People do not remember so great a flood.

April 23.

The water has risen one and a half inches at six this morning since last night. It is now, then, eight and a half inches above the iron truss, i. e. the horizontal part of it. There is absolutely no passing, in carriages or otherwise, over Hubbard's and the Red Bridge roads, and over none of the bridges for foot- travellers. Throughout this part of the country most people do not remember so great a flood, but, judging from some accounts, it was probably as high here thirty-five years ago. 

The willow catkins have made but little progress for a week. They have suffered from the cold rain and wind, and are partly blasted. 

It is a pleasant sight, among the pleasantest, at this season, to see the at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine from amidst the downy fog, turning a more and more lively yellow as the pollen appears, – like a flash of sulphur. It is like the sun bursting out of a downy cloud or mists.

I hear this morning, in the pine woods above the railroad bridge, for the first time, that delicious cool-sounding wetter-wetter-wetter-wetter-wet’ from that small bird (pine warbler ?) in the tops of the pines. I associate it with the cool, moist, evergreen spring woods. 

The wood pewee [?} on an elm sings now peer-r-weet peer-r-weet, peer-wee’. It is not the simple peer-r-wet peer-r-wee' that I heard at first. Will it not change next to that more tender strain? 

Vegetation starts when the earth's axis is sufficiently inclined; i. e. it follows the sun. Insects and all the smaller animals (as well as many larger) follow vegetation. The fishes, the small fry, start probably for this reason; worms come out of the trees; buffaloes finally seek new pastures; water-bugs appear on the water, etc., etc. Next, the large fish and fish hawks, etc., follow the small fry; flycatchers follow the insects and worms. (The granivorous birds, who can depend on the supplies of dry seeds of last year, are to some extent independent of the seasons, and can remain through the winter or come early in the spring, and they furnish food for a few birds of prey at that season.) Indians follow the buffaloes; trout, suckers, etc., follow the water-bugs, etc.; reptiles follow vegetation, insects, and worms; birds of prey, the fly- catchers, etc. Man follows all, and all follow the sun.

The greater or less abundance of food determines migrations. If the buds are deceived and suffer from frost, then are the birds. The great necessary of life for the brute creation is food; next, perhaps, shelter, i.e. a suitable climate; thirdly, perhaps, security from foes.

The storm may be said to have fairly ended last night. I observed yesterday that it was drier in most fields, pastures, and even meadows that were not reached by the flood, immediately after this remarkable fall of water than at the beginning. The condition of the fields has been steadily improving for walkers. I think one reason is that there was some frost in the ground which the rain melted, so that the ground soaked up the water. But no doubt it goes to prove dryness of our sandy soil and absence of springs. 

At 6 P. M. the water has fallen an inch and a half.

Heard the pigeon woodpecker today, that long-continued unmusical note, somewhat like a robin's, heard afar, yet pleasant to hear because associated with a more advanced stage of the season. 

Saw the Fringilla hyemalis to-day, lingering still.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1852

The water has risen one and a half inches at six this morning since last night.  See April 22, 1852 ("This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . The water at 6 P. M. is one and a half inches higher than in the morning , i.e. seven inches above the iron truss.") See also April 22, 1856 ("These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize the season."); April 22, 1857 ("The river higher than before and rising."); April 22, 1859 ("This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind."); April 22, 1861 ("It was high water again about a week ago.")

People do not remember so great a flood, but, judging from some accounts, it was probably as high here thirty-five years ago. See August 25, 1856 ("I was suggesting yesterday, as I have often before, that the town should provide a stone monument to be placed in the river . . . to record each high or low stage of the water. Now, when we have a remarkable freshet, we cannot tell surely whether it is higher than the one thirty or sixty years ago or not. ")

The at first reddish anthers of the sterile catkins of our earliest willow bursting forth on their upper sides like rays of sunshine See April 12, 1852 ("Saw the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day . . . The yellow blossom appears first on one side of the ament and is the most of bright and sunny color the spring has shown, the most decidedly flower-like that I have seen. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); April 16, 1852 ("That large early swamp (?) willow catkin (the sterile blossom) opens on one side like a tinge of golden sunlight, the yellow anthers bursting through the down that invests the scales.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding 

In the pine woods above the railroad bridge, for the first time, that delicious cool-sounding wetter-wetter-wetter-wetter-wet’ from that small bird. See April 11, 1856 ("And hear in the old place, the pitch pine grove on the bank by the river, the pleasant ringing note of the pine warbler. Its a-che, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vitter vitter, vet rings through the open pine grove very rapidly. I also heard it at the old place by the railroad, as I came along. It is remarkable that I have so often heard it first in these two localities"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

Will it not change next to that more tender strain?  See note to April 14, 1852 ("I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?")

All follow the sun. See September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! . . . As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons . . . The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay.”);  March 18, 1856 (“Two little water-bugs . . . here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun.”); April 24, 1854 ("The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile. Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat"); April 26, 1854 ("The buds start, then the insects, then the birds."); September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

Heard the pigeon woodpecker today. See  April 23, 1855 ("Saw two pigeon woodpeckers approach and, I think, put their bills together and utter that o-week, o-week.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

April 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 23

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, People do not remember so great a flood

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

As the wise is not anxious that time wait for him, neither does he wait for it

September 17

Septmeber 17, 2019

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace.

The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity.

All her operations seem separately, for the time, the single object for which all things tarry.

Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed?

Let him consume never so many æons, so that he go about the meanest task well, though it be but the paring of his nails.

If the setting sun seems to hurry him to improve the day while it lasts, the chant of the crickets fails not to reassure him, even-measured as of old, teaching him to take his own time henceforth forever.

The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. 

He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step.

As the wise is not anxious that time wait for him, neither does he wait for it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 17, 1839

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. See September 17, 1857 ("How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone."); September 10, 1860 ("Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day,"); September 24, 1859 ("Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry. The earth moves round the sun with inconceivable rapidity, and yet the surface of the lake is not ruffled by it. "); see also September 13, 1852 ("The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay."); July 19, 1851 ("This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me?"); August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other."); April 24, 1859 ("Man's moods and thoughts revolve just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s."); and also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature

As the Seasons revolve.

Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. 

As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons,

 so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable. 

In the moment, in the eon, time ever advances with this rapidity. 

September 13, 1852 

September

The plant waits a whole year,

 and then blossoms the instant it is ready

 and the earth is ready for it, 

without the conception of delay.

 September 13, 1852 

How perfectly each plant has its turn! – 

as if the seasons revolved for it alone.  

September 17, 1857

Nature never makes haste; 

her systems revolve at an even pace. 

The bud swells imperceptibly, 

without hurry or confusion, 

as though the short spring days were an eternity. 

Why, then, should man hasten 

as if anything less than eternity 

were allotted for the least deed?

September 17, 1839

The wise man is restful, 

never restless or impatient. 

He each moment abides there where he is, 

as some walkers actually rest

 the whole body at each step. 

September 17, 1839 

October

The seasons

and all their changes

are in me.

October 26, 1857

November

November twilight, 

clear white light seen through the woods,

the leaves being gone. 

November 2, 1853

November's bare bleak 

inaccessible beauty 

seen through a clear air. 

November 22, 1860

The bare, barren earth 

cheerless without ice and snow. 

But how bright the stars. 

November 27, 1853

December

Suddenly we have passed 

from Indian summer to winter. 

December 5, 1859 

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. 

It was summer, and now again it is winter. 

December 7, 1856

January

January 16.

The tree sparrow

comes from the north in winter

to get its dinner.

January 16, 1860 

January 23.

Walking on the ice

by the side of the river

I recommence life.

January 23, 1860

After December all 

weather that is not wintry 

is springlike. 

January 8, 1860

Between winter and summer there is, 

to my mind, an immeasurable interval.

January 24, 1858 

 Mercury down to 13° below zero.  

I say, "Let us sing winter." 

What else can we sing, 

and our voices be in harmony 

with the season?  

January 30, 1854

February

Is not January the hardest month to get through? 

When you have weathered that, 

you get into the gulfstream of winter, 

nearer the shores of spring.

February 2, 1854

Though the days are much longer now

the cold sets in stronger than ever. 

The rivers and meadows are frozen.

That earth is effectually buried.

It is midwinter.

 February 9, 1851

Sunlight thawing snow

 strangely excites a springlike

melting in my thoughts.

February 12, 1856

The northerly wind

roaring in the woods to-day

reminds me of March.

February 20, 1855

  

It is a moderately cool 

and pleasant day 

near the end of winter. 

We have almost completely forgotten summer.

 February 27, 1852

March

No mortal is alert enough

 to be present at the first dawn of the spring. 

March 17, 1857

Each new year is a surprise to us. 

We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, 

and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. 

March 18, 1858

Distant mountaintop

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

April

Something reminds me

of the song of the robin –

rainy days, past springs.

April 2, 1854

Man's moods and thoughts revolve

 just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.

April 24, 1859

Let the season rule us. 

Find your eternity in each moment.

April 24, 1859

May

Our moods vary from week to week, 

with the winds and the temperature 

and the revolution of the seasons. 

It is impossible to remember a week ago.  

 May 9, 1852 

Every new flower that opens, no doubt, 

expresses a new mood of the human mind. 

 May 23, 1853 

June

Each season is but an infinitesimal point.

 It no sooner comes than it is gone. 

It has no duration.  

June 6, 1857

 When the frogs dream, 

and the grass waves, 

and the buttercups toss their heads, 

and the heat disposes to bathe 

in the ponds and streams

 then is summer begun. 

June 8, 1850

July

The spring now seems far behind, 

yet I do not remember the interval. 
July 2, 1854

We have become accustomed to the summer. 

It has acquired a certain eternity. 

July 5, 1852 

This rapid revolution of nature, 

even of nature in me, 

why should it hurry me? 

July 19, 1851

Yesterday it was spring, 

and to-morrow it will be autumn. 

Where is the summer then? 

 July 19, 1851

Late rose now in prime.

The memory of roses

along the river.

July 23, 1860

August

It is one long acclivity 

from winter to midsummer 

and another long declivity 

from midsummer to winter. 

August 5, 1854 

The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, 

and therefore Nature rests no longer 

at her culminating point

 than at any other.

  August 19, 1851

*****

All these times and places 

and occasions 

are now and here. 

God Himself culminates

 in the present moment.  

Walden

See also

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, There was an artist in the City of Kouroo

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

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

Thermometers, hygrometers, and barometers. Frogs of Massachusetts

May 6 

I heard from time to time a new note from my Rana palustris in the firkin in my chamber. It was that strong vibratory purr or prr-r-r-a-a-a, as if it began with a p, lasting two or three seconds and sometimes longer. In the firkin near my bed, it sounded just like a vibrating sliver which struck hard and rapidly against the rail [it] belonged to, – dry, like a fine and steady watchman's rattle sounding but little while. I recognized it as a sound I hear along the riverside. It was like the tut tut tut more sharply and very rapidly or closely sounded perchance; perhaps even like the tapping of a woodpecker. Yes, quite like it thus close by. 

This morning that spawn laid night before last has expanded to three and a half inches in diameter. 

P. M. — To Trillium Wood. 

It is a muggy and louring afternoon, and I go looking for toad spawn and for frogs. 

In all cases in which I have noticed frogs coupled this year, — the sylvatica, halecina, and palustris, - the female has been considerably the largest. 

The most common frog that I get sight of along the brooks and ditches this afternoon, and indeed for some weeks in similar localities and even in some parts of the river shore, is what I have called the young R. pipiens, with commonly a dull-green head and sides of head, sometimes bright green, and back dusky-spotted. Can this be the bull frog? Is it not the fontinalis with less bright green and a white throat? Sometimes it is yellow-throated. 

I saw lately in the river a full-grown bullfrog, with, I think, a white throat. I see a Rana sylvatica by a ditch in Stow’s meadow, fifteen rods from the (Trillium) Wood. 

The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow. 

A boy brings me to-day an Attacus Cecropia moth which has come out of a cocoon in his trunk. It is, I think, the male, a dark brown above, and considerably larger than mine. It must be about seven inches in alar extent. 

Minott remembers the Rana palustris, or yellow legged one, as “ the one that stinks so,” as if that scent were peculiar to it. I suppose it is. He says that the white-legged one (the halecina) was preferred for invalids, i. e. their legs, as being sweeter. He says that there used to be a great many more bullfrogs than there are now, and what has got them he does not know. 

About 9 P. M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. Just there, however, I did not hear much of the toad, but rather from the road, but I heard the steady peeping of innumerable hylodes for a background to the palustris snoring, further over the meadow. 

There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, the very sounds that mine made in my chamber last night, and probably it began in earnest last evening on the river. It is a hard, dry, unmusical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion, lasting say some four or five seconds usually. The rhythm of it is like that of the toads’ ring, but not the sound. This is considerably like that of the tree-toad, when you think of it critically, after all, but is not so musical or sonorous as that even. There is an occasional more articulate, querulous, or rather quivering, alarm note such as I have described (May 2d). 

Each shore of the river now for its whole length is all alive with this stertorous purring. It is such a sound as I make in my throat when I imitate the growling of wild animals. I have heard a little of it at intervals for a week, in the warmest days, but now at night it [is] universal all along the river. If the note of the R. halecina, April 3d, was the first awakening of the river meadows, this is the second, —considering the hylodes and toads less (?) peculiarly of the river meadows. Yet how few distinguished this sound at all, and I know not one who can tell what frog makes it, though it is almost as universal as the breeze itself. 

The sounds of those three reptiles now fill the air, especially at night. The toads are most regardless of the light, and regard less a cold day than the R. palustris does. In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ringing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles. They express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature. They are perfect thermometers, hygrometers, and barometers. 

One of our cherries opens. 

I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago. 

Many are catching pouts this louring afternoon, in the little meadow by Walden. 

May 6, 2017

The thinker, he who is serene and self-possessed, is the brave, not the desperate soldier. He who can deal with his thoughts as a material, building them into poems in which future generations will delight, he is the man of the greatest and rarest vigor, not sturdy diggers and lusty polygamists. He is the man of energy, in whom subtle and poetic thoughts are bred. Common men can enjoy partially; they can go a-fishing rainy days; they can read poems perchance, but they have not the vigor to beget poems. They can enjoy feebly, but they cannot create. Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. How many can exercise the highest human faculties? He is the man truly — courageous, wise, ingenious - who can use his thoughts and ecstasies as the material of fair and durable creations. One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it. The mass of men do not know how to cultivate the fields they traverse. The mass glean only a scanty pittance where the thinker reaps an abundant harvest. What is all your building, if you do not build with thoughts? No exercise implies more real manhood and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men can tell what they have thought! I hardly know half a dozen who are not too lazy for this. They cannot get over some difficulty, and therefore they are on the long way round. You conquer fate by thought. If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow. There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed. - Horticulturalists think that they make flower-gardens, though in their thoughts they are barren and flowerless, but to the poet the earth is a flower-garden wherever he goes, or thinks. Most men can keep a horse or keep up a certain fashionable style of living, but few indeed can keep up great expectations. They justly think very meanly of themselves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1858

The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow. See May 5, 1857 ("Staminate Salix rostrata, possibly yesterday.”); June 6, 1856 ("That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered . . . willows”); May 2, 1859 (“I see on the Salix rostrata by railroad many honey bees laden with large and peculiarly orange-colored pellets of its pollen.”)

A boy brings me to-day an Attacus Cecropia moth . . . considerably larger than mine. See June 2, 1855 (“I gave it ether and so saved it in a perfect state. As it lies, not spread to the utmost, it is five and nine tenths inches by two and a quarter.”)

I heard a myrtle-bird's tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago. See May 5, 1857 (“Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after).”); May 6, 1855 (“Myrtle-birds very numerous just beyond Second Division. They sing like an instrument, teee teee te, t t t, t t t, on very various keys . . . Many white-throated sparrows there.”

In all cases in which I have noticed frogs coupled this year, — the sylvatica, halecina, and palustris, - the female has been considerably the largest. . .The young R. pipiens, with commonly a dull-green head and sides of head, sometimes bright green, and back dusky-spotted. Can this be the bull frog? Is it not the fontinalis with less bright green and a white throat? Sometimes it is yellow-throated. I saw lately in the river a full-grown bullfrog, with, I think, a white throat. . . .the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. . . .The rhythm of it is like that of the toads’ ring, but not the sound. This is considerably like that of the tree-toad.  See The 10 frog species in Massachusetts. (Mass Audubon) (HDT’s halecina is the northern leopard frog, his fontinalis is the green frog, his hylodes the peeper):

Spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)[hylodes]

Wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus)[Rana sylvatica]

American toad (Anaxyrus americanus)



Green frog (Lithobates clamitans)[Rana pipiens]

Northern leopard frog (Lithobates pipiens)[Rana halecina]

Pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris)[Rana palustris]

American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus)

Gray treefrog (Hyla versicolor)[tree-toad ]

Eastern spadefoot (Scaphiopus holbrookii)


Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri)