earliest willows are apparently in prime. 

I find that the signs of the weather in Theophrastus are repeated by many more recent writers without being referred to him or through him; e. g., by an authority quoted by Brand in his “Popular Antiquities," who evidently does not know that they are in Theophrastus. 

Talking with a farmer who was milking sixteen cows in a row the other evening, an ox near which we stood,  at the end of the row, suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side in a mechanical manner while its head was uncomfortably held between the stanchions as in a pillory. Thus man's fellow-laborer the ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave or culprit. It was evidently a difficult experiment each time to lie down at all without dislocating his neck, and his neighbors had not room to try the same at the same time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1860

Thermometer fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. See  April 2, 1852 (“The rain now turns to snow with large flakes, so soft many cohere in the air as they fall. . . . Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten.”); April 2, 1857 ("In the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep."); April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)

The great burning of the 31st. . . Look out for your wood-lots. See March 31, 1860 ("I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees,")

You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods. Compare January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. .that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

I saw amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire. See April 2, 1853 ("The amelanchier buds look more forward than those of any shrub I notice.")


The earliest willows are apparently in prime. See March 25, 1860  ("One early willow on railroad . . . just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward"); March 31, 1858 ("The most forward willow catkins are not so silvery now, more grayish, being much enlarged and the down less compact, revealing the dark scales"); April 1, 1852 ("There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above."); 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."); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far.")

A farmer who was milking sixteen cows. See January 9, 1860 ("A rich old farmer . . . milks seventeen cows regularly.")

An ox . . . suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side. See December 26, 1851 ("It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.")

It is the wind of March that makes it seem much colder than it is.

March 12. 

Sleet, turning soon to considerable rain, - a rainy day. 

Thermometer about 40, yet it seems a warm rain to walk in, it being still, while yesterday, of the same temperature, with that raw northwest wind, was cold and blustering. 

It is the wind of March that makes it unpleasant often, and to seem much colder than it is. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 12, 1860

Sleet, turning soon to considerable rain. See December 14, 1859 ( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain."); January 27, 1855 ("Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold"); February 27, 1857 (" Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified

The wind of March makes it seems colder than it is. See March 11, 1860 ("It is cold and blustering walking in the wind, though the thermometer is at 40; i. e., though the temperature is thus high, the strong and blustering northwest winds of March make this notorious March weather, which is worse to bear than severe cold without wind."). See also March 4, 1860 ("The last three have been true March days for wind."); March 6, 1855 ("Still stronger wind, shaking the house, and rather cool. This the third day of wind."): March 8, 1860 ("Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere."); March 9, 1860 ("You incline to walk now along the south side of hills which will shelter you from the blustering northwest and north winds."); March 10, 1856 ("A biting northwest wind compels to cover the ears. It is one of the hardest days of the year to bear. Truly a memorable 10th of March. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, March is famous for its winds

That raw northwest wind —

the wind of March makes it seem  

colder than it is.  

Cold and strong northwest wind

February 26

Sunday 2 P. M. — Thermometer 30; cold northwest wind. 

The water is about six inches above Hoar's steps.  That well covers the meadows generally. 

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1860

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday. See February 26, 1855 ("Still clear and cold and windy. . . . This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear. . . .Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.") See also February 9, 1856 ("How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way."); February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney."); February 17, 1860 ("Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. . . .thermometer 14º."); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter and April 15, 1860 ("Strong northwest wind and cold.. . .We are continually expecting warmer weather than we have”)

High dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice.

February 25. 

P. M. - Round via Clamshell to Hubbard's Bridge. 

Colder, and frozen ground; strong wind, northwest. 

I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth. 

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? 

It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct. As the waves rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. 

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. 

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. 

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. 

Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice.

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

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind. See 

February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? "); February 25, 1851 ("The waves on the meadows make a fine show."); March 29, 1852 ("The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind.") See alsoo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. see February 24, 1857 ("I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. “); March 10, 1854 ("See a skunk in the Corner road, which I follow. . .. It is a slender black (and white) animal, with its back remarkably arched, standing high behind and carrying its head low; runs, even when undisturbed, with singular teeter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow; I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has a long tail, which it regularly erects when I come too near and prepares to discharge its liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, and the hind head and a line on the front of the face, — the rest black, except the flesh-colored nose (and I think feet). . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Skunks Active

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind . . .those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually"); February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove.");  February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 2, 1860 ("I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.")

This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common.  . . .The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.")

“The History of Four-footed Beasts”

February 17.

P. M. — Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. 

3 P. M., thermometer 14º. A perfectly clear sky except one or two little cloud flecks in the southwest, which, when I look again after walking forty rods, have entirely dissolved. 

When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink, and even from white board fences. 

Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows. 

I hear that some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week!! It was probably a shrike . 

Minott says that he hears that Heard's testimony in regard to Concord River in the meadow case was that “it is dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle,” i.e. on account of the damage to the grass there. 

We cannot spare the very lively and lifelike descriptions of some of the old naturalists.  They sympathize with the creatures which they describe. 

The artist too has done his part equally well.

Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The History of Four-footed Beasts” says of the antelopes that “they are bred in India and Syria , near the river Euphrates," and then — which enables you to realize the living creature and its habitat — he adds, "and delight much to drink of the cold water thereof." 

The beasts which most modern naturalists describe do not delight in anything, and their water is neither hot nor cold. Reading the above makes you want to go and drink of the Euphrates yourself, if it is warm weather. 

I do not know how much of his spirit he owes to Gesner, but he proceeds in his translation to say that "they have horns growing forth of the crown of their head, which are very long and sharp; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the shields of his soldiers, and fought with them very irefully: at which time his company slew as he travelled to India, eight thousand five hundred and fifty, which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and seldom seen to this day.” 

Now here something is described at any rate; it is a real account, whether of a real animal or not. You can plainly see the horns which "grew forth” from their crowns, and how well that word “irefully” describes a beast' s fighting! And then for the number which Alexander's men slew “as he travelled to India,” — and what a travelling was that, my hearers! - eight thousand five hundred and fifty, just the number you would have guessed after the thousands were given, and [an] easy one to remember too. 

He goes on to say that “their horns are great and made like a saw, and they with them can cut asunder the branches of osier or small trees , whereby it cometh to pass that many times their necks are taken in the twists of the falling boughs , whereat the beast with repining cry, bewrayeth him self to the hunters, and so is taken.” 

The artist too has done his part equally well, for you are presented with a drawing of the beast with serrated horns, the tail of a lion, a cheek tooth (canine?) as big as a boar's, a stout front, and an exceedingly “ireful” look, as if he were facing all Alexander's army. 

Though some beasts are described in this book which have no existence as I can learn but in the imagination  of the writers, they really have an existence there, which is saying not a little, for most of our modern authors have not imagined the actual beasts which they presume to describe.

The very frontispiece is a figure of “the gorgon,” which looks sufficiently like a hungry beast covered with scales, which you may have dreamed of, apparently just fallen on the track of you, the reader, and snuffing the odor with greediness. 


These men had an adequate idea of a beast, or what a beast should be, a very bellua (the translator makes the word bestia to be “a vastando”); and they will describe and will draw you a cat with four strokes, more beastly or beast - like to look at than Mr. Ruskin's favorite artist draws a tiger. They had an adequate idea of the wildness of beasts and of men, and in their descriptions and drawings they did not always fail when they surpassed nature. 

Gesner says of apes that “they are held for a subtil, ironical, ridiculous and unprofitable beast, whose flesh is not good for meat as a sheep, neither his back for burthen as an asses, nor yet commodious to keep a house like a dog, but of the Grecians termed geloto poios, made for laughter.” As an evidence of an ape's want of “discretion” he says: “A certain ape after a shipwreck, swimming to land, was seen by a country man, who thinking him to be a man in the water gave him his hand to save him, yet in the mean time asked him what countryman he was , to which he answered that he was an Athenian: Well, said the man, dost thou know Piræus (a port in Athens)? Very well, said the ape, and his wife, friends and children. Whereat the man being moved, did what he could to drown him. ”

 “They are best contented to sit aloft although tied with chains . . . . They bring forth young ones for the most part by twins, whereof they love the one and hate the other; that which they love they bear on their arms, the other hangeth at the dam' s back, and for the most part she killeth that which she loveth, by pressing it too hard: afterward, she setteth her whole delight upon the other.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1860

When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink. See December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge");  December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.") January 31, 1859 (" The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.") and note to December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them").

Some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week! See February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.");  February 18, 1857 ("I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird. . . . I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. . . . Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird. They do not quite attain to song") See also December 18, 1859 ("I see three shrikes in different places to-day, — two on the top of apple trees, sitting still in the storm, on the lookout. They fly low to another tree when disturbed, much like a bluebird, and jerk their tails once or twice when they alight.")

February 22.

Such remarkably

pleasant weather, i  listen

for the first bluebird.

February 22, 1855

We live and walk on solidified fluids.

February 12

Return on green ice

to walk amid purple clouds

of the sunset sky. 

February 12, 1860

February 12, 2020

Sunday. 2 p. m., 22°. Walk up river to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy, — northwest.

About a quarter of an inch of snow fell last evening. This scarcely colors that part of the ground that was bare, and on all icy surfaces which are exposed to the sweep of the wind it is already distributed very regularly in thin drifts. It lies on the ice in waving lines or in lunar or semicircular, often spread-eagle, patches with very regular intervals, quite like the openings lately seen in the river when breaking up. The whole surface of the icy field is thus watered. That is, it is not collected in one place more than another, but very evenly distributed in these patches over the whole surface. 

I speak of what lies on the open ice. It comes flowing like a vapor from the northwest, low over the ice and much faster than a man walks, and a part is ever catching and lodging here and there and building a low drift, the northwest side of which will be abrupt with a sharp, beetling edge an inch or a half-inch high. No doubt these drifts are constantly changing their ground or rolling over. 

I see now that this vapor-like snow-dust is really sometimes blown up six or eight feet into the air, though for the most part it merely slides low over the ice. 

The greater part of this snow is lodged a foot deep amid the button-bushes, and there it continues to accumulate as long as the wind blows strong. 

In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. 

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky- blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water.

That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. Those are peculiar portions of the river which have thus always opened first, — been open latest and longest.

In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. 

It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. 

All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.

But to return to my walk. I proceed over the sky- blue ice, winding amid the flat drifts as if amid the clouds, now and then treading on that thin white ice (much marked) of absorbed puddles (of the surface), which crackles somewhat like dry hard biscuit. Call it biscuit ice. Some of it is full of internal eyes like bird's-eye maple, little bubbles that were open above, and elsewhere I tread on ice in which are traced all kinds of characters, Coptic and Syriac, etc.

How curious those crinkled lines in ice that has been partly rotted, reaching down half an inch per pendicularly, or else at an angle with the surface, and with a channel that may be felt above! 

There are places (a few), like that at Hubbard's Grove, commonly thin or open, leading to the shore, with the ice puffed up, as if kept open by a musquash, where apparently a spring comes in. Only betrayed by its being slow to freeze, or by the rottenness of the ice there. 

This is the least observed of all tributaries, the first evidence of a tributary. 

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. 

How unexpected is one season by another! Off Pleasant Meadow I walk amid the tops of bayonet rushes frozen in, as if the summer had been overtaken by the winter.

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the  low snow-patches. I see the color from the snow first where there is some shade, as where the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or twilight, then, is necessary, umbra mixed with the reflected sun. 

Off Holden Wood, where the low rays fall on the river from between the fringe of the wood, the snow-patches are not rose-color, but a very dark purple like a grape, and thus there are all degrees from pure white to black. 

When crossing Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow-patches are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cranberry juice. It is quite a faery scene, surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. What need to visit the crimson cliffs of Beverly? 

I thus find myself returning over a green sea, winding amid purple islets, and the low sedge of the meadow on one side is really a burning yellow. 

The hunter may be said to invent his game, as Neptune did the horse, and Ceres corn. 

It is twenty above at 5.30, when I get home. 

I walk over a smooth green sea, or aequor, the sun just disappearing in the cloudless horizon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower. It would not be more enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of the sunset sky. 

And, by the way, this is but a sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth. 

You have seen those purple fortunate isles in the sunset heavens, and that green and amber sky between them. Would you believe that you could ever walk amid those isles? You can on many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times. The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet. 

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. 

Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon they, as it were, meet and are seen to be one. 

I have walked in such a place and found it hard as marble. Not only the earth but the heavens are made our footstool.

That is what the phenomenon of ice means. The earth is annually inverted and we walk upon the sky. The ice reflects the blue of the sky. The waters become solid and make a sky below. The clouds grow heavy and fall to earth, and we walk on them. We live and walk on solidified fluids. 

We have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us. How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double! The one is on the earth around us, the other in the horizon. 

These snow-clad hills answer to the rosy isles in the west. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky. The ice is a solid sky on which we walk. It is the inverted year. 

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is for ever blue. In winter we are purified and translated. The earth does not absorb our thoughts. It becomes a Valhalla. 

Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow. 

North of the Warm Woodside (returning) is Bulrush Lagoon, — off Grindstone Meadow, — a good place for lilies; then Nut Meadow Mouth; Clamshell Bend, or Indian Bend; Sunset Reach, where the river flows nearly from west to east and is a fine sparkling scene from the hills eastward at sunset; then Hubbard's Bathing-Place, and the swift place, and Lily Bay, or Willow Bay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1860

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds See February 8, 1860 ("The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both.")

It is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. See Walden ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.")

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green . . . See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.")

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. See March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll

Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. See Walking ("I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is, —I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the 'woods?") See also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.")

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term See January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .") March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race.")

The phenomenon of ice . . . We live and walk on solidified fluids. See January 31, 1859 ("Surely the ice is a great and absorbing phenomenon. Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies, how much attention it monopolizes! We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue. See September 9, 1851 (" Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day"); February 3. 1852 ("Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? dark blue? Is it not always bluer when the ground is covered with snow in the winter than in summer?"); February 4, 1852 ("The sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.); February 5, 1852 ("The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day."). See also May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night."); January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day.") and  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

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 ©  2009-2023

No finer walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day.

February 10

A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. 

I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. 

P. M. — The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. 

It is a day for those rake and horn icicles; the water, dashing against the southeast shores where they chance to be open, i. e. free of ice, and blown a rod inland, freezes to the bushes, forming rakes and oftener horns. If twigs project above the ice-belt thus: the water freezes over them thus : — The very grass stubble is completely encased for a rod in width along the shore, and the trunks of trees for two or three feet up. 

Any sprig lying on the edge of the ice is completely crusted. Sometimes the low button-bush twigs with their few remaining small dark balls, and also the drooping corymbs of the late rose hips, are completely encased in an icicle, and you see their bright scarlet reflected through the ice in an exaggerated manner. 

If a hair is held up above the ice where this spray is blowing, it is sufficient to start a thick icicle rake or horn, for the ice forming around it becomes at once its own support, and gets to be two or three inches thick. 

Where the open water comes within half a dozen feet of the shore, the spray has blown over the intervening ice and covered the grass and stubble, looking like a glaze, — countless loby fingers and horns over some fine stubble core, — and when the grass or stem is horizontal you have a rake. Just as those great organ-pipe icicles drip from rocks have an annular structure growing downward, so these on the horizontal stubble and weeds, when directed to the point toward which the wind was blowing; i. e., they grow thus southeast. 

Then there is the thickened edge of the ice, like a cliff, on the southeast sides of openings against which the wind has dashed the waves, especially on the southeast side of broad meadows.

No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. If the ice is wet, you slip in rubbers; but when it is dry and cold, rubbers give you a firm hold, and you walk with a firm and elastic step. I do not know of any more exhilarating walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day when your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice. 

I see that the open places froze last night only on the windward side, where they were less agitated, the waves not yet running so high there. 

A little snow, however, even the mere shavings or dust of ice made by skaters, hinders walking in rubbers very much, for though the rubber may give a good hold on clear ice, when you step on a little of the ice dust or snow you slide on that. 

Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold, and this shows that they were not forced up accidentally in the first place, but attracted by the light and warmth, probably as those minnows were some time ago. That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1860

A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. See February 10, 1858 ("Grows cold toward night, and windy."); see also February 3, 1856 (“The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”); February 13, 1856 (“Grew cold again last night, with high wind. . . . I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter.”) and note to November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest")

Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last  spring, — their first awakening. See  February 4, 1852 ("Anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually; . . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them. "); February 25, 1860 ("The first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind");  March 20, 1853 ("In this spring breeze, how full of life the silvery pines.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: First silvery sheen from needles of the white pine waving in the wind

The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high See  March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”); April 9, 1859( "For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high from the north west, making high waves and much shadow.”); May 8, 1854 ("They are melaina . . .  This is our black sea"); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about . . . and see the waves look so angry and black.”)

Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. See Theophrastus On Colors (“Darkness is due to privation of light. For we see black under three different conditions. Either (1) the object of vision is naturally quite black (for black light is always reflected from black objects); or (2) no light at all passes to the eyes from the object (for an invisible object surrounded by a visible patch looks black) ; and (3) objects always appear black to us when the light reflected from them is very rare and scanty. This last condition is the reason why shadows appear black. It also explains the blackness of ruffled water, e.g. of the sea when a ripple passes over it: owing to the roughness of the surface few rays of light fall on the water and the light is dissipated, and so the part which is in shadow appears black.”)

No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. See February 9, 1851 ("It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); see also note to February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer.")

In a thaw in the winter some water-insects will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun. See February 8, 1860 ("About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice"); March 18, 1856 ("Here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10

A strong northwest wind

shaking the house and driving

smoke down the chimney.

No finer walking  

this glittering winter day –

a broad field of ice.

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 © 2009-2026