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

Like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date.

March 23. 

March 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Cardinal Shore and sail to Well Meadow and Lee's Cliff. 

It clears up at 2 p. m. The Lycoperdon stellatum are numerous and blossomed out widely in Potter's Path by Bare Hill, after the rain of the night. 

As we sail upward toward the pond, we scare up two or three golden-eyes, or whistlers, showing their large black heads and black backs, and afterward I watch one swimming not far before us and see the white spot, amid the black, on the side of his head. I have now no doubt that I saw some on the 21st flying here, and it is very likely that Rice saw them here on the 17th, as he says. 

The pond may be said to be open to-day. There is, however, quite a large mass of ice, which has drifted, since the east wind arose yesterday noon, from the east side over to the north of the Island. 

This ice, of which there may be eight or ten acres, is so very dark, almost black, that it is hard to discern till you are just upon it, though some little pieces which we broke off and left on its edge were very visible for half a mile. When at the edge of this field of ice, it was a very dark gray in color, had none of the usual whiteness of ice. It was about six inches thick, but was most completely honeycombed. The upper surface was not only thus dark, dusky, or blackish, but full of little hollows three to six inches across, and the whole mass undulated with the waves very much, irregular cracks alternately opening and closing in it, yet it was well knitted together. 

With my paddle I could depress it six inches on the edge, and cause it to undulate like a blanket for a rod or more, and yet it bore us securely when we stepped out upon it, and it was by no means easy to break off or detach a piece a foot wide. In short, it was thoroughly honeycombed and, as it were, saturated with water. The masses broken off reminded me of some very decayed and worm-eaten interiors of trees. Yet the small cakes into which it visibly cracked when you bent it and made it undulate were knitted together or dovetailed somewhat like the plates of a tortoise-shell, and immediately returned to their places.  

Though it would bear you, the creaking of one such part on another was a quite general and considerable noise, and one detached mass, rubbed in your hand upon the edge of the field, yielded a singular metallic or ringing sound, evidently owing to its hollowness or innumerable perforations. It had a metallic ring. The moment you raised a mass from the water, it was very distinctly white and brilliant, the water running out from it. This was the relic of that great mass which I saw on the 21st on the east side. 

There was a great quantity of bayonet rush, also, drifted over here and strewn along the shore. This and the pontederia are the coarsest of the wrack. 

Now is the time, then, that it is added to the wrack, probably being ripped up by the ice. It reminds you of the collections of seaweed after a storm, — this river-weed after the spring freshets have melted and dispersed the ice. The ice thus helps essentially to clear the shore. 

I am surprised to see one of those sluggish ghost-horses alive on the ice. It was probably drifted from the shore by the flood and here lodged. 

That dark, uneven ice has a peculiarly coarse-grained appearance, it is so much decomposed. The pieces are interlocked by the irregularities of the perpendicular combing. The underside presents the most continuous surface, and it is held together chiefly on that side. One piece rings when struck on another, like a trowel on a brick, and as we rested against the edge of this ice, we heard a singular wheezing and grating sound, which was the creaking of the ice, which was undulating under the waves and wind. 

As we entered Well Meadow, we saw a hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of one of the tall pines at the head of the meadow. Soon another appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect outline and, as they came round, showing their rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as they sailed away from us, that slight teetering or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings seen edgewise, now on this side, now that, by which they balanced and directed themselves. 

These are the most eagle-like of our common hawks. They very commonly perch upon the very topmost plume of a pine, and, if motionless, are rather hard to distinguish there. 

The cowslip and most of the skunk-cabbage there have been and are still drowned by flood; else we should find more in bloom. As it is, I see the skunk- cabbage in bloom, but generally the growth of both has been completely checked by the water. 

While reconnoitring there, we hear the peep of one hylodes somewhere in this sheltered recess in the woods. And afterward, on the Lee side, I hear a single croak from a wood frog. 

We cross to Lee's shore and sit upon the bare rocky ridge overlooking the flood southwest and northeast. It is quite sunny and sufficiently warm. I see one or two of the small fuzzy gnats in the air. The prospect thence is a fine one, especially at this season, when the water is high. 

The landscape is very agreeably diversified with hill and vale and meadow and cliff. As we look southwest, how attractive the shores of russet capes and peninsulas laved by the flood! Indeed, that large tract east of the bridge is now an island. How fair that low, undulating russet land! 

At this season and under these circumstances, the sun just come out and the flood high around it, russet, so reflecting the light of the sun, appears to me the most agreeable of colors, and I begin to dream of a russet fairyland and elysium. How dark and terrene must be green! but this smooth russet surface reflects almost all the light. 

That broad and low but firm island, with but few trees to conceal the contour of the ground and its outline, with its fine russet sward, firm and soft as velvet, reflecting so much light, — all the undulations of the earth, its nerves and muscles, revealed by the light and shade, and even the sharper ridgy edge of steep banks where the plow has heaped up the earth from year to year, — this is a sort of fairyland and elysium to my eye. 

The tawny couchant island! Dry land for the Indian's wigwam in the spring, and still strewn with his arrow-points. The sight of such land reminds me of the pleasant spring days in which I have walked over such tracts, looking for these relics. How well, too, this smooth, firm, light-reflecting, tawny earth contrasts with the darker water which surrounds it, — or perchance lighter sometimes! 

At this season, when the russet colors prevail, the contrast of water and land is more agreeable to behold. What an inexpressibly soft curving line is the shore! Or if the water is perfectly smooth and yet rising, you seem to see it raised an eighth of an inch with swelling up above the immediate shore it kisses, as in a cup or the of [sic] a saucer. Indian isles and promontories. 

Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak, and dream of a russet elysium. Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. Spring has a beauty of its own which we would not exchange for that of summer, and at this moment, if I imagine the fairest earth I can, it is still russet, such is the color of its blessed isles, and they are surrounded with the phenomena of spring. 

The qualities of the land that are most attractive to our eyes now are dryness and firmness. It is not the rich black soil, but warm and sandy hills and plains which tempt our steps. We love to sit on and walk over sandy tracts in the spring like cicindelas. 

These tongues of russet land tapering and sloping into the flood do almost speak to one. They are alternately in sun and shade. When the cloud is passed, and they reflect their pale-brown light to me, I am tempted to go to them. 

I think I have already noticed within a week how very agreeably and strongly the green of small pines contrasts with the russet of a hillside pasture now. Perhaps there is no color with which green contrasts more strongly. 

I see the shadow of a cloud — and it chances to be a hollow ring with sunlight in its midst — passing over the hilly sprout-land toward the Baker house, a sprout-land of oaks and birches; and, owing to the color of the birch twigs, perhaps, this shadow turns all from russet to a decided dark-purplish color as it moves along. 

And then, as I look further along eastward in the horizon, I am surprised to see strong purple and violet tinges in the sun, from a hillside a mile off densely covered with full-grown birches. It is the steep old corn-field hillside of Jacob Baker's. 

I would not have believed that under the spring sun so many colors were brought out. 

It is not the willows only that shine, but, under favorable circumstances, many other twigs, even a mile or two off. 

The dense birches, so far that their white stems are not distinct, reflect deep, strong purple and violet colors from the distant hillsides opposite to the sun.

Can this have to do with the sap flowing in them? 

As we sit there, we see coming, swift and straight, northeast along the river valley, not seeing us and therefore not changing his course, a male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. Ere long the same returns with his mate, the red-throated, the male taking the lead. 

The loud peop (?) of a pigeon woodpecker is heard in our sea [?], and anon the prolonged loud and shrill cackle, calling the thin-wooded hillsides and pastures to life. It is like the note of an alarm-clock set last fall so as to wake Nature up at exactly this date. Up up up up up up up up up ! What a rustling it seems to make among the dry leaves! 

You can now sit on sunny sheltered sprout-land hillsides and enjoy the sight and sound of rustling dry leaves. 

Then I see come slowly flying from the southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which at length by a sudden and steep descent alights in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which was seeking its food on the edge of the ice. This shows that the crows get along the meadow's edge also what has washed up.

 It is suggested that the blue is darkest when reflected from the most agitated water, because of the shadow (occasioned by the inequalities) mingled with it. Some Indians of the north have but one word for blue and black, and blue is with us considered the darkest color, though it is the color of the sky or air. Light, I should say, was white; the absence of it, black. Hold up to the light a perfectly opaque body and you get black, but hold up to it the least opaque body, such as air, and you get blue. Hence you may say that blue is light seen through a veil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1859

A male goosander, so near that the green reflections of his head and neck are plainly visible. He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly painted up, black and white and green, and moves along swift and straight like one. See March 17, 1860 (“See a large flock of sheldrakes . . . flying with great force and rapidity over my head in the woods. Now I hear the whistling of their wings, and in a moment they are lost in the horizon. Like swift propellers of the air.”); April 6, 1855 (“I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfect specimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander, undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A single croak from a wood frog . . . Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood frog's croak. See March 15, 1860 ("Am surprised to hear, from the pool behind Lee's Cliff, the croaking of the wood frog. . . . As Walden opens eight days earlier than I have known it, so this frog croaks about as much earlier.."); March 24, 1859 ("I am sitting in Laurel Glen, listening to hear the earliest wood frogs croaking . . . Now, when the leaves get to be dry and rustle under your feet, dried by the March winds, the peculiar dry note, wurrk wurrk wur-r-r-k wurk of the wood frog is heard faintly by ears on the alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a woodland hollow which is open to the influences of the sun. ")

An alarm-clock set

as to wake Nature up at

exactly this date.

Spring has a beauty –

beauty we would not exchange

for that of summer.

Birches reflect deep 

strong purple and violet 

colors from the hillsides.

Sitting on this rock

we hear the first wood frog’s croak

and begin to dream.

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

 

I realize how water predominates on the surface of the globe.

March 17.

 

March 17, 2019

6.30 a. m. — River risen still higher. 

It is seven and a half inches below the highest part of the truss and about fifteen and a half inches below the middle of the lower stone step of the railroad. It is not quite over Wood's road.

I hear a robin fairly singing. 

A great many musquash have been killed within a week. One says a cartload have been killed in Assa- bet. Perhaps a dozen gunners have been out in this town every day. They get a shilling apiece for their skins. One man getting musquash and one mink earned five or six dollars the other day. I hear their guns early and late long before sunrise and after sunset, for those are the best times. 

P. M. — To Flint's Bridge by water. 

The water is very high, and smooth as ever it is. 

It is very warm. I wear but one coat on the water. 

The town and the land it is built on seem to rise but little above the flood. This bright smooth and level surface seems here the prevailing element, as if the distant town were an island. 

I realize how water predominates on the surface of the globe. 

I am surprised to see new and unexpected waterlines, drawn by the level edge of the flood about knolls in the meadows and in the woods, — waving lines, rarely if ever recognized or thought of by the walker or any, which mark the boundary of a possible or probable freshet any spring. 

Even if the highest water-mark were indicated at one point, the surveyor could not, with any labor short of infinite, draw these lines for us which wind about every elevation of earth or rock. Yet, though this slight difference of level which the water so simply and effectually points out, is so unobservable by us ordinarily, no doubt Nature never forgets it for a moment, but plants grow and insects, etc., breed in conformity to it. 

Many a kingdom of nature has its boundaries parallel with this waving line. By these freshets, the relation of some field, usually far from the stream, to future or past deluge is suggested. I am surprised and amused, at least, to walk in such a field and observe the nice distinctions which the great water-level makes there. 

So plants and animals and thoughts have their commonly unseen shores, and many portions of the earth are, with reference to them, islands or peninsulas or capes, shores or mountains. 

We are stiff and set in our geography because the level of water is comparatively, or within short periods, unchangeable. We look only in the sea for islands and continents and their varieties. But there are more subtle and invisible and fluctuating floods which island this or that part of the earth whose geography has never been mapped. 

For instance, here is Mantatuket Rock, commonly a rocky peninsula with a low or swampy neck and all covered with wood. It is now a small rocky island, and not only the swampy neck but a considerable portion of the upland is blotted out by the flood, covered and concealed under water; and what surprises me is that the water should so instantly know and select its own shore on the upland, though I could not have told with my eye whether it would be thirty feet this way or as many that. 

A distinction is made for me by the water in this case which I had never thought of, revealing the relation of this surface to the flood ordinarily far from it, and which I now begin to perceive that every tree and shrub and herbaceous plant growing there knew, if I did not. 

How different to-day from yesterday! Yesterday was a cool, bright day, the earth just washed bare by the rain, and a strong northwest wind raised respectable billows on our vernal seas and imparted remarkable life and spirit to the scene. 

To-day it is perfectly still and warm. Not a ripple disturbs the surface of these lakes, but every insect, every small black beetle struggling on it, is betrayed; but, seen through this air, though many might not notice the difference, the russet surface of the earth does not shine, is not bright. 

I see no shining russet islands with dry but flushing oak leaves. The air is comparatively dead when I attend to it, and it is as if there were the veil of a fine mist over all objects, dulling their edges. Yet this would be called a clear day. 

These aerial differences in the days are not commonly appreciated, though they affect our spirits. 

When I am opposite the end of the willow-row, seeing the osiers of perhaps two years old all in a mass, they are seen to be very distinctly yellowish beneath and scarlet above. They are fifty rods off. 

Here is the same chemistry that colors the leaf or fruit, coloring the bark. It is generally, probably always, the upper part of the twig, the more recent growth, that is the higher-colored and more flower or fruit like. So leaves are more ethereal the higher up and further from the root. In the bark of the twigs, indeed, is the more permanent flower or fruit. 

The flower falls in spring or summer, the fruit and leaves fall or wither in autumn, but the blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the pleasure of late November, of winter, or of early spring walks to look into these mazes of twigs of different colors. 

As I float by the Rock, I hear rustling amid the oak leaves above that new water-line, and, there being no wind, I know it to be a striped squirrel, and soon see its long-unseen striped sides flirting about the instep of an oak. Its lateral stripes, alternate black and yellowish, are a type which I have not seen for a long time, or rather a punctuation-mark, the character to indicate where a new paragraph commences in the revolution of the seasons. Double lines.

I find by measurement that there is from two to three inches fall in the middle between the piers of Flint's Bridge, on the two sides of the bridge, supposing the planking to be level; but there is much more close to the abutments, for the water is very conspicuously heaped up in the middle in each case, or between each two piers, thus : —   If you look from above, it is somewhat thus: — 

If I land now on any knoll which is left dry above the flood, an island in the meadow, and its surface is broken, I am pretty sure to find Indian relics. They pitched their wigwams on these highest places, near water. 

I was speaking yesterday of the peculiarity of our meadow-bays in time of flood, — a shore where there are no shore-marks; for in time trees, rocks, etc., arrange themselves parallel with the water's edge, and the water by its washing makes for itself a strand, washing out the soil from the bank and leaving the sand and stones, and paths of animals and men conform to the permanent shore, but in this case all is abrupt and surprising. 

Rocky islands covered with green lichens and with polypody half submerged rise directly from the water, and trees stand up to their middles in it. Any eye would perceive that a rock covered with green lichens quite down to the water's edge was something unusual.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 17, 1859


I hear a robin fairly singing. See March 12, 1854 ("I hear my first robin peep distinctly at a distance. No singing yet.”); March 18, 1858 (“The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first.”) See also note to  March 17, 1858 ("Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak beyond the hill, I hear a faint note far in the wood which reminds me of the robin. Again I hear it; it is he, — an occasional peep.”)

It is very warm. I wear but one coat on the water. See March 17, 1854 ("A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my great coat; almost like May heats.”)

Discusssng experimental science.

March 20. 

Dine with Agassiz at R. W. E.’s. 

He thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia, having very large air-bladders and being in the habit of coming to the surface for air. But then, he is thinking of a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter.

He says that the Emyspicta does not copulate till seven years old, and then does not lay till four years after copulation, or when eleven years old. 

The Cistuda Blandingii (which he has heard of in Massachusetts only at Lancaster) copulates at eight or nine years of age. He says this is not a Cistuda but an Emys. 

He has eggs of the serpentina from which the young did not come forth till the next spring. 

He thinks that the Esquimau dog is the only indigenous one in the United States. 

He had not observed the silvery appearance and the dryness of the lycoperdon fungus in water which I showed. 

He had broken caterpillars and found the crystals of ice in them, but had not thawed them. 

When I began to tell him of my experiment on a frozen fish, he said that Pallas had shown that fishes were frozen and thawed again, but I affirmed the contrary, and then Agassiz agreed with me. 

Says Aristotle describes the care the pouts take of their young. I told him of Tanner’s account of it, the only one I had seen. 

The river over the meadows again, nearly as high as in February, on account of rain of the 19th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , March 20, 1857

He thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia. . . a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter.  See March 28, 1857 ("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."); March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker."); April 14, 1856 ("I see the first dead sucker"); April 10, 1855("Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating."); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!")

The dryness of the lycoperdon fungus in water which I showed. See February 8, 1857 ("To my surprise, when held under water it looked like a mass of silver or melted lead, it was so coated with air,. . .It was impossible to wet. It seems to be encased in a silvery coat of air which is water-tight.")

He had broken caterpillars and found the crystals of ice in them, but had not thawed them. See February 12, 1857  ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. ")

My experiment on a frozen fish . . . See January 4, 1856 ("[T]hinking of what I had heard about fishes coming to life again after being frozen, on being put into water, I thought I would try it. . . . ")

Aristotle describes the care the pouts take of their young. See July 15, 1856 ("I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them . . ")

The first sight of the blue water in the spring.

April 5. 

The April weather still continues. It looks repeatedly as if the sun would shine, and it rains five minutes after. 

I look out to see how much the river has risen. Last night there were a great many portions or islets visible, now they are engulfed, and it is a smooth expanse of water and icy snow. The water has been steadily deepening on Concord meadows all night, rising with a dimple about every stem and bush. 

P. M. —- To North River at Tarbell’s. 

Fair weather again. See half a dozen blackbirds, uttering that sign-like note, on the top of Cheney’s elm, but notice no red at this distance. Were they grackles? 

Hear after some red-wings sing baby-lee. Do these ever make the sign—like note? Is not theirs a fine shrill whistle ? 

The ice from the sides of the rivers has wheeled round in great cakes and lodged against each of the railroad bridges, i. e. over each stream. Near the town there is the firmest body of ice (in the river proper) above Hubbard’s Bridge. 

A warm and pleasant afternoon. The river not yet so high by four or five feet as last winter. 

Hear, on all sunny hillsides where the snow is melted, the chink clicking notes of the F. hyemalis flitting before me. I am sitting on the dried grass on the south hillside be hind Tarbell’s house, on the way to Brown’s. These birds know where there is a warm hillside as well as we. 

The warble of the bluebird is in the air. 

From Tarbell’s bank we look over the bright moving flood of the Assabet with many maples standing in it, the purling and eddying stream, with a hundred rills of snow water trickling into it.  

Further toward J. P. Brown’s, see two large ant-hills (red before, black abdomens), quite covered on all the sunny portion with ants, which appear to have come forth quite recently and are removing obstructions from their portals. Probably the frost is quite out there. Their black abdomens glisten in the sun. Each is bringing up some rubbish from beneath. The outlines of one of these hills is a very regular cone; both are graceful curves. 

Come out upon the high terrace behind Hosmer’s, whence we overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. 

See half a dozen white sheldrakes in the meadow, where Nut Meadow Brook is covered with the flood. There are two or three females with them. These ducks swim together first a little way to the right, then suddenly turn together and swim to the left, from time to time making the water fly in a white spray, apparently with a wing. Nearly half a mile off I see their green crests in the sun. They are partly concealed by some floating pieces of ice and snow, which they resemble. 

On the hill beyond Clamshell scare up two turtle doves. 

It is that walking when we must pick the hardest and highest ground or ice, for we commonly sink several inches in the oozy surface.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1856

Hear, on all sunny hillsides where the snow is melted, the chink clicking notes of the F. hyemalis flitting before me. See April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning since the warm days, the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Perchance after the warmer days, which bring out the frogs and butterflies, the alders and maples, the greater part of them leave for the north and give place to newcomers.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

The warble of the bluebird is in the air. See April 5, 1853 ("The bluebird comes to us bright in his vernal dress as a bridegroom."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. See March 5, 1854 ("and for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows."); March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. "); April 3, 1853 ("Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue.");  April 4, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue."); April 5, 1856 ("We overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. "); April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. "); April 9, 1856 ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring. 

See half a dozen white sheldrakes in the meadow, where Nut Meadow Brook is covered with the flood.  See April 7, 1855 ("In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. . . .I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly."); see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

This is our black sea.

May 8

A. M. — To Nawshawtuct. 

A female red-wing. I have not seen any before. Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char-char. No great flocks of blackbirds on tree-tops now, nor so many of robins. 

Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin – tail with black bars– probably a sparrow hawk; probably the same I have seen before. Saw one at Boston next day; mine was the pigeon hawk [No; for that is barred with white. Could mine have been the F. fuscus and so small?], slaty above (the male) and coarsely barred with black on tail. I saw these distinct bars at a distance as mine flew. It appeared hardly larger than a robin. 

Probably this the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. The sparrow hawk is a rather reddish brown and finely and thickly barred above with black.  [Could the Boston pigeon hawk have been barred with black ?]

I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now. The first of any consequence go by now. 

P. M. — By boat to Fair Haven.

The water has fallen a foot or more, but I cannot get under the stone bridge, so haul over the road. There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail up stream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon. 

It is long since I have sailed on so broad a tide. How dead would the globe seem, especially at this season, if it were not for these water surfaces! We are slow to realize water, — the beauty and magic of it. It is interestingly strange to us forever. Immortal water, alive even in the superficies, restlessly heaving now and tossing me and my boat, and sparkling with life!

I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me. I am even obliged to head across them and not get into their troughs, for I can hardly keep my legs. 

They are so black, — as no sea I have seen, — large and powerful, and make such a roaring around me. You see a perfectly black mass about two feet high and perhaps four or five feet thick and of indefinite length, round-backed, or perhaps forming a sharp ridge with a dirty-white crest, tumbling like a whale unceasingly before you. 

They are melainai — what is the Greek for waves? This is our black sea. 

I am delighted to find that our usually peaceful river could toss me so. How much more exciting than to be planting potatoes with those men in the field! What a different world!

Lee's Cliff is now a perfect natural rockery for flowers. These gray cliffs and scattered rocks, with upright faces below, reflect the heat like a hothouse. The ground is whitened with the little white cymes of the saxifrage, now shot up to six or eight inches, and more flower-like dangling scarlet columbines are seen against the gray rocks, and here and there the earth is spotted with yellow crowfoots and a few early cinque-foils (not to mention houstonias, the now mostly effete sedge, the few Viola ovata, — whose deep violet is another kind of flame, as the crowfoot is yellow, — hanging their heads low in the sod, and the as yet inconspicuous veronica); while the early Amelanchier Botryapium overhangs the rocks and grows in the shelves, with its loose, open-flowered racemes, curving downward, of narrow-petalled white flowers, red on the back and innocently cherry-scented, — as if it had drunk cherry-bounce and you smelled its breath. To which is to be added the scent of bruised catnep and the greenness produced by many other forward herbs, and all resounding with the hum of insects. And all this while flowers are rare elsewhere. It is as if you had taken a step suddenly a month forward, or had entered a greenhouse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1854

Saw a small hawk flying low, the only hawk of this size that I have seen this season. See October 17, 1858 ("Saw a small hawk come flying over the Assabet, . . . it had a very distinct black head, with apparently a yellowish-brown , breast and beneath and a brown back, — both, however, quite light, — and a yellowish tail with a distinct broad black band at the tip. . . .Could it have been a sparrow hawk?")

There is a fair and strong wind with which to sail up stream, and then I can leave my boat, depending on the wind changing to southwest soon. See  May 28, 1855 (" Yesterday left my boat at the willow opposite this Cliff, the wind northwest. Now it is southeast, and I can sail back.")

 

The beauty and magic of it . . . strange to us forever.  See August 6, 1851 ("After how few steps, how little exertion, the student stands in pine woods . . .in a place still unaccountably strange and wild to him."); March 29, 1853 (“ A man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to...appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”);  April 24, 1854 ("Go to new trees, like cedars and firs, and you hear new birds.  They increase the strangeness."); June 9, 1854 ("What musicians compose our woodland quire? They must be forever strange and interesting to me.")  June 21, 1854 ("Up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north of Goose Pond I feel as if in a strange country, — a pleasing sense of strangeness and distance."); July 24, 1857 ("How unexplored still are the realms of nature. . . We may any day take a walk as strange as Dante's imaginary one to L' Inferno or Paradiso.")

I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves. See March 16, 1860 (" I make more boisterous and stormy voyages now than at any season. . . . I vastly increase my sphere and experience by a boat.”); April 29, 1856 ("It is flattering to a sense of power to make the wayward wind our horse and sit with our hand on the tiller. Sailing is much like flying, and from the birth of our race men have been charmed by it.”); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about in such a harmless storm, and see the waves look so angry and black.”); October 27, 1857 (“It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. . . .How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other!”) See also A Book of the Seasons  by Henry Thoreau, A Season for Sailing and  June 27, 1852 ("All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe") 


They are melaina — what is the Greek for waves?-- Greek μελαινα (melaina) meaning "black, dark”. See note  February 10, 1860 (“The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated.”)

A Strange Dog

April 22.

It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge, so that there is now only the Boston road open. This flood tempts men to build boats. The villagers walk the streets and talk of the great rise of waters.


A strange dog accompanies us today, a hunting dog, gyrating about us at a great distance, beating every bush and barking at the birds, with great speed, gyrating his tail too all the while. Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. This stranger dog has good habits for a companion, he keeps so distant. He never trusts himself near us, though he accompanies us for miles.

It takes this day to clear up gradually; successive sun-showers still make it foul. But the sun feels very warm after the storm. This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

The water, slightly agitated, looks bright when the sun shines.

See four hawks soaring high in the heavens over the Swamp Bridge Brook. At first saw three; said to myself there must be four, and found the fourth.

From Cliffs see much snow on the mountains.

The pine on Lee's shore of the pond, seen against the light water this cloudy weather from part way down the Cliff, is an agreeable object to me. When the outline and texture of white pine is thus seen against the water or the sky, it is an affecting sight.

The shadow of the Cliff on Conantum in the semi-sunshine, with indistinct edge and a reddish tinge from bushes here and there!

What is that grass with a yellow blossom which I find now on the Cliff? [Carex marginata, early sedge, the earliest grass that flowers.] 
The early sedge grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass.

I want things to be incredible, — too good to appear true. 

C. says, "After you have been to the post-office once you are damned!" But I answer that it depends somewhat on whether you get a letter or not. If you should not get a letter there is some hope for you.

If you would be wise, learn science and then forget it.

A boat on the river, on the white surface, looks black, and the boatman like Charon.

I see swarms of gnats in the air.
.
It is the contrast between sunshine and storm that is most pleasing; the gleams of sunshine in the midst of the storm are the most memorable.

It is pleasant sometimes looking thirty or forty rods into an open wood, where the trunks of the trees are plainly seen, and patches of soft light on the ground.

The maples in the side swamp near Well Meadow are arranged nearly in a circle in the water.

Saw that winkle-like fungus, fresh and green, covering an oak stump to-day with concentric marks, spirally arranged, sometimes in a circle, very handsome. I love this apparent exuberance of nature.
.
On the most retired, the wildest and craggiest,  most precipitous hillside you will find some old road by which the teamster carted off the wood.

The hylas peep now in full chorus, but are silent on my side of the pond.

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. 

The strain of the red-wing on the willow spray over the water to-night is liquid, bubbling, watery, almost like a tinkling fountain, in perfect harmony with the meadow. It oozes, trickles, tinkles, bubbles from his throat, -bob-y-lee-e-e, and then its shrill, fine whistle.

At 10 P. M. the northern lights are flashing, like some grain sown broadcast in the sky. 

I hear the hylas peep on the meadow as I stand at the door.

Mr. Holbrook tells me he heard and saw martins (?) yesterday. [Storm ends this evening.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1852

It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge, so that there is now only the Boston road open. See April 22, 1856 (“These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.”)

Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. See April 22,1859 (" Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods. . .dodging to right and left and avoiding the twigs, yet without once flapping the wings after having launched themselves.")See also December 14, 1855 ("They shoot off swift and steady, showing their dark-edged tails, almost like a cannon-ball. “)

The shadow of the Cliff on Conantum in the semi-sunshine, . . . See May 16, 1854 ("I notice the dark shadow of Conantum Cliff from the water. Why do I notice it at this season particularly? Is it because a shadow is more grateful to the sight now that warm weather has come? Or is there anything in the contrast between the rich green of the grass and the cool dark shade?”)

The early sedge (Carex marginata) grows on the side of the Cliffs in little tufts with small yellow blossoms, i. e. with yellow anthers, low in the grass. See  April 22, 1859 ("Sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there."); April 10, 1855 ('As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger");  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sedges in Early Spring

The strain of the red-wing on the willow spray over the water to-night is liquid,,bubbling, watery, almost like a tinkling fountain,. . ., and then its shrill, fine whistle. See April 30, 1855 (" Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it?")  

See four hawks soaring high in the heavens. See April 22, 1860 ("See now hen-hawks, a pair, soaring high as for pleasure, circling ever further and further away, as if it were midsummer. The peculiar flight of a hawk thus fetches the year about. I do not see it soar in this serene and leisurely manner very early in the season, methinks. ")

When the outline and texture of white pine is thus seen against the water or the sky, it is an affecting sight. See April 24, 1853 ("See a pretty islet in the Creek Pond on the east side covered with white pine wood, appearing from the south as if the trees grew out of the water. . . .This gives the isle a peculiarly light and floating appearance.")

I see swarms of gnats in the air. See note to April 22, 1860 ("And in one place we disturb great clouds of the little fuzzy gnats that were resting on the bushes.")

The pine on Lee’s shore

seen against the light water

this cloudy weather.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A Strange Dog

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

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