Half an hour standing perfectly still to hear the frogs croak.

March 27.

Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. Brown's Pond in the woods. They are remarkably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes out, croaking, but all ceased, dove, and concealed themselves, before I got within a rod of the shore. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes on the shore, before one showed himself; finally five or six, and all eyed me, gradually approached me within three feet to reconnoitre, and, though I waited about half an hour, would not utter a sound nor take their eyes off me, - were plainly affected by curiosity. 

Dark brown and some, perhaps, dark green, about two inches long; had their noses and eyes out when they croaked. If described at all, must be either young of Rana pipiens or the R. palustris.

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

March 28. My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which however I did not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, "Think of it! He stood half an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers."

See also April 8, 1852: "To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods, and see dimples on the surface, which I suppose that they make, for when I approach they are silent and the dimples are no longer seen."

May 9, 1860:  “We sit by the shore of Goose Pond. … After sitting there a little while, I count noses of twenty frogs. It is a still, cloudy, thoughtful day.”

And July 17, 1854: "I watch them [white lillies] for an hour and a half."

The hazel is fully out.

March 27.

The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. 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. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, when the catkins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs of life in the bush.

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

The hazel is fully out., though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it.See March 27, 1859 ("Of our seven indigenous flowers which begin to bloom in March, four, i. e. the two alders, the aspen, and the hazel, are not generally noticed so early, if at all."); 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 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. A little bunch of (in this case) half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen on the hand, and, close by, as many minute, but clear crystalline crimson stars at the end of a bare and seemingly dead twig. For two or three days in my walks, I had given the hazel catkins a fillip with my finger under their chins to see if they were in bloom, but in vain; but here, on the warm south side of a wood, I find one bunch fully out and completely relaxed. They know when to trust themselves to the weather.”) May 7, 1854 ("Flowers are self-registering indicators of fair weather. I remember how I waited for the hazel catkins to become relaxed and shed their pollen, but they delayed, till at last there came a pleasanter and warmer day and I took off my greatcoat while surveying in the woods, and then, when I went to dinner at noon, hazel catkins in full flower were dangling from the banks by the roadside and yellowed my clothes with their pollen. If man is thankful for the serene and warm day, much more are the flowers.”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hazel

An open winter.

March 24.

March 24, 2019

The past has been a remarkable winter; such a one as I do not remember. The ground has been bare almost all the time, and the river has been open about as much. I got but one chance to take a turn on skates over half an acre. The first snow more than an inch deep fell January 13th, but probably was not a foot deep and was soon gone. There was about as much more fell February 13th, and no more to be remembered, i.e. only two or three inches since.  I doubt if there has been one day when it was decidedly better sleighing than wheeling. I have hardly heard the sound of sleigh-bells.

The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side  of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I like the smell of it, all ready for the borers, and the rich light-yellow color of the freshly split wood and the purple color of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1853

Perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out. See March 9, 1855 (“I am struck, in favorable lights, with the jewel-like brilliancy of the sawed ends thickly bedewed with crystal drops of turpentine, thickly as a shield, as if pine-wood nymphs had seasonably wept there the fall of the tree. The perfect sincerity of these terebinthine drops, each one reflecting the world. . .”)

March 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, An Open Winter

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-530324

Looking with the side of the eye

March 23

The buds of the shad-blossom look green. The crimson-starred flowers of the hazel begin to peep out, though the catkins have not opened. 

The alders are almost generally in full bloom, and a very handsome and interesting show they make with their graceful tawny pendants, inclining to yellow. They shake like ear-drops in the wind, perhaps the first completed ornaments with which the new year decks herself. Their yellow pollen is shaken down and colors my coat like sulphur as I go through them. 

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. It turns the man of science to stone. I feel that I am dissipated by so many observations. I should be the magnet in the midst of all this dust and filings. I knock the back of my hand against a rock, and as I smooth back the skin, I find myself prepared to study lichens there. I look upon man but as a fungus. I have almost a slight, dry headache as the result of all this observing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1853

The alders are almost generally in full bloom, See March 22, 1853 ("The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen . . . This the first native flower.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

I find myself prepared to study lichens there. See January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”). 

Look only with the side of the eye.  See August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see."); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.); February 18, 1852 ("One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds."); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.");   June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.")

I have a slight, dry

headache as the result of

all this observing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1853

I have an appointment with spring.

March 22

As soon as those spring mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am sure to be an early riser. I am waked by my genius. I wake to inaudible melodies and am surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.

I have an appointment with spring. She comes to the window to wake me, and I go forth an hour or two earlier than usual.

It is by especial favor that I am waked, not rudely but gently, as infants should be waked. Though as yet the trill of the chip-bird is not heard, — added, — like the sparkling bead which bursts on bottled cider or ale.

When we wake indeed, with a double awakening, not only from our ordinary nocturnal slumbers, but from our diurnal, we burst through the thallus of our ordinary life with a proper exciple, we awake with emphasis.

To Cliffs. 6 A. M.- There is a white frost on the ground.

One robin really sings on the elms. Even the cockerel crows with new lustiness. Already I hear from the railroad the plaintive strain of a lark or two. They sit now conspicuous on the bare russet ground. 

The tinkling  bubbles of the song sparrow are wafted from distant fenceposts, little rills of song that begin to flow and tinkle as soon as the frost is out of the ground.

The blackbird tries to sing, as it were with a bone in his throat, or to whistle and sing at once. Whither so fast, the restless creature, chuck, chuck, at every rod, and now and then whistle-ter-ee? 

The chill-lill of the blue snowbirds is heard again.

A partridge goes off on Fair Haven Hill-side with a sudden whir like the wad of a six-pounder, keeping just level with the tops of the sprouts. These birds and quails go off like a report.

It affects one's philosophy, after so long living in winter quarters, to see the day dawn from some hill. Our effete lowland town is fresh as New Hampshire. It is as if we had migrated and were ready to begin life again in a new country, with new hopes and resolutions. See your town with the dew on it, in as wild a morning mist (though thin) as ever draped it.

To stay in the house all day, such reviving spring days as the past have been, bending over a stove and gnawing one's heart, seems to me as absurd as for a woodchuck to linger in his burrow.  We have not heard the news then! Sucking the claws of our philosophy when there is game to be had! 

The tapping of the woodpecker, rat-tat-tat, knocking at the door of some sluggish grub to tell him that the spring has arrived, and his fate, this is one of the season sounds, calling the roll of birds and insects, the reveille.

The Cliff woods are comparatively silent. Not yet the woodland birds, except, perhaps, the woodpecker, so far as it migrates; only the orchard and river birds have arrived.

Probably the improvements of men thus advance the season. This is the Bahamas and the tropics or turning point to the redpoll. Is not the woodpecker (downy?) our first woodland bird? Come to see what effects the frost and snow and rain have produced on decaying trees, what trunks will drum.

Fair Haven Pond will be open entirely in the course of the day. 

The oak plain is still red. There are no expanding leaves to greet and reflect the sun as it first falls over the hills. To see the first rays of the sun falling over an eastern wooded ridge on to a western wood and stream and lake! 

I go along the riverside to see the now novel reflections. The subsiding waters have left a thou sand little isles, where willows and sweet-gale and the meadow itself appears. 

I hear the phoebe note of the chickadee, one taking it up behind another as in a catch, phe-bee phe-bee.

The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen. I detect a few catkins at a distance by their distinct yellowish color. This the first native flower.

One of my willow catkins in the pitcher has opened at length.

That is an interesting morning when one first uses the warmth of the sun instead of fire; bathes in the sun, as anon in the river; eschewing fire, draws up to a garret window and warms his thoughts at nature's great central fire, as does the buzzing fly by his side.

Like it, too, our muse, wiping the dust off her long-unused wings, goes blundering through the cobweb of criticism, more dusty still, what venerable cobweb is that, which has hitherto escaped the broom, whose spider is invisible, but the North American Review? — and carries away the half of it.

No sap flows from the maples I cut into, except that one in Lincoln.

What means it? Hylodes Pickeringii, a name that is longer than the frog itself! A description of animals, too, from a dead specimen only, as if, in a work on man, you were to describe a dead man only, omitting his manners and customs, his institutions and divine faculties, from want of opportunity to observe them, suggesting, perchance, that the colors of the eye are said to be much more brilliant in the living specimen, and that some cannibal, your neighbor, who has tried him on his table, has found him to be sweet and nutritious, good on the gridiron.

Having had no opportunity to observe his habits, because you do not live in the country.

Only dindons and dandies.

Nothing is known of his habits.

Food : seeds of wheat, beef, pork, and potatoes.



P. M. — To Martial Miles Meadow, by boat to Nut Meadow Brook.

Launched my new boat. It is very steady, too steady for me; does not toss enough and communicate the motion of the waves. Beside, the seats are not well arranged; when there are two in it, it requires a heavy stone in the stern to trim. But it holds its course very well with a side wind from being so flat from stem to stern.

The cranberries now make a show under water, and I always make it a point to taste a few.

Fresh clamshells have been left by the muskrats at various heights.

C. says he saw a painted tortoise yesterday. Very likely.

We started two ducks feeding behind a low spit of meadow. From Brooks's plates I should think them widgeons. [Brown thinks them sheldrakes.] They had the grayish-white breasts of the wood duck. They look as if they had dropped from heaven, motionless.

Saw a green grasshopper and a common caterpillar, also another beetle similar to that of yesterday, except that this was a sort of slate-color with two or three fawn-colored marks on each wing-case.

The spearheads of the skunk cabbage are now quite conspicuous.  I see that many flowers have been destroyed by the cold. In no case is the spathe unrolled, and I think it is not yet in blossom.

At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty.

I see the Emys guttata with red spots. Some which I think to be the same sex have striated scales, while others are smooth above. What I take to be the female has a flat-edged shell as well as depressed sternum. The yellow spots appear like some yellow wood let in. The spots are brightest when they are in the water. They are in couples.

C. saw a frog.

Some willows will be out in a day or two. Silvery catkins of all sizes shine afar.

The two white feathers of the blue snowbird contrast prettily with the slate.

Returning to river, the water is blue as blue ink from this side.  Hubbard's field a smooth russet bank lit by the setting sun and the pale skim-milk sky above.

I told Stacy the other day that there was another volume of De Quincey's Essays (wanting to see it in his library).

"I know it " says he, "but I shan't buy any more of them, for nobody reads them."

I asked what book in his library was most read.

He said, “The Wide, Wide World.” 

In a little dried and bleached tortoiseshell about an inch and three quarters long, I can easily study his anatomy and the house he lives in. His ribs are now distinctly revealed under his lateral scales, slanted like rafters to the ridge of his roof, for his sternum is so large that his ribs are driven round upon his back.

It is wonderful to see what a perfect piece of dovetailing his house is, the different plates of his shell fitting into each other by a thousand sharp teeth or serrations, and the scales always breaking joints over them so as to bind the whole firmly together, all parts of his abode variously inter-spliced and dovetailed.

An architect might learn much from a faithful study of it.

There are three large diamond-shaped openings down the middle of the sternum, covered only by the scales, through [ which ], perhaps, he feels, he breasts the earth. His roof rests on four stout posts.This young one is very deep in proportion to its breadth. The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches.

The bæomyces is not yet dried up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 22, 1853

So  serene and joyful and expectant a mood. See September 2. 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood.")

I have an appointment with spring. See Walden, “Spring” ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring,”)

A double awakening. See Walden ("We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”)

Fair Haven Pond will be open entirely in the course of the day. See March 22, 1855 (" I cross Fair Haven Pond, including the river, on the ice, and probably can for three or four days yet..") ; March 22, 1854 ("Launch boat and paddle to Fair Haven . . . Fair Haven still covered and frozen anew in part.")

At Nut Meadow Brook, water-bugs and skaters are now plenty. See March 19, 1860 ("Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular shadow on the bottom?"); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring, the water-bug (Gyrinus)

Some willows will be out in a day or two. Silvery catkins of all sizes shine afar. See March 22, 1854 ("The now silvery willow catkins shine along the shore"); March 22. 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . Vegetation fairly begins. . . bæomyces handsome; willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright,. . .alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated.");  March 21, 1855. ("Early willow . . .catkins are very conspicuous now . . .This increased silveriness was obvious, I think, about the first of March, perhaps earlier . . . It is the first decided growth I have noticed, and is probably a month old.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The very earliest alder is in bloom and sheds its pollen.. . . the first native flower. See March. 23, 1853 ("A very handsome and interesting show they make with their graceful tawny pendants, inclining to yellow. They shake like ear-drops in the wind, perhaps the first completed ornaments with which the new year decks herself. Their yellow pollen is shaken down and colors my coat like sulphur as I go through them.")

I see the Emys guttata with red spots. . .  C. saw a frog . . . The Emys guttata is first found in warm, muddy ditches. See February 23, 1857 ("See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch. . . these brilliantly spotted creatures. There are commonly two, at least. The tortoise is stirring in the ditches again. . . . The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. "); March 18, 1854 ("C. has already seen a yellow-spotted tortoise in a ditch."); March 22. 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . . those little frogs (sylvatica males ?) at spring-holes and ditches, the yellow-spot turtle and wood turtle, Rana fontinalis, and painted tortoise come forth, and the Rana sylvatica croaks.. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring

The spearheads of the skunk cabbage are now quite conspicuous. . . .it is not yet in blossom. See  March 22, 1860; ("The phenomena of an average March . . . The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d)"); March 21, 1858 ("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating, according to the condition in which the winter leaves the crust of the meadow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

 Waked by my genius

 in so serene joyful and 

expectant a mood.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  An appointment with spring.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

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

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt5303

 

A mental spring thaw.

March 21.

It is a genial and reassuring day; the mere warmth of the west wind amounts almost to balminess. The softness of the air mollifies our own dry and congealed substance. 

I sit down by a wall to see if I can muse again. We become, as it were, pliant and ductile again to strange but memorable influences; – we are led a little way by our genius. 

We are affected like the earth, and yield to the elemental tenderness; winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.  

Might not my Journal be called "Field Notes?" 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 21, 1853


Winter breaks up within us . . . and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels. See December 26, 1854 ("I feel the winter breaking up in me; if I were home I would try to write poetry."); January 31, 1854 ("We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression."); March 9, 1852 ("[T]he air excites me. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man.”)

March 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 21

Frost comes out of me,

thoughts like a freshet pour down

unwonted channels.

Ice-out

March 20.

Walden is melting apace. It has a canal two rods wide along the northerly side and the west end, wider at the east end, yet, after running round from west to east, it does not keep the south shore, but crosses in front of the  deep cove in a broad crack to where it started, by the lee ground. It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. 

The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice, unusually hard, all watered or waved like a tessellated floor, a figured carpet; yet dead, yet in vain, till it slides on to the living water surface, where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore, a silvery sheen like the scales of a leuciscus, as if it were all one active fish in the spring.  

It is the contrast between life and death. There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 20, 1853

The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy. See Walden ("Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore — olit, olit, olit-chip, chip, chip, che char-che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore — a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.") See also Walden: ("Walden was first completely open in 1845 the 1st of April;

in '46, the 25th of March;
in '47, the 8th of April;
in '51, the 28th of March;
in '52, the 18th of April;
in '53, the 23rd of March;
in '54, about the 7th of April.”);

April 9, 1854 ("I am surprised to find Walden completely open. When did it open ? According to all accounts, it must have been between the 6th and 9th.")

March 29, 1855 ("As I stand on Heywood’s Peak, looking over Walden, more than half its surface already sparkling blue water, I inhale with pleasure the cold but wholesome air like a draught of cold water”)

April 18, 1856 ("Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th.“)

March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.”)

March 28, 1858 (“Walden is open. When? On the 20th it was pretty solid. C. sees a very little ice in it to-day, but probably it gets entirely free to-night.”

March 29, 1859 ("Walden is first clear after to-day.”)

March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”)

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out