Walking in the Rain.

April 4.

Last night, a sugaring of snow, which goes off in an hour or two in the rain. Rains all day.

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly in such an atmosphere, and makes a small angle with the earth. It is low, perhaps, for the same reason that the clouds are.

The robins sang this morning, nevertheless, and now more than ever hop about boldly in the garden in the rain, with full, broad, light cow-colored breasts.

P. M. -- Rain, rain.

To Clematis Brook via Lee's Bridge.

Again I notice that early reddish or purplish grass that lies flat on the pools, like a warm blush suffusing the youthful face of the year.

A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.

We go abroad with a slow but sure contentment, like turtles under their shells. We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. Our comfort is positive then. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. Now we seem to hear the ground a-soaking up the rain, and not falling ineffectually on a frozen surface. We, too, are penetrated and revived by it.

Robins still sing, and song sparrows more or less, and blackbirds, and the unfailing jay screams.

How the thirsty grass rejoices! It has pushed up so visibly since morning, and fields that were completely russet yesterday are already tinged with green. We rejoice with the grass.

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. Instead of ripples there are a myriad dimples on the stream.

The lichens remember the sea to-day. The usually dry cladonias, which are so crisp under the feet, are full of moist vigor.

The rocks speak and tell the tales inscribed on them.Their inscriptions are brought out. I pause to study their geography.

At Conantum End I saw a red-tailed hawk launch, a heavy flier, flapping even like the great bittern at first,-heavy forward.

After turning Lee's Cliff I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather, --

• tree sparrows, whose song has the character of the canary's,
• F. hyemalis's, chill-lill,
• the sweet strain of the fox-colored sparrow,
• song sparrows,
• a nuthatch,
• jays,
• crows,
• bluebirds,
• robins, and
• a large congregation of blackbirds. 

They suddenly alight with great din in a stubble-field just over the wall, not perceiving me and my umbrella behind the pitch pines, and there feed silently; then, getting uneasy or anxious, they fly up on to an apple tree, where being reassured, commences a rich but deafening concert, o-gurgle-ee-e, o-gurgle-ee-e, some of the most liquid notes ever heard, as if produced by some of the water of the Pierian spring, flowing through some kind of musical water-pipe and at the same time setting in motion a multitude of fine vibrating metallic springs. Like a shepherd merely meditating most enrapturing glees on such a water-pipe. A more liquid bagpipe or clarionet, immersed like bubbles in a thousand sprayey notes, the bubbles half lost in the spray.

When I show myself, away they go with a loud harsh charr-r, charr-r. At first I had heard an inundation of blackbirds approaching, some beating time with a loud chuck, chuck, while the rest played a hurried, gurgling fugue.

Saw a sucker washed to the shore at Lee's Bridge, its tail gone, large fins standing out, purplish on top of head and snout. Reminds me of spring, spearing, and gulls.

A rainy day is to the walker in solitude and retirement like the night.
Few travellers are about, and they half hidden under umbrellas and confined to the highways. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. It is somewhat like the dark day; it is a light night. How cheerful the roar of a brook swollen by the rain, especially if there is no sound of a mill in it! 

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved.

A clustering of small narrow leaves somewhat cone-like on the shrub oak.

Some late, low, remarkably upright alders (serrulata), short thick catkins, at Clematis Brook.

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.

A little willow (Salix Muhlenbergiana?) nearly ready to bloom, not larger than a sage willow. All our early willows with catkins appearing before the leaves must belong to the group of “The Sallows. Cinereæ. Borrer," and that of the "Two-colored Willows. Discolores. Borrer," as adopted by Barratt; or, in other words, to the first § of Carey in Gray.

The other day, when I had been standing perfectly still some ten minutes, looking at a willow which had just blossomed, some rods in the rear of Martial Miles's house, I felt eyes on my back and, turning round suddenly, saw the heads of two men who had stolen out of the house and were watching me over a rising ground as fixedly as I the willow. They were study the cheapest of the two.

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1853

The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly. . . and makes a small angle with the earth. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

We never feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a storm with satisfaction. We are all compact, and our thoughts collected. We walk under the clouds and mists as under a roof. One's thoughts run in a different channel from usual. See April 2, 1852 (" The rain was soothing, so still and sober, gently beating against and amusing our thoughts, swelling the brooks. . . . The hour is favorable to thought"); April 19, 1852 (" To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth."); May 13, 1852("They who do not walk in the woods in the rain never behold them in their freshest, most radiant and blooming beauty."); August 4, 1852("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this"); . August 7, 1853 (" It is worth the while to walk in wet weather;. . .The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts"); November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . . The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, . . . My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. . . . This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling."); See also January 27, 1858("It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring,")

A warm, dripping rain, heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, and on the leaves without, suggests comfort.  See  March 21, 1858 ("This first spring rain is very agreeable. I love to hear the pattering of the drops on my umbrella, and I love also the wet scent of the umbrella. ")

I hear the hollow sound of drops falling into the water under Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a conspicuous bubble which is floated down-stream. See June 14, 1855 ("  It is very pleasant to  . . .see and hear the great drops patter on the river, each making a great bubble; the rain seemed much heavier for it")

I heard, methinks, more birds singing even than in fair weather. See April 4, 1855 ("A fine morning, still and bright, with smooth water and singing of song and tree sparrows and some blackbirds. "). and note to April 4, 1860("The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages")

A woodcock went off from the shore of Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half revolved. See June 15, 1851 ("A solitary woodcock in the shade goes off with a startled, rattling, hurried note.")

The hazel bloom is about one tenth of an inch long (the stigmas) now.  See   March 27, 1853 ("It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.. . .The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring,"):.  March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen"):  April 1, 1853 ("The hazel stigmas now more fully out , curving over and a third of an inch long , that the catkins begin to shed pollen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

I hear the twitter of tree sparrows from fences and shrubs in the yard and from alders by meadows and the riverside every day. See April 8, 1854 ("Methinks I do not see such great and lively flocks of hyemalis and tree sparrows in the morning. . .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 Tree Sparrow

How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised

December 31. 

I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. 

I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. 
First fall the chestnuts with the severe frosts, the greater part of them at least, and then, at length, the rains and winds bring down the leaves which cover them with a thick coat. 

I have wondered sometimes how the nuts got planted which merely fell on to the surface of the earth, but already I find the nuts of the present year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where is all the moisture and manure they want. A large proportion of this year's nuts are now covered loosely an inch deep under mouldy leaves, though they are themselves sound, and are moreover concealed from squirrels thus. 

It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. Will not the trees look finely in the morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1852

Gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook.   See December 27, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); See also August 14, 1856 ("Just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook”); November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”);  December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow."); January 10, 1853 ("Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts"); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")


How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. See October 22, 1857 ("Nature drops it on the rustling leaves, a done nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again.”)

Scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods. See October 24, 1857 (“I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk . . .It is best to reduce it to a system.”)

A sort of frozen rain this afternoon stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. See
December 6, 1858 (“Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.”). See also See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze.

December 6

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze. 

It is already half fallen, melting off. The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. 

It is now perfect only on the north sides of woods which the sun has not touched or affected. Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light. 

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.

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

To see the glaze. See December 5, 1858 ("Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing . . . so that there is quite a glaze."); December 5, 1859 ("There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves"); December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produces a slight glaze, the first of the winter. "); December 26, 1855 ("After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had."); February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one."); February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.”) See also Yesterday's ice storm today and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Days

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")

December 6. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 6

Here or there one or

another rainbow color –

a small point of light.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Go out to see the glaze.

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/HDT581206

Nature loves gradation.

January 26. 

At the Doublechair
January 26, 2018

A warm rain from time to time. 

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp down the brook. 

When it rains it is like an April shower. The brook is quite open, and there is no snow on the banks or fields. 

From time to time I see a trout glance, and sometimes, in an adjoining ditch, quite a school of other fishes, but I see no tortoises. In a ditch I see very light-colored and pretty large lizards moving about, and I suspect I may even have heard a frog drop into the water once or twice. 

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. 

On the side-hill at the swamp, I see how the common horizontal birch fungus is formed. I see them in all stages and of all sizes on a dead Betula alba, both on the upper and under sides, but always facing the ground. At first you perceive the bark merely raised into a nub and perhaps begun to split, and, removing a piece of the bark, you [find] a fibrous whitish germ like a mildew in the bark, as it were of a fungus be neath, in the bark and decayed wood. Next you will see the fungus pushed out like a hernia, about the size as well as form of a pea. At first it is of a nearly uniform convex and homogeneous surface, above and below, but very soon, or while yet no larger than a pea,it begins to show a little horizontal flat disk, always on the under side, which you would not suspect with out examining it, and the upper surface already be gins to be water. So it goes on, pushing out through the bark further and further, spreading and flatting out more and more, till it has attained its growth, with a more or less elongated neck to its peninsula. The fungus as it grows fills the rent in the bark very closely, and the edges of the bark are recurved, lip-like. They commonly break off at the junction of the true bark with the wood, bringing away some of the woody fibre. Apparently the spongy decayed bark and wood is their soil. 

This is a lichen day. 

The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed. 

The yellow birch tree is peculiarly interesting. It might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. The edges of the curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree, corresponding to the twist of the nerve or grain. 

Nature loves gradation. Trees do not spring abruptly from the earth. Mosses creep up over the insteps of the trees and endeavor to reclaim them. Hence the propriety of lacing over the instep. 

Is not the moccasin a more picturesque and fitter sort of shoe than ours in which to move amid the herbage? 

How protean is life! One may eat and drink and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if he is as truly alive or his life is as valuable and divine as that of an oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick himself with a pin to see if he is alive. 

It is wonderful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a living creature may be. No more energy may it have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a decaying tree. 

I raised last summer a squash which weighed 123 1/2 pounds. If it had fallen on me it would have made as deep and lasting an impression as most men do. I would just as lief know what it thinks about God as what most men think, or are said to think. In such a squash you have already got the bulk of a man. My man, perchance, when I have put such a question to him, opes his eyes for a moment, essays in vain to think, like a rusty firelock out of order, then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat and goes to sleep, as it is called, — and that is no great distance to go, surely. 

Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it hadn’t been January. Some say that this particularly warm weather within a few days is the January thaw, but there is nothing to thaw. The sand-banks in the Deep Cut are as dry as in summer. 

Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words, mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes like the bear her cubs,—words like “tribal” and “ornamentation,” which drag a dead tail after them. They will pick you out of a thousand the still-born words, the falsettos, the wing-clipped and lame words, as if only the false notes caught their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. 

The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens cackle and scratch, all this winter. Eggs must be plenty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1858

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. See May 30, 1857 (“Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower.”)  Also January 27, 1858 ("sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. . . .The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life. . . . And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, , , ,You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. ")

Edges of the yellow birch curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree. See February 18, 1854 (“The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. ”)

 She takes me out  to see bear tracks.  We continue on straight up the mountain to our north east corner.. The snow is  a hard packed crust. The walking is easy everywhere in the woods as there is a smooth surface covering all imperfections. I am wearing studded boots

We stop at the double chair and sit. This is one of those blue sky days. Now in late afternoon we see the first quarter moon in the east

We bushwhack down off the mountain to the top of the rocky trail and then bushwhack straight up to the view. Nature is putting on another orange sunset way to the south. It seems to be setting right over Giant. 

I start to feel chilled. Even though the day seem to be in the 30s the temperature here is now 16°

We head north through the woods and then down to the under view Trail where it connects with the rocky trail. We feel the freedom to go anywhere on this crusty snow

Though we have our headlamps we do not pull them out as it gets dark. Jane suddenly exclaims what is that shadow – we realize we are now walking in the moonlight– Moon light and shadows the rest of the way home.

Moonlight and shadows.

Freedom to go anywhere 

on this crusty snow.

Zypx 20180126

Sailing with an umbrella: It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms.

April 22.

April 22.

It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over. In a few minutes the air is full of mizzling rain again. 

8 A. M. —Go to my boat opposite Bittern Cliff. 

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. 

There is snow still (of the winter) in the hollows where sand has been dug on the hillside east of Clamshell. 

Going through Hubbard’s root-fence field, see a pigeon woodpecker on a fence post. He shows his lighter back between his wings cassock-like and like the smaller woodpeckers. Joins his mate on a tree and utters the wooing note o-week o-week, etc. 

The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,_and the rhythm of its strain is ker chick | ker che |  ker-char—r-r-r-r | chick, the last two bars being the part chiefly heard. 

The huckleberry buds are much swollen. 

I see the tracks of some animal which has passed over Potter’s sand, perhaps a skunk. They are quite distinct, the ground being smoothed and softened by rain. The tracks of all animals are much more distinct at such a time. 

By the path, and in the sandy field beyond, are many of those star-fingered puffballs. I think they must be those which are so white, like pigeons’ eggs, in the fall, the thick, leathery rind bursting into eight to eleven segments, like those of a boy’s batting ball, and curving back. They are very pretty and remarkable now, sprinkled over the sand, smooth and plump on account of the rain. (I find some beyond at Mountain Sumach Knoll, smaller with a very thin rind and more turned back, a different species plainly.) The inside of the rind, which is uppermost, approaches a chocolate-color; the puffball is a rough dirty or brownish white; the dust which does not fly now at any rate is chocolate-colored. Seeing these thus open, I should know there had been wet weather. 

The mountain sumach berries have no redness now, though the smooth sumach berries have. Its twigs are slender and so have a small pith. Its heart-wood is not yellow, like the smooth and the dogwood, but green. Its bark is more gray than that of the smooth, which last, when wet, is slightly reddish. Its bark sap or juice is not yellow like that of the smooth, and is slower to harden. 

Some hellebore leaves are opened in the Cliff Brook Swamp. 

My boat is half full of water. 

There are myriads of snow-fleas in the water amid the bushes, apparently washed out of the bark by the rain and rise of river. I push up-stream to Lee’s Cliff, behind Goodwin, who is after musquash. 

Many suckers and one perch have washed up on the Conantum shore, the wind being southeasterly. I do not detect any wound. Their eyes are white, -- it would be worth while to see how long before this happens, —and they appear to have been dead some time; their fins are worn, and they are are slimy. I cut open a sucker, and it looked rather yellow within. I also see sometimes their bladders washed up. They float on their backs. When cut open they sink, but the double bladder is uppermost and protruded as far as possible. Saw some pieces of a sucker recently dropped by some bird or beast, eight or ten rods from the shore. 

Much root and leaf-bud washed up. 

A gull. 

Very perfect and handsome clamshells, recently opened by the musquash, i. e. during the storm, lie on the meadow and the hillside just above water-mark. They are especially handsome because wet by the rain. 

I buy a male muskrat of Goodwin, just killed. He sometimes baits his mink-traps with muskrat; always with some animal food. The musquash does not eat this, though he sometimes treads on the trap and is caught. 

It rains hard and steadily again, and I sail before it.

Now I see many more ducks than in all that fair weather, — sheldrakes, etc. 

A marsh hawk, in the midst of the rain, is skimming along the shore of the meadow, close to the ground, and, though not more than thirty rods, I repeatedly lose sight of it, it is so nearly the color of the hillside beyond. It is looking for frogs. 

The small slate-colored hawk which I have called pigeon hawk darts away from a bushy island in the meadow. 

The muskrat, which I bought for twelve cents, weighs three pounds, six ounces. Goodwin thought that some would weigh a half to three quarters of a pound more than this; I think a pound more. Thought this was a young one of last year, — judged by the tail, —and that they hardly came to their growth in one year. Extreme length, twenty—three inches; length of bare tail, nine inches; breadth of tail, seven eighths of an inch; breadth of body, etc., as it lies, six and a half. An oval body, dark-brown above (black in some lights, the coarse wind hairs aft), reddish-brown beneath. Thus far the color of the hair. The fur within slate-color. Tail black; feet a delicate glossy dark slate (?), with white nails. The hind feet half webbed, and their sides and toes fringed thickly with stiff hair, apparently to catch water; ears (the head is wet and bruised), partly concealed in the fur, short and round; long black mustachial bristles; fore legs, quite short, more like hands; hind ones, about three inches without the line of the body’s fur and hair. Tail, on the skin, is a little curved downwards. 

The star fungi, as they dried in my chamber in the course of two or three hours, drew in the fingers. The different segments curled back tightly upon the central puff, the points being strongly curled downward into the middle dimple-wise. It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers. 

Their coat seems to be composed of two thicknesses of different material and quality, and I should guess that the inside chocolate-colored had a great affinity for moisture and, being saturated with it, swelled, and so necessarily burst off and turned back, and perchance the outside dirty-white or pale-brown one expands with dryness. 

A single male sheldrake rose from amid the alders against Holden Swamp Woods, as I was sailing down in angles across my course, only four or five rods from me and a foot or two above the water, finally circling round into my rear. 

Soon after I turned about in Fair Haven Pond, it began to rain hard. The wind was but little south of east and therefore not very favorable for my voyage. I raised my sail and, cowering under my umbrella in the stern, wearing the umbrella like a cap and holding the handle between my knees, I steered and paddled, almost perfectly sheltered from the heavy rain. Yet my legs and arms were a little exposed sometimes, in my endeavors to keep well to windward so as to double certain capes ahead. For the wind occasionally drove me on to the western shore. 

From time to time, from under my umbrella, I could see the ducks spinning away before me, like great bees. For when they are flying low directly from you, you see hardly anything but their vanishing dark bodies, while the rapidly moving wings or paddles, seen edgewise, are almost invisible. 

At length, when the river turned more easterly, I was obliged to take down my sail and paddle slowly in the face of the rain, for the most part not seeing my course, with the umbrella slanted before me. But, though my progress was slow and laborious, and at length I began to get a little wet, I enjoyed the adventure because it combined to some extent the advantages of being at home in my chamber and abroad in the storm at the same time. 

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. We cannot be said to have fully invented clothing yet. In the meanwhile the rain-water collects in the boat, and you must sit with your feet curled up on a paddle, and you expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges. 

These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer. Flowers delay their blossoming, birds tarry in their migrations, etc., etc. It is surprising how so many tender organizations of flowers and insects survive them uninjured. 

The muskrat must do its swimming chiefly with its hind feet. They are similar in form and position to those of the sheldrake. Its broad oval and flattish body, too, must help keep it up. 

Those star puffballs which had closed up in my chamber, put into water, opened again in a few hours. 

What is that little bodkin-shaped bulb which I found washed up on the edge of the meadow, white with a few  small greenish rounded leafets? 

On the 19th, when setting out one of those over cup oaks in Sleepy Hollow, digging at the decayed stump of an apple tree, we disturbed, dug up, a toad, which probably had buried itself there last fall and had not yet come out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1856

Monroe’s larches by river will apparently shed pollen soon. The staminate flowers look forward, but the pistil late scarcely show any red. See April 26, 1856 (“ Monroe’s larch will [shed pollen], apparently, by day after to-morrow.”); April 27, 1856 (" I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow.”); April 29, 1855 ( A few of the cones within reach on F. Monroe’s larches shed pollen; say, then, yesterday. The crimson female flowers are now handsome but small. “);April 29, 1856 ("Monroe’s larch staminate buds have now erected and separated their anthers, and they look somewhat withered, as if they had shed a part of their pollen. If so, they began yesterday.”)

you expose yourself in taking down your mast and raising it again at the bridges. . . . See April 17, 1856 ("I make haste to take down my sail at the bridges, but at the stone arches forgot my umbrella, which was un avoidably crushed in part. ")

A marsh hawk . . . looking for frogs . See April 8, 1856  ("marsh hawks circling low shows that frogs must be out.”); April 5, 1854 ("These days, when a soft west or southwest wind blows and it is truly warm, and an outside coat is oppressive, — these bring out the butterflies and the frogs, and the marsh hawks which prey on the last.”)

It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. See February 15, 1857 (“Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass. . .”); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); November 6, 1851 ("I had on my  bad-weather clothes” at Quebec like Olaf Trygvesson, the Northman, when he went to Thing in England.")

Tonight, April 22, we leave the dogs behind around 6 o'clock and climb straight up behind the house to the logging road that connects to the red trail over the ridge down the red trail towards the wetland turn right at the big tree and there is that pile of scat still there. 

She says she wishes she had something to take it home and I reach in my back pocket ( I'm wearing shorts) and serendipity have a blue latex glove and  a plastic bag from an old Subway sandwich. (She collects the scat I put it in the cargo pocket of my shorts and hand it to her when we got home a little before 9:30.)

We detour into the wetland she gets very excited there is lots of Sphagum moss and a pit of mud where some animal has been digging. 

I discover part of the shell and skeleton of a snapping turtle. 

Surprisingly we are able to walk on the tufts of grass and mossy fallen logs without getting wet although there is a great deal of water all around.

Discover part of 

the shell and skeleton of 

a snapping turtle.

zphx April 22, 2016

The ice on Lake Champlain was broken up on the 12th.

April 17, 2016

April 17.

Was awakened in the night by a thunder and lightning shower and hail-storm — the old familiar burst and rumble, as if it had been rumbling somewhere else ever since I heard it last, and had not lost the knack. 

I heard a thousand hailstones strike and bounce on the roof at once. What a clattering! Yet it did not last long, and the hail took a breathing-space once or twice. I did not know at first but we should lose our windows, the blinds being away at the painters’. 

These sounds lull me into a deeper slumber than before.

Hail-storms are milked out of the first summer-like warmth; they belong to lingering cool veins in the air, which thus burst and come down. The thunder, too, sounds like the final rending and breaking up of winter; thus precipitous is its edge. The first one is a skirmish between the cool rear-guard of winter and the warm and earnest vanguard of summer. Advancing summer strikes on the edge of winter, which does not drift fast enough away, and fire is elicited. Electricity is engendered by the early heats. 

I love to hear the voice of the first thunder as of the toad (though it returns irregularly like pigeons), far away in his moist meadow where he is warmed to life, and see the flash of his eye. 

Hear a chip-bird high on an elm this morning, and probably that was one I heard on the 15th. You would not be apt to distinguish the note of the earliest. 

I still see quite a snow-bank from my window on the hillside at the northeast end of Clamshell, say a northeast exposure. This is on the surface, but the snow lies there in still greater quantity, in two hollows where sand has been dug for the meadow, on the hillside, though sloping to the southeast, where it is quite below the general surface. We have had scarcely any rain this spring, and the snow has been melting very gradually in the sun. 

P. M. Start for Conantum in boat, wind southwest. 

I can hide my oars and sail up there and come back another day. A moist muggy afternoon, rain-threatening, true April weather, after a particularly warm and pleasant forenoon. The meadows are still well covered, and I cut off the bends. 

The red-wing goes over with his che-e-e che-e-e, chatter, chatter, chatter. 

On Hubbard’s great meadow I hear the sound of some fowl, perhaps a loon, rushing through the water, over by Dennis’s Hill, and push for it. Meanwhile it grows more and more rain-threatening, — all the air moist and muggy, a great ill-defined cloud darkening all the west. — but I push on till I feel the first drops, knowing that the wind will take me back again. 

Now I hear ducks rise, and know by their hoarse quacking that they are black ones, and see two going off as if with one mind, along the edge of the wood.

Now comes the rain with a rush. In haste I put my boat about, raise my sail, and, cowering under my umbrella in the stern, with the steering oar in my hand, begin to move homeward. The rain soon fulls up my sail, and it catches all the little wind. From under the umbrella I look out on the scene. 

The big drops pepper the watery plain, the aequor, on every side. It is not a hard, dry pattering, as on a roof, but a softer, liquid pattering, which makes the impression of a double wateriness. You do not observe the drops descending but where they strike, for there they batter and indent the surface deeply like buckshot, and they, or else other drops which they create, rebound or hop up an inch or two, and these last you see, and also when they circling dimples, running into and breaking one another, and very often a bubble is formed by the force of the shot, which floats entire for half a minute. These big shot are battering the surface every three inches or thicker. 

I make haste to take down my sail at the bridges, but at the stone arches forgot my umbrella, which was un avoidably crushed in part. 

Even in the midst of this rain I am struck by the variegated surface of the water, different portions reflecting the light differently, giving what is called a watered appearance. Broad streams of light water stretch away between streams of dark, as if they were different kinds of water unwilling to mingle, though all are equally dimpled by the rain, and you detect no difference in their condition. As if Nature loved variety for its own sake. 

It is a true April shower, or rain,—I think the first. It rains so easy, —has a genius for it and infinite capacity for it. Many showers will not exhaust the moisture of April. 

When I get home and look out the window, I am surprised to see how it has greened the grass. It springs up erect like a green flame in the ditches on each side the road, where we had not noticed it before. Grass is born. 

There is a quite distinct tinge of green on the hillside seen from my window now. I did not look for the very first. 

I learn from the papers that an unusual number of fruit trees have been girdled by the mice under the deep snow of the past winter. Immense damage has been done to nurseries and orchards. I saw where a prostrate maple in the Great Meadows had been gnawed nearly bare. 

April 17, 2016

Our river was generally breaking up on the 3d of April, though some parts were frozen till the 12th. I see by the papers that the ice had left Lake St. Peter (St. Lawrence) the 12th. Another paper (of the 11th) has heard that the St. Lawrence was open from Quebec to Three Rivers, or before the Hudson. The ice on Lake Champlain was broken up on the 12th. Fair Haven Pond was quite open the 13th. The ice moved down the Penobscot, and the river opened the 15th. Lake Ontario was free of ice the 16th. The Kennebec is expected to open this week. (To-day is Thursday.) 

There is still ice in Walden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1856


Drops batter and indent the surface deeply like buckshot. . . Broad streams of light water stretch away between streams of dark. . . See July 31, 1860 ("I see the differently shaded or lit currents of the river . . .and a myriad white globules dance or rebound an inch or two from the surface, where the big drops fall, and I hear a sound as if it rains pebbles or shot”); June 17, 1859 ("The different-colored currents, light and dark, are seen through it all. At last the whole surface is nicked with the rebounding drops ...” )

April 17, 2016

Red oak acorns fall first.

September 12.

A cool, overcast day threatening a storm. Methinks these cool cloudy days are important to show the colors of some flowers, —that with an absence of light their own colors are more conspicuous and grateful against the cool, moist, dark-green earth.

The river has at length risen perceptibly, and bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm.

A sprinkling drives me back for an umbrella. and I start again for Smith’s Hill 'via Hubbard’s Close. I see plump young bluebirds in small flocks along the fences, with only the primaries and tail a bright blue, the other feathers above dusky ashy-brown, tipped with white. 

How much more the crickets are heard a cool, cloudy day like this! 

I see the Epilobium molle in Hubbard’s Close still out, but I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.

White oak acorns have many of them fallen. They are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them; but frequently three, forming a little star with three rays, looking very artificial. Some black scrub oak acorns have fallen, and a few black oak acorns also have fallen. The red oak began to fall first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 12, 1854

Bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. See September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably" ); September 6, 1854 ("The water is again warmer than I should have believed; "); September 24, 1854 ("It is now too cold to bathe with comfort") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

Small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two.  See September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

Septemeber 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 12

These cool cloudy days 

show the colors of flowers

against dark-green earth.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Red oak acorns fall first.

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-540912 

Shad-bush in blossom

May 10

 To Tall's Island, taking boat at Cliffs. 

May 10, 2023

Rain about daylight makes the weather uncertain for the day. Damp, April-like mistiness in the air. I take an umbrella with me. 

The wind is southwest, and I have to row or paddle up. The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hill sides, seen afar amid gray twigs, before even its own leaves are much expanded.

I drag and push my boat over the road at Deacon Farrar's brook, carrying a roller with me. It is warm rowing with a thick coat. 

I make haste back with a fair wind and umbrella for sail.  

A sprinkling rain ceases when I reach Bittern Cliff, and the water smooths somewhat. I see many red maple  blossoms on the surface.  Their keys now droop gracefully about the stems.

A fresh, growing scent comes from the moistened earth and vegetation, and I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway. 

Above the railroad bridge I see a kingfisher twice sustain himself in one place, about forty feet above the meadow, by a rapid motion of his wings, somewhat like a devil's-needle, not progressing an inch, apparently over a fish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1854

The shad-bush in blossom is the first to show like a fruit tree on the hillsides.  See May 9, 1852 ("The first shad-bush, Juneberry, or service-berry (Amclanchier canadensis), in blossom.");  May 12, 1855 ("I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind."); May 13, 1852 ("The amelanchiers are now the prevailing flowers in the woods and swamps and sprout-lands, a very beautiful flower, with its purplish stipules and delicate drooping white blossoms. The shad-blossom days in the woods.")

I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway.. See May 12, 1855 ("I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, . . ."); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, ")

May 10. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

Shad-bush in blossom

seen afar amid gray twigs

before its own leaves.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush in blossom

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-540510