A Book of the Seasons, Signs of the Spring: ripples made by fishes

 

No mortal is alert enough 

to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857

No wonder we feel the spring influences. 

There is a motion in the very ground under our feet. 

Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it. 

March 20, 1858

Sandy-bottomed brook

flowing cold from ice and snow —

fins poised over sand!

March 19, 1854

March 19, 2015

February 1.  Nut Meadow Brook open for some distance in the meadow. I am affected by the sight of some green polygonum leaves there. Some kind of minnow darts off. February 1, 1856 

February 23.   I have seen signs of the spring.  February 23, 1857

February 25. Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. February 25, 1856

March 7. 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. March 7, 1855

March 8.  I walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc.  March 8, 1855

March 9. I detect the trout minnows not an inch long by their quick motions or quirks, soon concealing themselves. March 9, 1854

March 11. Snow and ice together make a curtain twenty-eight inches thick now drawn over the pond. Such is the prospect of the fishes!   March 11, 1856

March 15.  The trout darts away in the puny brook there so swiftly in a zigzag course that commonly I only see the ripple that he makes, in proportion, in this brook only a foot wide, like that made by a steamer in a canal. Or if I catch a glimpse of him before he buries himself in the mud, it is only a dark film without distinct outline. By his zigzag course he bewilders the eye, and avoids capture perhaps. March 15, 1857

March 16. Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing . . . It is remarkable that they find their finny prey on the middle of the meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, as I afterward saw, though the water is quite low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. I never see them fish thus in the channel. Perhaps the fishes lie up there for warmth already. March 16, 1860 

March 18.  Nut Meadow Brook is open for a dozen rods from its mouth, and for a rod into the river . . . I see the ripples made by some fishes, which were in the small opening at its mouth, making haste to hide themselves in the ice-covered river. This square rod and one or two others like it in the town are the only places where I could see this phenomenon now. Thus early they appear, ready to be the prey of the fish hawk. Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long, amid or over the bare dead stems of polygonums, and one or two little water-bugs (apple seeds). The last also in the broad ditch on the Corner road, in Wheeler’s meadow.  Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun. March 18, 1856

March 19.  See in Mill Brook behind Shannon's three or four shiners (the first), poised over the sand with a distinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it. This is a noteworthy and characteristic lineament, or cipher, or hieroglyphic, or type, of spring.  You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent, as if the material of which it was builded had all been picked up from them. March 19, 1854

March 19.  No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, and thus early, perchance, may become the prey of the fish hawk. They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach. March 19, 1856

March 19.  I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker.  March 19, 1857

March 19.  I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible.  March 19, 1860

March 20. The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. March 20, 1853

March 20. [The dead sucker phenomenon] is confined to the very earliest spring or winter. March 20, 1857 

March 20. In the sluiceway of Pole Brook, by the road just beyond, I found . . . a dozen (or more) willow sticks, as big one's finger or larger, being set small end down in a circle, in a thin round board which made the bottom, and then smaller osiers interwoven at right angles with them, close and firm. Another funnel-shaped basket was secured within this, extending about half-way down it. . . with an opening hardly two inches wide at the bottom, where only a dozen sharped sticks approached each other. There was a square door in the board bottom, by which the fishes could be taken out. This was set in that sluice way, with the mouth or broad end down-stream, all sunk beneath the surface, the fishes being now evidently running up the brooks from the river and ponds, the ice being mostly gone out of the meadows and brooks. We raised this and found eight or ten small pickerel in it, the biggest a foot long.  March 20, 1858

March 20. The fishes are going up the brooks as they open. They are dispersing themselves through the fields and woods, imparting new life into them. They are taking their places under the shelving banks and in the dark swamps. The water running down meets the fishes running up. They hear the latest news. Spring-aroused fishes are running up our veins too. Little fishes are seeking the sources of the brooks, seeking to disseminate their principles. Talk about a revival of religion! and business men's prayer-meetings! with which all the country goes mad now! What if it were as true and wholesome a revival as the little fishes feel which come out of the sluggish waters and run up the brooks toward their sources? All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new life, but with these churchgoers it is only a revival of religion or hypocrisy. They go down stream to still muddier waters. It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun. The fish lurks by the mouth of its native brook, watching its opportunity to dart up the stream by the cakes of ic . . . No wonder we feel the spring influences. There is a motion in the very ground under our feet. Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it.. March 20, 1858

March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . As for fishes, etc., trout glance in the brooks , brook minnows are seen; see furrows on sandy bottoms, and small shell snails copulate; dead suckers, etc. , are seen floating on meadows; pickerel and perch are running up brooks, and suckers (24th) and pickerel begin to dart in shallows.  March 22, 1860

March 27. I saw on the 22d a sucker which apparently had been dead a week or two at least. Therefore they must begin to die late in the winter. March 27,1858

March 28.  I can remember now some thirty years — after a fashion — of life in Concord, and every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows. This phenomenon of dead suckers is as constant as the phenomenon of living ones; nay, as a phenomenon it is far more apparent . . . When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring. Thus they have fallen on fate. And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here.   March 28, 1857 

March 29.  The trout glances like a film from side to side and under the bank. March 29, 1853

March 30.   It is a little warmer than of late, though still the shallows are skimmed over. The pickerel begin to dart from the shallowest parts not frozen.  March 30, 1855

*****

So I came in and

shut the door and passed my first

spring night in the woods.

Walden, Spring

See also

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

and Signs of the Spring:

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

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

 Ripples made by Fishes

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/HDTfishes

Willow catkins show red and yellowish pushed out half an inch or more.

February 22

I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road, about half-way up the hill. They dig under the frozen surface and then crack it off with iron wedges, with much labor, in pieces from three to six feet square. It was eighteen inches thick and more there thicker higher up, not so thick lower down the hill. 

Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant. This was the way the wound was healed. The cut surface of the stump was completely and thickly covered. 

Our neighbor Wetherbee was J. Moore's companion when he took that great weight of pickerel this winter. He says it was fifty-six pounds in Flint's, in one day, and that four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. 

February 22, 2020

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two, and the willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 22, 1854

The frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road. See January 9, 1856 ("In passing through the deep cut on the new Bedford road, I saw that a little sand, which was pretty coarse, almost gravel, had fallen from the bank, and was blown over the snow, here and there.")

That winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers. See October 10, 1858 ("The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute . . . T]he humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind.")

Four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. See December 29, 1858 ("Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long."); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once . . . which weighed four pounds . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”); May 4, 1858 (" A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds"); April 3, 1859 ("I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Pickerel

My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two.  See March 6, 1853 ("Last Sunday I plucked some alder twigs, some aspen, and some swamp willow, and put them in water in a warm room, Immediately the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen"); March 10, 1853 ("The alder's catkins — the earliest of them — are very plainly expanding, or, rather, the scales are loose and separated, and the whole catkin relaxed."); March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

The willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish. See February 19, 1857 ("Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather.");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now . . . 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

Willow catkins show

red and yellowish pushed out

half an inch or more.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Willow catkins show

red and yellowish 

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-540222

A springlike afternoon.

January 25


P. M. — To Flint's Pond, down railroad.

January 25, 2022

There is something springlike in this afternoon. In winter, after middle, we are interested in what is springlike. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.

The banks seem to lie in the embrace of the sun. The ground is partly bare. The cress is fresh and green at the bottoms of the brooks.

What is that long-leaved green plant in the brook in Hosmer's meadow on the Turnpike?

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.

There are temporary ponds in the fields made by the rain and melted snow, which hardly have time [to] freeze, they soak up so fast.

As I go up Bare Hill, there being only snow enough there to whiten the ground, the last year's stems of the blueberry (vacillans) give a pink tinge to the hillside, reminding me of red snow, though they do not semble it.

I am surprised to see Flint's Pond a quarter part open, — the middle. Walden, which froze much later, is nowhere open. But Flint's feels the wind and is shallow.

I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds, an inch and more in diameter, with short, apparently abortive leaves from some. The leaves were nearly all single, as in the plants of one or two years' growth, and were finely serrate or toothed, pectinate (?).

On the lot I surveyed for Weston I found the chestnut oak (though the teeth are sharper than E.'s plate), a handsome leaf, still on the young trees. I had taken it for a chestnut before. It is hard to distinguish them by the trunk alone.

I found some barberry sprouts where the bushes had been cut down not long since, and they were covered with small withered leaves be set with stiff prickles on their edges, and you could see the thorns, as it were gradually passing into leaves, being, as one stage, the nerves of the leaf alone, — starlike and branched thorns, gradually, as. you descended the stem, getting some pulp between them. I suppose it was owing to the shortening them in.

I still pick chestnuts.

Some larger ones proved to contain double meats, divided, as it were arbitrarily, as with a knife, each part having the common division without the brown skin transverse to this.


The pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, they are so foreign to the streets, or even the woods; handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty which separates [them] by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock, at least a day old, which we see.

They are as foreign as Arabia to our Concord life, as if the two ends of the earth had come together. These are not green like the pines, or gray like the stones, or blue like the sky; but they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stones.

It is surprising that these fishes are caught here. They are something tropical. That in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims!

They are true topazes, inasmuch as you can only conjecture what place they came from. The pearls of Walden, some animalized Walden water. I never chanced to see this kind of fish in any market.

With a few convulsive quirks they give up their diluted ghosts.

I have noticed that leaves are green and violets bloom later where a bank has been burnt over in the fall, as if the fire warmed it. I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica.

Young white oaks retain their leaves, and large ones on their lower parts.

• Swamp white oak (?)
• Very young rock chestnut oaks 
• The little chinquapin (?) 
• The bear oak 
• The scarlet oak (?) 
• The red 
• The black (?), young trees 
• The witch-hazel, more or less 
• Carpinus Americana 
• Ostrya Virginica, somewhat 
• Sweet-fern, more or less 
• Andromeda 
• Andromeda, panicled (?)
• Kalmia latifolia 
• Kalmia angustifolia 
• Cranberry 

The above are such as I think of which wear their leaves conspicuously now.

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

There is something springlike in this afternoon. See January 25, 1852 ("It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon . . . The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer.") ); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Warmth of the Sun;'; Compare January 25, 1854 ("A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens But this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy. "); January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°, ours in bulb; but about seven, ours was at -8° and Smith's at -24; ours therefore at first about -23°.")

The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen.”)

 I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds. See January 23, 1852 ("I see where . . . in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow"); March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")

The pickerel of Walden! See January 29, 1853("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon . . .all the fishes which in habit this pond, are as much handsomer than ordinary, as the water is purer than that of other ponds.") See  also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel and Walden ("Ah, the pickerel of Walden! . . . ")

I saw to-day, where a creeping juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of johnswort, thistle, clover, dandelion, etc., as well as sorrel and veronica. See December 23, 1855 ("At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, mullein, columbine, veronica, thyme-leaved sandwort, spleenwort, strawberry, buttercup, radical johnswort, mouse-ear, radical pinweeds, cinquefoils, checkerberry, Wintergreen, thistles, catnip, Turritis strictae specially fresh and bright."); January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew"); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed."); February 27, 1860 ("Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle")

January 25. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 25

Springlike afternoon –

earth and sun appear to have

approached some degrees.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A springlike afternoon.

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-530125

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers.

June 27

 4. 30 A. M. – To Island by river.

The cuckoo’s nest is robbed, or perhaps she broke her egg because I found it.

Thus three out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have been broken up.

It is a very shallow nest, six or seven inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within ; concealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on the edge of the river meadow, two to three feet from ground, made of slender twigs which are prettily ornamented with much ramalina lichen, lined with hickory catkins and pitch pine needles.

I have described the rest before.

Saw a little pickerel with a minnow in his mouth.

It was a beautiful little silver-colored minnow, two inches long, with a broad stripe down the middle.

The pickerel held [it] crosswise near the tail, as he had seized it, and as I looked down on him, he worked the minnow along in his mouth toward the head, and then swallowed it head foremost.

Was this instinct? 

Fishermen should consider this in giving form to their bait. The pickerel does not swallow the bait at once, but first seizes it, then probably decides how it can best be swallowed, and no doubt he lets go again in disgust some baits of which he can make neither head nor tail.

The radical leaves (four?) of the floating-heart are triangularly or wedge ovate, on petioles one to two inches long.

The two large potamogetons now common on river  the smaller apparently not long in flower), with ovate or elliptical floating leaves sometimes salmon color, belong to one or two of the first three of Gray.

The smaller has its immersed leaves long, narrowly linear, and semicylindrical ; those of the largest are pellucid, lanceolate, and waved.

That sort of ostrich feather on the bottom appears to be the Potamogeton Robbinsii.

What is that foul, submerged, densely whorled and capillary-leaved and forked utricularia like but bladderless plant? Then there is a pinnate and cut- leafed plant on the bottom.

Is it radical leaves of a proserpinaca? or a milfoil? I find a little bug between the calyx and petals of white lilies which have not opened. It has eaten holes in them.

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers.

  

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1853

The dogsbane is one of the more interesting little flowers. See April 24, 1856 (“See a dog’s-bane with two pods open and partially curved backward on each side, but a third not yet open. This soon opens and scatters its down and seeds in my chamber. The outside is a dull reddish or mahogany-color, but the inside is a singularly polished very pale brown. The inner bark of this makes a strong twine like that of the milkweed.”); June 15, 1852 (“Dogsbane is just ready to open.”); June 21, 1852 (“It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year, , ,. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here.”); July 2, 1858 (“the A. androsoemifolium, quite downy beneath.”); July 3, 1853 ("Dogsbane and Jersey tea are among the prevailing flowers now.");August 1, 1858 (“the common apocynum (also in bloom as well as going and gone to seed) are very common.”);  August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”).; August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”) See also notes to August 5, 1856 (“At the Assabet stone bridge, apparently freshly in flower, — though it may have been out nearly as long as the androscemifolium, — apparently the Apocynum var. hypericifolium (?)”) and to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time.

April 1. 

Sunday. Warm, with the thick haze still concealing the sun. 

Worm-piles abundant this morning. 

Our gooseberry begins to show a little green, but not our currant. 

3 P. M. — Up Assabet in boat. 

There is another fire in the woods this afternoon. It is yet more hazy than before, — about as thick as a fog, and apparently clouds behind it. 

Still warmer than yesterday, — 71 at 3 P. M. 

The river was lowest for March yesterday, viz. just three feet below Hoar's wall. It is so low that the mouths of the musquash-burrows in the banks are exposed with the piles of shells before them. 

Willows about the stump on S. Brown's land are very well out. Are they discolor? 

The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness. 

A kingfisher seen and heard. 

As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles -- the first I have noticed — and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, and see where they have travelled over the sand and the mud. This and the previous two days have brought them out in numbers. Also see the sternothærus on the bottom.

The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks, for thirty rods or more visible at once, reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be. The sawdust adheres to the perfectly upright bank and probably marks the standstill or highest water for the time. This level line drawn by Nature is agreeable to behold. 

The large Rana fontinalis sits enjoying the warmth on the muddy shore. I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. 

Hear the hum of bees on the maples. 

Rye-fields look green. 

Pickerel dart, and probably have some time. 

The sweet-gale is almost in bloom; say next pleasant day. [It sheds its pollen the same night in my chamber, — from the old mill-site, north side.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1860

The red maple buds are considerably expanded, and no doubt make a greater impression of redness. See April 10, 1853 ( "The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open.")

As we paddle up the Assabet we hear the wood turtles and painted turtles rustling down the bank into the water, This and the previous two days have brought them out in numbers. See  April 1, 1858 ("See wood turtles coupled on their edges at the bottom, where the stream has turned them up.") See also  March 31, 1858 ("The painted and wood turtles have seemed to be out in surprising abundance at an unusually early date this year, but I think I can account for it. The river is remarkably low," ) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. See March 23, 1859 ("While reconnoitring there, we hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods."); March 31, 1855 (“I go listening for the croak of the first frog, or peep of a hylodes."); March 31, 1857 (“How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal."); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time.")

The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . . .reminding you of a coarse chalk line made by snapping a string, not more than half an inch wide much of it, but more true than that would be. See April 1, 1858 ("The river is at summer level. . . . It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”) See also November 23, 1853 ("What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature.") and alao A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks.

The large Rana fontinalis sits enjoying the warmth on the muddy shore. See March 22. 1860 ("The yellow-spot turtle and wood turtle, Rana fontinalis, and painted tortoise come forth."); March 24, 1859 ("There sits also on the bank of the ditch a Rana fontinalis, and it is altogether likely they were this species that leaped into a ditch on the 10th. This one is mainly a bronze brown, with a very dark greenish snout, etc., with the raised line down the side of the back. This, methinks, is about the only frog which the marsh hawk could have found hitherto."); April 5, 1858 ("What I call the young bullfrog, about two and a half inches long, — though it has no yellow on throat. It has a bright-golden ring outside of the iris as far as I can see round it. Is this the case with the bullfrog? May it not be a young Rana fontinalis? No yellow to throat.."); See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Identifying the Green Frog in Spring.

Hear the hum of bees on the maples. See April 1, 1858 ("The white maples are abundantly out to-day. . . .We hold the boat beneath one, surprised to hear the resounding hum of honey-bees, which are busy about them,"); April 1, 1852 ('' Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad causeway,") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, White Maple Buds and Flowers

The sweet-gale is almost in bloom; say next pleasant day. See April 22, 1855 ("The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars")

Walden apparently froze over last night.

January 6. 

Walden apparently froze over last night. 

It is but little more than an inch thick, and two or three square rods by Hubbard's shore are still open. A dark, transparent ice. It would not have frozen entirely over, as it were in one night, or maybe a little more, and yet have been so thin next the shore as well as in the middle, if it had not been so late in the winter, and so ready to freeze. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking. 

As I walked along the edge, I started out three little pickerel no longer than my finger from close to the shore, which went wiggling into deeper water like bloodsuckers or pollywogs. 

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles which I had thought were within its own substance are against its under surface, and that they are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, apparently, and very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice (perhaps an inch and an eighth), from one eightieth of an inch in diameter, or a mere point, up to one eighth of an inch. 

There are thirty or forty of these, at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop. There are, also, within the substance of the ice, oblong perpendicular bubbles half an inch long, more or less, by about one thirtieth of an inch, and these are commonly widest at the bottom (?), or, oftener, separate minute spherical bubbles of equal or smaller diameter, one directly above another, like a string of beads, perhaps the first stage of the former. But these internal bubbles are not nearly so numerous as those in the water beneath. 

It may be twenty-four hours since the ice began to form decidedly. 

I see, on the sandy bottom a few inches beneath, the white cases of caddis-worms made of the white quartz sand or pebbles. And the bottom is very much creased or furrowed where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks, — perhaps the caddis-worm, for I find one or two of the same in the furrows, though the latter are deep and broad for them to make. 

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost, the leaves a third of an inch long, shaped somewhat like this, with triangular points, but very thin. Another morning there will be no frost. 

I forgot to say yesterday that I picked up four pignuts by the squirrel's hole, from which he had picked the meat, having gnawed a hole about half the diameter of the nut in width on each side. After I got home I observed that in each case the holes were on the sides of the nut and not on the edges, and I cut into a couple with my knife in order to see certainly which was the best way to get at the meat. 

Cutting into the edge, I came upon the thick partition which runs the whole length of the nut, and then came upon the edges of the meats, and finally was obliged to cut away a good part of the nut on both edges before I could extract the meat, because it was held by the neck in the middle. 

But when I cut holes on the sides, not only the partitions I met with were thin and partial, but I struck the meats broadside and extracted them with less trouble. It may be that it is most convenient for the squirrel to hold the nut thus, but I think there is a deeper reason than that. 

I observe that, out of six whole pignuts which I picked from a tree, three are so cracked transversely to the division of the meat that I can easily pry them open with my knife. 

They hang on as food for animals.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1853

Walden apparently froze over last night. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it."); . January 2, 1853 ("Walden begins to freeze in the coves or shallower water on the north side, where it was slightly skimmed over several weeks ago"); January 3, 1853 ("Walden not yet frozen.")

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice. June 3, 1854 ("On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head).")

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 6.

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 © 2009-2022