I wish to hear the silence of the night.

January 21.

January 21, 2018

A fine, still, warm moonlight evening. We have had one or two already. Moon not yet full.

To the woods by the Deep Cut at 9 o'clock.

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. The night is not black when the air is clear, but blue still. The great ocean of light and ether is unaffected by our partial night. Night is not universal. At midnight I see into the universal day. Walking at that hour, unless it is cloudy, still the blue sky o'erarches me.

I am somewhat oppressed and saddened by the sameness and apparent poverty of the heavens, — that these irregular and few geometrical figures which the constellations make are no other than those seen by the Chaldean shepherds. The same simplicity and unchangeableness which commonly impresses me by wealth sometimes affects me as barrenness. I pine for a new world in the heavens as well as on the earth, and though it is some consolation to hear of the wilderness of stars and systems invisible to the naked eye, yet the sky does not make that impression of variety and wildness that even the forest does, as it ought. It makes an impression, rather, of simplicity and unchangeableness, as of eternal laws; this being the same constellation which the shepherds saw, and obedient still to the same law. 

It does not affect me as that unhandselled wilderness which the forest is. I seem to see it pierced with visual rays from a thousand observatories.

It is more the domain of science than of poetry. But it is the stars as not known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveller knows. The Chaldean shepherds saw not the same stars which I see, and if I am elevated in the least toward the heavens, I do not accept their classification of them. I am not to be distracted by the names which they have imposed. The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the evening star Venus. The heavens should be as new, at least, as the world is new.

This classification of the stars is old and musty; it is as if a mildew had taken place in the heavens, as if the stars so closely packed had heated and moulded there. If they appear fixed, it is because that hitherto men have been thus necessitated to see them. I see not merely old but new testaments in the skies. Do not I stand as near the stars as the Chaldean shepherds? The heavens commonly look as dry and meagre as our astronomies are, — mere troops, as the latter are catalogues, of stars. The Milky Way yields no milk. A few good anecdotes is our science, with a few imposing statements respecting distance and size, and little or nothing about the stars as they concern man; teaching how he may survey a country or sail a ship, and not how he may steer his life.

Astrology contained the germ of a higher truth than this. It may happen that the stars are more significant and truly celestial to the teamster than to the astronomer. Nobody sees the stars now. They study astronomy at the district school, and learn that the sun is ninety-five millions distant, and the like, — a statement which never made any impression on me, because I never walked it, and which I cannot be said to believe.

But the sun shines nevertheless. Though observatories are multiplied, the heavens receive very little attention. The naked eye may easily see farther than the armed. It depends on who looks through it. No superior telescope to this has been invented. In those big ones the recoil is equal to the force of the discharge. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling ranges from earth to heaven, but this the astronomer's does not often do. It does not see far beyond the dome of the observatory. Compared with the visible phenomena of the heavens, the anecdotes of science affect me as trivial and petty.

Man's eye is the true star-finder, the comet-seeker. As I sat looking out the window the other evening just after dark, I saw the lamp of a freight-train, and, near by, just over the train, a bright star, which looked exactly like the former, as if it belonged to a different part of the same train. It was difficult to realize that the one was a feeble oil lamp, the other a world. 

As I walk the railroad causeway I am, as the last two months, disturbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night, for the silence is something positive and to be heard. I cannot walk with my ears covered. I must stand still and listen with open ears, far from the noises of the village, that the night may make its impression on me. A fertile and eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is merely negative, an arid and barren waste in which I shudder, where no ambrosia grows. I must hear the whispering of a myriad voices.

Silence alone is worthy to be heard. Silence is of various depth and fertility, like soil. Now it is a mere Sahara, where men perish of hunger and thirst, now a fertile bottom, or prairie, of the West. As I leave the village, drawing nearer to the woods, I listen from time to time to hear the hounds of Silence baying the Moon, — to know if they are on the track of any game. If there 's no Diana in the night, what is it worth? I hark the goddess Diana.

The silence rings; it is musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible. I hear the unspeakable. I easily read the moral of my dreams. 

Yesterday I was influenced with the rottenness of human relations. They appeared full of death and decay, and offended the nostrils. In the night I dreamed of delving amid the graves of the dead, and soiled my fingers with their rank mould. It was sanitarily, morally, and physically true.

If night is the mere negation of day, I hear nothing but my own steps in it. Death is with me, and life far away. If the elements are not human, if the winds do not sing or sigh, as the stars twinkle, my life runs shallow. I measure the depth of my own being. I walk with vast alliances. I am the allied powers, the holy alliance, absorbing the European potentates.

I do not get much from the blue sky, these twinkling stars, and bright snow-fields reflecting an almost rosaceous light. But when I enter the woods I am fed by the variety, — the forms of the trees above against the blue, with the stars seen through the pines like the lamps hung on them in an illumination, the somewhat in distinct and misty fineness of the pine-tops, and the finely divided spray of the oaks, etc., and the shadows of all these on the snow.

The first shadow I came to I thought was a black place where the woodchoppers had had a fire. These myriad shadows checker the white ground and enhance the brightness of the enlightened portions. See the shadows of these young oaks which have lost half their leaves, more beautiful than themselves, like the shadow of a chandelier, and motionless as if they were fallen leaves on the snow, — but shake the tree, and all is in motion.

In this stillness and at this distance, I hear the nine-o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village, but here its music surmounts the village din and has something very sweet and noble and inspiring in it, associated, in fact, with the hooting of owls.

Returning, I thought I heard the creaking of a wagon just starting from Hubbard's door, and rarely musical it sounded. It was the telegraph harp. It began to sound but at one spot only. It is very fitful, and only sounds when it is in the mood. You may go by twenty times, both when the wind is high and when it is low and let it blow which way it will, and yet hear no strain from it, but another time, at a particular spot, you may hear a strain rising and swelling on the string, which may at last ripen to something glorious. The wire will perhaps labor long with it before it attains to melody. Even the creaking of a wagon in a frosty night has music in it which allies it to the highest and purest strain of the muse.

I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along. It finally turned into my old tracks and went toward the river and Fair Haven Pond. One was killed there last spring.

Minott says his mother told him she had seen a deer come down the hill behind her house, where I. Moore's now is, and cross the road and the meadow in front; thinks it may have been eighty years ago.

Otter are very rare here now. I have not heard of any killed here abouts for twenty or thirty years till, within two years, two or three of them. In Sudbury and at Fair Haven Pond. Israel Rice tells of one shot within the year in a ditch near White Pond; probably the same [as made the track of January 20.]

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1853

Moon not yet full.To the woods by the Deep Cut at 9 o'clock. See July 16, 1850 ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night.); July 12, 1851 ("The moon is full, and I walk alone.")

The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me. See 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 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . 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."); May 11, 1853 ("The sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.")

As I sat looking out the window the other evening just after dark, I saw the lamp of a freight-train, and, near by, just over the train, a bright star, which looked exactly like the former, as if it belonged to a different part of the same train. Compare Wordsworth, according to DeQuincey (""Just now … . . .t the very instant when I raised my head from the ground . . .at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness, fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension with a pathos and a sense of the Infinite, that would not have arrested me 
under other circumstances.")

I hear the nine- o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off. See August 8, 1851 (“I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. ”)

She had seen a deer eighty years ago. See March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”)

I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs. See note to March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. He has left some scentless jelly-like substance").

Otter are very rare here now. See December 10, 1840. (" I discover a strange track in the snow, and learn that some migrating otter has made across from the river to the wood, by my yard and the smith's shop, in the silence of the night . . . though his tracks are now crosswise to mine, our courses are not divergent, but we shall meet at last."); March 14, 1853 ("The blacksmith of Sudbury has two otter skins taken in that town."); December 31, 1853 ("Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along. . . .This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); ; March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!");and the Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly.")

http://tinyurl.com/hdt530121

The snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads.

January 30.

8 A. M. -- It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot.  Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.

As I walked above the old stone bridge on the 27th, I saw where the river had recently been open under the wooded bank on the west side; and recent sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory, and also the ends of saplings and limbs of trees which had been bent down by the ice, were frozen in. In some places some water stood above the ice, and as I stood there, I saw and heard it gurgle up through a crevice and spread over the ice. This was the influence of Loring’s Brook, far above.

P. M. -- Measure to see what difference there is in the depth of the snow . . .

. . .  The Andromeda calyculata is now quite covered, and I walk on the crust over an almost uninterrupted plain there; only a few blueberries and last, I break through. It is so light beneath that the crust breaks there in great cakes under my feet, and immediately falls about a foot, making a great hole, so that once pushing my way through — for regularly stepping is out of the question in the weak places —makes a pretty good path. 

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. It repeatedly hops to a bunch of berries, takes one, and, hopping to a more horizontal twig, places it under one foot and hammers at it with its bill. The snow is strewn with the berries under its foot, but I can see no shells of the fruit. Perhaps it clears off the crimson only. Some of the bunches are very large and quite upright there still. 

Again, I suspect that on meadows the snow is not so deep and has a firmer crust. In an ordinary storm the depth of the snow will be affected by a wood twenty or more rods distant, or as far as the wood is a fence.

There is a strong wind this afternoon from northwest, and the snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads. On the railroad causeway it lies in perfectly straight and regular ridges a few feet apart, northwest and southeast. It is dry and scaly, like coarse bran. Now that there is so much snow, it slopes up to the tops of the walls on both sides. 

What a difference between life in the city and in the country at present, — between walking in Washington Street, threading your way between countless sledges and travellers, over the discolored snow, and crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1856

It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything. See December 14, 1859 (" . . . Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it.")
 
sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory. . . .   See “Pail-stuff"

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. See Janaury 30, 1854("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day,.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter 

What a solemn silence reigns here! See January 21, 1853 ("The silence rings; it is musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible."); August 11, 1853 ("What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, . . ..The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence."); August 2, 1854 ("As I go up the hill, surrounded by its shadow, while the sun is setting, I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening, . . . .It is the first silence I have heard for a month")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

A pensive evening walk

August 2. 

My attic chamber has compelled me to sit below with the family at evening for a month. 

I feel the necessity of deepening the stream of my life; I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much. I am inclined now for a pensive evening walk. I go via Hubbard Path. 

July has been to me a trivial month. It began hot and continued drying, then rained some toward the middle, bringing anticipations of the fall, and then was hot again about the 20th. It has been a month of haying, heat, low water, and weeds. Birds have grown up and flown more or less in small flocks, though I notice a new sparrow's nest and eggs and perhaps a catbird's eggs lately. The woodland quire has  steadily diminished in volume.

As I go up the hill, surrounded by its shadow, while the sun is setting, I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening, save that on the hills the wind blows. I am surprised by the sound of my own voice. It is an atmosphere burdensome with thought. For the first time for a month, at least, I am reminded that thought is possible. 

The din of trivialness is silenced. I float over or through the deeps of silence. It is the first silence I have heard for a month. My life had been a River Platte, tinkling over its sands but useless for all great navigation, but now it suddenly became a fathomless ocean. It shelved off to unimagined depths.

I sit on rock on the hilltop, warm with the heat of the departed sun, in my thin summer clothes. Here are the seeds of some berries in the droppings of some bird on the rock. 

The sun has been set fifteen minutes, and a long cloudy finger, stretched along the northern horizon, is held over the point where it disappeared.

I see dark shadows formed on the south side of the woods east of the river. After a little while the western sky is suddenly suffused with a pure white light, against which the hickories further east on the hill show black with beautiful distinctness. A few sparrows sing as in the morning and the spring; also a peawai and a chewink. 

Meanwhile the moon in her first quarter is burnishing her disk. 

Now suddenly the cloudy finger and the few scattered clouds glow with the parting salute of the sun, which has so long sunk below the convex earth.

The surface of the forest on the east of the river presents a singularly cool and wild appearance. 

A few fireflies in the meadows. I am uncertain whether that so large and bright and high was a firefly or a shooting star. Shooting stars are but fireflies of the firmament. 

The crickets on the causeway make a steady creak. 

I am compelled to stand to write where a soft, faint light from the western sky came in between two willows. 

Fields to-day sends me a specimen copy of my "Walden." It is to be published on the 12th inst.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1854


I sit on rock on the hilltop, warm with the heat of the departed sun, in my thin summer clothes. See January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer.”);  January 9, 1853 ("As I climb the Cliff, I pause in the sun and sit on a dry rock, dreaming. I think of those summery hours when time is tinged with eternity"); May 23, 1854 ("I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me."); February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side."); March 28, 1858 ("While I sit on these warm rocks, turning my glass toward the mountains, I can see the sun reflected from the rocks on Monadnock, and I know that it would be pleasant to be there too to-day as well as here")

Here are the seeds of some berries in the droppings of some bird on the rock. See August 2, 1860 ("I see the seeds of berries recently left on the rocks where birds have perched. ")

Scattered clouds glow with the parting salute of the sun, which has so long sunk below the convex earth. See August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across . . . to that blue rim of the earth").

Shooting stars are but fireflies of the firmament. See June 16, 1852 ("Do not the stars, too, show their light for love, like the fireflies ?”); June 25, 1852 (“What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness?”); July 20, 1852  ("The stars are few and distant; the fireflies fewer still") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fireflies

August 2. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 2

I go up the hill

surrounded by its shadow –

the sun is setting

sit on the hilltop

this rock warm with the heat of

the departed sun

here on the rock in

the droppings of some bird the

seeds of some berries

suddenly my life is a

fathomless ocean.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A pensive evening walk

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540802

The first partridge drums.

April 25

Heard and saw my warbler (?) of the 23d and 24th on Mr. Emerson's  pines. It is the smallest bird I have seen this year. Sits still amid the pines not far below the top and sings very sweetly, loud and clear, and seems further off than it is, beginning first with very fine wiry notes and then increasing in volume and melody till it ends with tweeter tweeter tweeter ter twe. Some of it a martin-like warble. Has sometimes a harsh scolding note. 

It is all light, perhaps ashy-white, beneath; has a little narrow forked tail; ashy (?) under wings, which are considerably shorter than tail; and light above and below eye; perhaps a whitish bar on wings; olivaceous(?) above. 

I think it may be the golden-crested wren, though I hardly saw the upper parts, or possibly the small blue-gray flycatcher. 

I do not find the male blossoms of the red cedar open yet. 

P. M. — To Indian Cedar Hill. 

April 25, 2014

Quite warm and the frogs are snoring on the meadow. I swelter under my greatcoat.  

Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes. 

The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile. 

At first we were compelled to take off our mittens, then to unbutton our greatcoat, and now, perhaps, to take it off occasionally (I have not left it at home yet), and wear thin boots. For some time we have done with little fire, nowadays let it go out in the afternoon. 

Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat.

The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate. 

Saw a golden crested wren in the woods near Goose Pond. (This must be my warblers of April 18th, April 23d and 24th.) It sounded far off and like an imitation of a robin, (and of a golden robin, which later I often mistook for him) — a long strain and often repeated. 

I was quite near it before I was aware of it, it sounding still like a faint imitation of a robin. Some chickadees and yellow redpolls were first apparent, then my wren on the pitch pines and young oaks. 

He appeared curious to observe me. A very interesting and active little fellow, darting about amid the tree-tops, and his song quite remarkable and rich and loud for his size. 

Begins with a very fine note, before its pipes are filled, not audible at a little distance, then woriter weter, etc., etc., winding up with teter teter, all clear and round. His song is comical and reminds me of the thrasher. 

This was at 4 p. m., when most birds do not sing. I saw it yesterday, pluming itself and stretching its little wings. Our smallest bird, methinks, except the hummingbird.

As I stand listening for the wren, and sweltering in my greatcoat, I hear the woods filled with the hum of insects, as if my hearing were affected; and thus the summer's quire begins. The silent spaces have begun to be filled with notes of birds and insects and the peep and croak and snore of frogs, even as living green blades are everywhere pushing up amid the sere ones.

I heard that same snoring which I hear on the river meadows, on an inland meadow this afternoon, where I think no bullfrogs are. Are they not then the palustris, or else the shad frog? 

There are now many new insects in the air. 

Black ducks still on Flint's. 

The fertile fruit-stems of the sensitive fern by the side of the Flint's Pond path, more than a foot high, are a rich ornament to the ground, brown, four or five inches long, and turned to one side, contrasting with the lighter rachis (?). 

Saw my thrush of the 18th by the pond. It appears dark-olive, ferruginous on rump and tail, with a dark streak slanting from each cheek and flesh-colored legs. 

The red cedar has fairly begun to-day; maybe the first yesterday. Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. As I approach the red cedars now, I perceive a delicious strawberry-like fragrance in the air, like that from the arbor-vita. 

The creeping juniper apparently open, but not yet open. 

Though I see some amber on the sweet-fern, I am in doubt whether to say to-day or to-morrow. 

The wild red cherry (if that is one near Everett's), privet, and buckthorn are beginning to leaf out. 

The abele will probably blossom to-morrow. 

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 25, 1854

The frogs are snoring on the meadow. See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris?"); May 6, 1858 (“There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side . . . 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 . . . 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 . . .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.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pickerel frog (Rana palustris) and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frogs to begin calling

I swelter under my greatcoat. . . .(I have not left it at home yet) See April 26, 1854 (“It is now so warm that I go back to leave my greatcoat for the first time, and the cooler smell of possible rain is refreshing”; April 26, 1852 (“I begin now to leave off my greatcoat.”)

Many shad-flies in the air and alighting on my clothes. See May 1, 1854 (“The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”);May 1, 1858 (“Ephemerae quite common over the water. ”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

Increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile. See April 6, 1860 (“Vegetation thus comes forward rather by fits and starts than by a steady progress. Some flowers would blossom tomorrow if it were as warm as to-day, but cold weather intervening may detain them a week or more. The spring thus advances and recedes repeatedly, — its pendulum oscillates, — while it is carried steadily forward. Animal life is to its extent subject to a similar law. It is in warm and calm days that most birds arrive and reptiles and insects and men come forth.”); April 7, 1860 (“This is the Rana halecina day, — awakening of the meadows, — though not very warm.. . .Probably, then, when it is about 50 at this season, the river being low, they are to be heard in calm places.”); April 9, 1856 (“It has probably been 70° or more; and the last two days have been nearly as warm. This degree of heat, then, brings the Fringilla juncorum and pine warbler and awakes the hyla. “) April 13, 1859 (“The hylodes and wood frogs are other degrees on the thermometer of the season, indicating that the weather has attained a higher temperature than before and winter fairly ended, but this note marks what you may call April heat (or spring heat).”);  May 6, 1858 (“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.”)

I hear the woods filled with the hum of insects, as if my hearing were affected; and thus the summer's quire begins. See  April 17, 1859 (“The air which was so lately void and silent begins to resound as it were with the breathing of a myriad fellow-creatures . . . gradually the spaces of the air are filled . . . we hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring.”); April 28, 1860 ("I am advertised of the approach of a new season, as yesterday. The air is not only warmer and stiller, but has more of meaning or smothered voice to it, now that the hum of insects begins to be heard. You seem to have a great companion with you, are reassured by the scarcely audible hum, as if it were the noise of your own thinking”)

Even as living green blades are everywhere pushing up amid the sere ones. See April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like . .. I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived.") See also April 14, 1854 ("There is a general tinge of green now discernible through the russet on the bared meadows and the hills, the green blades just peeping forth amid the withered ones."); April 23, 1854 ("How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet! "); April 24, 1859 (“From the amid the withered blades spring up ranks of green life like a fire . . . the renewal of life.”); April 28, 1854 ("Perhaps the greenness of the landscape may be said to begin fairly now . . . during the last half of April the earth acquires a distinct tinge of green, which finally prevails over the russet.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Brown Season

["Golden"- crested wren] .It is the smallest bird I have seen this year . . . Our smallest bird, methinks, except the hummingbird.  Note. Thoreau first misidentified the ruby-cowned as a warbler and also misidentiifed the ruby-crowned as the golden-crowned. He was put in doubt when he saw a red crest on what he had been calling the golden-crested wren, and did not truly identify a golden-crested wren until Christmas 1859. See note to December 25, 1859. See also See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the ruby-crowned or crested wren.

This must be my warblers of April 18th, April 23d and 24th . . . I saw it yesterday. See April 18, 1854 ("Saw another warbler about the same size, in the same localities, somewhat creeper-like, very restless, more like the Tennessee warbler than any, methinks. Light-slate or bluish-slate head and shoulders, yellowish backward, all white beneath, and a distinct white spot on the wing; a harsh grating note[?]."); April 23, 1854 ("Had a glimpse of a very small warbler on a pitch pine, and heard a pleasant and unusual whistle from him."); April 24, 1854 ("Hear amid the white cedars the fine, clear singing warbler of yesterday, whose harsh note I may have heard the 18th, very clear and fast.")

 

Black ducks still on Flint's. See April 27, 1860 ("The hurry of the duck migration is, methinks, over"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

The fertile fruit-stems of the sensitive fern by the side of the Flint's Pond path, more than a foot high. See  May 13, 1860 ("The sensitive fern is only six inches high. — apparently the latest of all")

Saw my thrush of the 18th by the pond. See April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush. . . which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near.")

Put the red yesterday and the white to-day. See April 24, 1854 ("The white cedar female blossoms are open."); see also  April 24, 1855  ("The sprigs of red cedar, now full of the buff-colored staminate flowers, like fruit, are very rich. The next day they shed an abundance of pollen in the house. It is a clear buff color, while that of the white cedar is very different, being a faint salmon." )

The abele will probably blossom to-morrow. See April 26, 1855 ("The silvery abele, probably to-day or yesterday, but I do not see pollen.")

The first partridge drums in one or two places, as if the earth's pulse now beat audibly with the increased flow of life. It slightly flutters all Nature and makes her heart palpitate. See April 19, 1860 ("Toward night, hear a partridge drum. You will hear at first a single beat or two far apart and have time to say, "There is a partridge," so distinct and deliberate is it often, before it becomes a rapid roll.");  April 29, 1857 ("A partridge there drums incessantly. C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast."); June 22, 1851("My pulse must beat with Nature”). See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

April 25, 2014

The first partridge drums –

earth’s pulse now beats audibly

with the flow of life.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The first partridge drums

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/hdt-540425

The moon, the stars, the trees, the snow

March 7.

A very pleasant, spring-promising day. Yet I walk up the river on the ice to Fair Haven Pond. As I cross the snow (2 P.M.) where it lies deepest in hollows, its surface honeycombed by the sun, I hear it suddenly sink under and around me with a crash, and look about for a tree or roof from which it may have fallen. It has melted next the earth, and my weight makes it fall. In one instance, when I jump over a wall on to snow nearly three feet deep, I hear this loud and startling crash and look round in vain to discover the cause of it. I hear it settle over many rods. 

At 9 o'clock P.M to the woods by the full moon. 

It is rather mild to-night. I can walk without gloves. There is no snow on the trees. The ground is thinly covered with a crusted snow, through which the dead grass and weeds appear, telling the nearness of spring. 

Going through the high field beyond the lone graveyard, I see the track of a boy's sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon.

Though the snow-crust between me and the moon reflects the moon at a distance, westward it is but a dusky white; only where it is heaped up into a drift, or a steep bank occurs, is the moonlight reflected to me as from a phosphorescent place. I distinguish thus large tracts an eighth of a mile distant in the west, where a steep bank sloping toward the moon occurs, that glow with a white, phosphorescent light, while all the surrounding snow is comparatively dark, as if shaded by the woods. I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me.

As I look down the railroad, standing on the west brink of the Deep Cut, I see a promise or sign of spring in the way the moon is reflected from the snow covered west slope,-- a sort of misty light as if a fine vapor were rising from it. The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow, --a monumental stillness, whose void must be supplied by thought. 

The student of lichens has his objects of study brought to his study on his fuel without any extra expense. 

What a man does abroad by night requires and implies more deliberate energy than what he is encouraged to do in the sunshine. 


The moon appears to have waned a little, yet, with this snow on the ground, I can plainly see the words I write. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1852

The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow. See January 7, 1857 ("The stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. ")

I look to see if these white tracts in the distant fields correspond to openings in the woods, and find that they are places where the crystal mirrors are so disposed as to reflect the moon's light to me. See February 3, 1852 (I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter.")