One with the rocks and with me – I saw the world as through a glass, eternally.

May 12

May 12. 

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all, world-ridden. 

I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out of his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can't do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets. He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting. 

The Salix cordata var. Torreyana is distinguished by its naked ovaries more or less red-brown, with flesh- colored stigmas, with a distinct slender woolly rachis and conspicuous stalks, giving the ament a loose and open appearance. 

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of. 

May 12, 2017

*****

While dropping beans in the garden at Texas just after sundown (May 13th), I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. 

It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. 

The spirit of its earth-song, of its serene and true philosophy, was breathed into me, and I saw the world as through a glass, as it lies eternally. 

Some of its aboriginal contentment, even of its domestic felicity, possessed me. What he suggests is permanently true. 

As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured. 

It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture. 

I would thus from time to time take advice of the birds, correct my human views by listening to their volucral (?). 

He is a brother poet, this small gray bird (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, perchance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly see him against the plowed ground. You advance step by step as the twilight deepens, and lo! he is gone, and in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter. 

One with the rocks and with us. 

Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed, at any rate only when I have no reason to be ashamed of my employment. I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind for doing something from a sense of duty, even unconsciously. 

Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. 

If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. 

I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am doing some task which I have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. Mushroom institutions hedge me in. 

But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness. 

*****

The second amelanchier out, in garden. Some fir balsams, as Cheney's. Is not ours in the grove, with the chip-bird's nest in it, the Abies Fraseri? Its cones are short. I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird's (song sparrow's) nest with five eggs. 

P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. I hear a yorrick, apparently anxious, near me, utter from time to time a sharp grating char-r-r, like a fine watchman's rattle. As usual, I have not heard them sing yet. 

A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. 

Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler. 

Veronica serpyllifolia is abundantly out at Corner Spring. 

As I go along the hillside toward Miles Swamp, I mistake the very light gray cliff-sides east of the river at Bittern Cliff for amelanchier in bloom. 

The brother of Edward Garfield (after dandelions!) tells me that two years ago, when he was cutting wood at Bittern Cliff in the winter, he saw something dark squatting on the ice, which he took to be a mink, and taking a stake he went to inspect it. It turned out to be a bird, a new kind of duck, with a long, slender, pointed bill (he thought red). It moved off backwards, hissing at him, and he threw his stake about a rod and partly broke its neck, then killed it. It was very lean and the river was nowhere open. He sent it to Waltham and sold it for twenty-five cents.

Black ash, maybe a day. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum.

I see a whitish cocoon on a small carpinus. It is artfully made where there is a short crook in the main stem, so as to just fill the hollow and make an even surface, the stick forming one side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1857

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history. See April 9, 1853 ("The more I study willows, the more I am confused. ") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Salix cordata (heartleaf willow); A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminiscences, only when well employed. . . See November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work . . . that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.”); April 30, 1856 (“Surveying seemed a noble employment which brought me within hearing of this bird. I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”); See also December 8, 1859 ("Only the poet has the faculty to see present things as if also past and future, as if universally significant.”)

As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. Compare Walden (“I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more”);

See  June 23, 1856. ("Bay-wings sang morning and evening . . . Its note somewhat like Come, here here, there there, —— quick quick quick (fast), — or I m gone. "); May 14, 1858 ("As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season?")

If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. See Wordsworth;s Tintern Abbey:

, , , While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.,

and  February 13, 1859 ("A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.")

A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song. According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”) 

Suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me . . . and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.") See January 11, 1857("I become a witness with unprejudiced senses to the order of the universe."); See also December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it.")

As the bay-wing sang 

many thousand years ago

so sang he to-night. 

A brother poet 

one with the rocks and with me – 

whose muse inspires mine.

To be inspired  

a thousand years hence – be in 

harmony to-day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  One with the rocks and with me

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/hdt-570517  

As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.

April 12.

Sunday. 

I think I hear the bay-wing here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 12, 1857

See April 13, 1854 ("Did I see a bay-wing?"); April 13, 1855(“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing”); April 13, 1856 (“I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind”); May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons: May 12

May 12.

As the bay-wing sang 

many thousand years ago

so sang he to-night. 

A brother poet, 

one with the rocks and with me, 

whose muse inspires mine. 

May 12, 1857

May 12, 2017

Very heavy dew and mist this morning. The earth is so dry it drinks like a sponge. May 12, 1860

Very hot. 2.30 P. M. — 81°. We seek the shade to sit in for a day or two.  May 12, 1860

The sudden heat compels us to sit in the shade at the bars above Puffer's, whence we hear the first bobolink. May 12, 1856

How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! May 12, 1856 

First bathe in the river. Quite warm enough. , May 12, 1860

I see now, as I go forth on the river, the first summer shower coming up in the northwest, a dark and well defined cloud with rain falling sheaf-like from it, . . . but elsewhere, south and northeast, is a fair-weather sky with only innocent cumuli. Journal, May 12, 1858

How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end! May 12, 1856

It rained last night, and now I see the elm seed or samarae generally fallen or falling., This must be the earliest of trees and shrubs to go to seed or drop its seed. The elm seed floats off down the stream and over the meadows, and thus these trees are found bordering on the stream. May 12, 1858

The sugar maple blossoms on the Common resound with bees. Journal, May 12, 1860

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 12, 1855

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of.  May 12, 1857

Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.  May 12, 1857

I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone (which I have no doubt sits on some fence-post or rail there), and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. . . . As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. May 12, 1857

May 12, 2013

Passing on into the Miles meadow, am struck by the interesting tender green of the just springing foliage of the aspens, apples, cherries (more reddish), etc. It is now especially interesting while you can see through it. May 12, 1855

One flower of the Polygonatum pubescent open there [under Lee’s Cliff]; probably may shed pollen to-morrow. May 12, 1855

The sweet-gale begins to leaf  May 12, 1855 

 The red oak there leafed a day or two, or one day earlier than hickory. May 12, 1855 

My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground.  May 12, 1859 

I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind. May 12, 1855

Under Lee’s Cliff, about one rod east of the ash, am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines, — not a tinge of scarlet, —the leaves and stem also not purplish, but a yellowish and light green, with leaves differently shaped from the common, the parts, both flower and leaves, more slender, and the leaves not so flat, but inclining to fold. May 12, 1855

The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places. The first is more uniformly woolly down the stem, the other, though very woolly at top, being partly bare on the stem. The wool of the last is coarser. May 12, 1858

Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser. May 12, 1855

Hear the screep of the parti-colored warbler May 12, 1857

A parti-colored warbler hangs dead downward like a goldfinch on our gooseberries, within a few feet of me, apparently about the blossoms. Journal, May 12, 1859

The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods. May 12, 1855

Hear an oven-bird. May 12, 1855

I have found half a dozen robins’ nests with eggs already, —one in an elm, two in a Salix alba, one in a Salix nigra, one in a pitch pine, etc., etc. Journal, May 12, 1855

From beyond the orchard see a large bird far over the Cliff Hill, which, with my glass, I soon make out to be a fish hawk advancing. . . .. It comes on steadily, bent on fishing, with long and heavy undulating wings, with an easy, sauntering flight, over the river to the pond, and hovers over Pleasant Meadow a long time, hovering from time to time in one spot, when more than a hundred feet high, then making a very short circle or two and hovering again, then sauntering off against the wood side. A. . .When just below Bittern Cliff, I observe by its motions that it observes something. It makes a broad circle of observation in its course, lowering itself somewhat; then, by one or two steep sidewise flights, it reaches the water, and, as near as intervening trees would let me see, skims over it and endeavored to clutch its prey in passing. May 12, 1855

We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests. May 12, 1855

Sounds of the deep wood

where red-tailed hawk, partridge and

owl sit on their nests. 

May 12, 1855

A glorious day. May 12, 1856

May 12, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

  May 11 <<<<<<<<  May 12  >>>>>>>>  May 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May 12

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-May-12

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out.

April 2.

P. M. – To yew and R. W. E.'s Cliff. 

April 2, 2018

At Hubbard’s Grove I see a woodchuck. He waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose within thirty feet to reconnoitre.

It is too windy, and the surface of the croaker pool is too much ruffled, for any of the croakers to be lying out, but I notice a large mass of their spawn there well advanced.

At the first little sluiceway just beyond, I catch a large Rana halecina, which puffs itself up considerably, as if it might be full of spawn. I must look there for its spawn. It is rather sluggish; cannot jump much yet. It allows me to stroke it and at length take it up in my hand, squatting still in it.

Who would believe that out of these dry and withered banks will come violets, lupines, etc., in profusion?

At the spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill, I startle a striped snake. It is a large one with a white stripe down the dorsal ridge between two broad black ones, and on each side the last a buff one, and then blotchy brown sides, darker toward tail; beneath, greenish-yellow. This snake generally has a pinkish cast.

There is another, evidently the same species but not half so large, with its neck lying affectionately across the first, — I may have separated them by my approach, – which, seen by itself, you might have thought a distinct species. The dorsal line in this one is bright-yellow, though not so bright as the lateral ones, and the yellow about the head; also the black is more glossy, and this snake has no pink cast.

No doubt on almost every such warm bank now you will find a snake lying out. The first notice I had of them was a slight rustling in the leaves, as if made by a squirrel, though I did not see them for five minutes after. The biggest at length dropped straight down into a hole, within a foot of where he lay. They allowed me to lift their heads with a stick four or five inches without stirring, nor did they mind the flies that alighted on them, looking steadily at me without the slightest motion of head, body, or eyes, as if they were of marble; and as you looked hard at them, you continually forgot that they were real and not imaginary.

The hazel has just begun to shed pollen here, perhaps yesterday in some other places. This loosening and elongating of its catkins is a sufficiently pleasing sight, in dry and warm hollows on the hillsides. It is an unexpected evidence of life in so dry a shrub.

On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking for bay wings, turning my glass to each sparrow on a rock or tree. At last I see one, which flies right up straight from a rock eighty [or] one hundred feet and warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain, after the manner of the skylark, methinks, and close by I see another, apparently a bay-wing, though I do not see its white in tail, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain.

See how those black ducks, swimming in pairs far off on the river, are disturbed by our appearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, now on that.

The yew shows its bundles of anthers plainly, as if it might open in four or five days.

Just as I get home, I think I see crow blackbirds about a willow by the river.

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch of his voice is the main thing. It appears to me that the wisest philosophers that I know are as foolish as Sancho Panza dreaming of his Island. Considering the ends they propose and the obstructions in their path, they are even. One philosopher is feeble enough alone, but observe how each multiplies his difficulties, – by how many unnecessary links he allies himself to the existing state of things. He girds himself for his enterprise with fasting and prayer, and then, instead of pressing forward like a light-armed soldier, with the fewest possible hindrances, he at once hooks himself on to some immovable institution, as a family, the very rottenest of them all, and begins to sing and scratch gravel towards his objects. Why, it is as much as the strongest man can do decently to bury his friends and relations without making a new world of it. But if the philosopher is as foolish as Sancho Panza, he is also as wise, and nothing so truly makes a thing so or so as thinking it so.

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. It has probably been here as long as I said before.

Returning, I saw a sparrow-like bird flit by in an orchard, and, turning my glass upon it, was surprised by its burning yellow. This higher color in birds surprises us like an increase of warmth in the day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1858

A woodchuck waddles to his hole and then puts out his gray nose. See April 2, 1856 ("A woodchuck has been out under the Cliff, and patted the sand, cleared out the entrance to his burrow.”)

A bay wing warbles a peculiar long and pleasant strain. Close by I see another, and it utters while sitting the same subdued, rather peculiar strain. See  April 13, 1856 (“I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (or here here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same, as if contending with each other, notwithstanding the cold wind”); See also April 8, 1859 (“ See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet.”); April 12, 1857 (“I think I hear the bay-wing here.”); April 13, 1855(“See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing”);  April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear”). See April 13, 1854 ("Did I see a bay-wing?"); May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

It is not important that the poet should say some particular thing, but should speak in harmony with nature. See  May 23, 1853 (“The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”)

Approaching the side of a wood on which were some pines, this afternoon, I heard the note of the pine warbler, calling the pines to life, though I did not see it. See April 2, 1853 ("The edge of the wood is not a plane surface, but has depth. Hear and see what I call the pine warbler, --vetter vetter vetter vetter vet, -- the cool woodland sound.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

The bay-wing now sings.

April 15. 

Ground white with snow this morning, but it melts in a few hours, and, the sun coming out, I observe, after it is gone, much bluish vapor curling up from plowed ground, looking like a smoke there, but not from ground not recently plowed or from grass ground. 

Is it that the plowed ground is warmer, or merely that it has absorbed more moisture? Perhaps the sun penetrates it and so warms it more, since it lies up lighter. It is a very noticeable phenomenon, at any rate, that only the ground just plowed thus smokes. 

P. M. — To Cliffs and Well Meadow. 

There is quite a shimmer in the air, the day being pretty warm, but methinks it is a little greater over plowed ground than over sod, but I see it in woods as high as the tree-tops. M. [?] Pratt refers it chiefly to heat, as about a stove, and thinks I should [see] the most over the driest sand, and it occurs to me that if it is chiefly owing to evaporation I ought to see considerable over water, but I believe that I do not. 

Carpenter refers it (in part, at least) to the exhalation of plants, but they are not now exhaling, — not leafed or leafing as yet. I am uncertain, therefore, whether to regard [sic] the earliest shimmer in the spring, on pleasant days, to heated air in motion or to vapor raised by heat into the air. (Vide back to April 10th.) 

I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes. I am pretty sure it was these and not the martin I heard on the 13th. 

The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear — both about the Texas house and the fields this side of Hayden's, both of them similar dry and open pastures. I heard it just before noon, when the sun began to come out, and at 3 p. m., singing loud and clear and incessantly. It sings with a pleasing deliberation, contrasting with the spring vivacity of the song sparrow, whose song many would confound it with. It comes to revive with its song the dry up lands and pastures and grass-fields about the skirts of villages. 

Only think how finely our life is furnished in all its details, — sweet wild birds provided to fill its interstices with song! It is provided that while we are employed in our corporeal, or intellectual, or other, exercises we shall be lulled and amused or cheered by the singing of birds. 

When the laborer rests on his spade to-day, the sun having just come out, he is not left wholly to the mercy of his thoughts, nature is not a mere void to him, but he can hardly fail to hear the pleasing and encouraging notes of some newly arrived bird. The strain of the grass finch is very likely to fall on his ear and convince him, whether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in. It will make him calm and contented. 

If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. What an institution that! 

Nor are we obliged to catch and cage them, nor to be bird-fanciers in the common sense. Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work. 

Consider how much is annually spent on the farmer's life: the beauty of his abode, which has inspired poets since the world was made; the hundreds of delicate and beautiful flowers scattered profusely under his feet and all around him, as he walks or drives his team afield, — he cannot put his spade into uncultivated, nor into much cultivated, ground without disturbing some of them; a hundred or two of equally beautiful birds to sing to him morning and evening, and some at noonday, a good part of the year; a perfect sky arched over him, a perfect carpet spread under him, etc., etc. ! 

And can the farmer speak or think carelessly of these gifts ? Will he find it in his heart to curse the flowers and shoot the birds? 

Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird. 

Observe in the small shallow rills in the sandy road beyond the Smallpox Burying-Ground, made by the snow of the morning, now melted, very interesting ripples over a pebbly or uneven bottom on this side or that. 

The beauty of these little ripples was occasioned by their shadows amid the bright water. They were so arranged with remarkable order as to resemble the bright scales of a portion of a snake's skin with geometrical regularity, seven or eight parallel rows in a triangular form, successively diminishing in size. 

The ripple is occasioned merely by the impetuosity of the water meeting some slight obstacle. Thus you see in the very ripples on a rill a close resemblance in arrangement to the bright scales of a fish, and it [would] greatly help to conceal a fish if it could lie under them. The water was generally less than an inch deep on a sandy bottom. 

The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler, the for the most part invisible minstrel. That wood, for example, at the Punk Oak, where we sit to hear it. It is surprising how quickly the earth, which was covered half an inch deep this morning, and since so wet, has become comparatively dry, so that we sit on the ground or on the dry leaves in woods at 3 p. m. and smell the pines and see and hear the flies, etc., buzz about, though the sun did not come out till 12 m. 

This morning, the aspect of winter; at mid-forenoon, the ground reeking with moisture; at 3 p. m., sit on dry leaves and hear the flies buzz and smell the pines! 

That wood is now very handsome seen from the westerly side, the sun falling far through it, though some trunks are wholly in shade. This warbler impresses me as if it were calling the trees to life. I think of springing twigs. Its jingle rings through the wood at short intervals, as if, like an electric shock, it imparted a fresh spring life to them. You hear the same bird, now here now there, as it incessantly flits about, commonly invisible and uttering its simple jingle on very different keys, and from time to time a companion is heard farther or nearer. 

This is a peculiarly summer-like sound. Go to a warm pine wood-side on a pleasant day at this season after storm, and hear it ring with the jingle of the pine warbler.

 As I sit on the stump of a large white pine which was sawed off, listening to these warblers, in a warm sun, I see a fair-weather cloud going over rather low, and hear the flies buzz about me, and it reminds me of those long-drawn summer days when you lie out-of-doors and are more related to the clouds travelling over. The summer clouds, the thunder-cloud especially, are nearer to us than the clouds of winter.

When we go huckleberrying, the clouds are our fellow-travellers, to greet or avoid. I might say the clouds have come. I perceive that I am in the same apartment with them. 

Going up a mountain is like travelling half a day through a tan-yard, till you get into a fog, and then, when the fog blows away, you discover yourself and a buzzing fly on the sunny mountain-top. 

The wood thrush! At Well Meadow Head. Not being prepared to hear it, I thought it a boy whistling at first. 

Also a catbird mews? [Could this have been a goldfinch?]

The epigaea opened, apparently, the 13th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 15, 1859

I see and hear white-bellied swallows as they are zigzagging through the air with their loud and lively notes. See April 15, 1855 ("Many martins (with white—bellied swallows) are skimming and twittering above the water, perhaps catching the small fuzzy gnats"); April 15, 1856 ("The white-bellied swallows are circling about and twittering above the apple trees and walnuts on the hillside.")

The bay-wing now sings. See April 13, 1856 ("I hear a bay-wing on the railroad fence sing, the rhythm somewhat like, char char (orhere here), che che, chip chip chip (fast), chitter chitter chitter chit (very fast and jingling), tchea tchea (jinglingly). It has another strain, considerably different, but a second also sings the above. Two on different posts are steadily singing the same.") ,May 12, 1857(" I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone . . . and it instantly translates me from the sphere of my work and repairs all the world that we jointly inhabit. It reminds me of so many country afternoons and evenings when this bird's strain was heard far over the fields, as I pursued it from field to field. . .  As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. In the beginning God heard his song and pronounced it good, and hence it has endured.. . . . [S]uddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

The beauty of these little ripples was occasioned by their shadows amid the bright water. See March 26, 1860 ("The yellow sands of a lonely brook seen through the rippling water, with the shadows of the ripples like films passing over it.")

The wood thrush!  Probably the hermit thrush. See April 15, 1858 ("Saw flitting silently through the wood, near the yew, two or three thrushes, . . . a light ring about eyes, and whitish side of throat (?); rather fox-colored or cinnamon tail, with ashy reflections from edges of primaries; flesh-colored legs.").  See also  note to April 24, 1856 ("See a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: The Arrival of the Hermit Thrush


The warm pine woods are all alive this afternoon with the jingle of the pine warbler, the for the most part invisible minstrel. See April 15, 1855 ( "In the meanwhile, as we steal through the woods, we hear the pleasing note of the pine warbler, bringing back warmer weather"); April 15, 1860 ("At Conantum pitch pines hear the first pine warbler") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pine Warbler

It is most impressive when you first detect the presence of the bird by its shadow.

May 11

A. M. —To Island. 

Only the lower limbs of bass begin to leaf yet, -- yesterday. 

A crow blackbird’s nest, about eight feet up a white maple over water, -- a large, loose nest without, some eight inches high, between a small twig and main trunk, composed of coarse bark shreds and dried last year’s grass, without mud; within deep and size of robin’s nest; with four pale-green eggs, streaked and blotched with black and brown. Took one. Young bird not begun to form. 

Hear and see yellow-throat vireo. 

See oat-seed spawn — a mass as big as fist —- on bottom; of brown jelly composed of smaller globules, each with a fish-like tadpole, color of a seed.

May 11, 2025

P. M. — To Andromeda Polifolia. 

Some young elms begin to leaf. Butternut leafs apparently to-morrow. Larger rock maples not yet begun to leaf, -- later considerably than large white maples, and somewhat than large red. 

Apparently andromeda will not open before the 15th or 16th, and the buck-bean, now just budded above the water, not before the 20th. 

Juniperus repens will not open, apparently, before the 14th or 15th. 

Canoe birch just sheds pollen. Very handsome drooping golden catkins, sometimes two or three together, some five and a quarter inches long. The leaves of some young sprouts already three-quarters inch over, but of the trees not started. 

The second amelanchier just sheds pollen, in a swamp. 

I trod on a large black snake, which, as soon as I stepped again, went off swiftly down the hill toward the swamp, with head erect like a racer. Looking closely, I found another left behind, partly concealed by the dry leaves. They were lying amid the leaves in this open wood east of Beck Stow’s, amid the sweet fem and huckleberry bushes. The remaining one ran out its tongue at me, and vibrated its tail swiftly, making quite a noise on the leaves; then darted forward, passed round an oak, and whipped itself straight down into a hole at its base one and a half inches over. After its head had entered, its tail was not long in following. 

You can hardly walk in a thick pine wood now, especially a swamp, but presently you will have a crow or two over your head, either silently flitting over, to spy what you would be at and if its nest is in danger, or angrily cawing. It is most impressive when, looking for their nests, you first detect the presence of the bird by its shadow. 

Was not that a bay-wing which I heard sing, — ah, twar twe twar, twit twit twit twit, twe?

Viola pedata sheds pollen,-- the first I have chanced to see. 

I hear some kind of owl partially hooting now at 4 P.M., I know not whether far off or near.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1855

 Only the lower limbs of bass begin to leaf yet, -- yesterday. See May 13, 1854 ("The bass suddenly expanding its little round leaves."); May 13, 1855 ("The large bass trees now begin to leaf. ") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Hear and see yellow-throat vireo. See May 6, 1860 ('Hear probably a yellow-throated vireo in the woods."); May 6, 1859 ("Hear yellow-throat vireo, and probably some new warblers."); May 19, 1856 ("a yellow-throated vireo, . . . singing indolently, ullia — eelya, and sometimes varied to eelyee.”); May 27, 1854 ("I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals."); May 29, 1855 ("Also the yellow-throated vireo—its head and shoulders as well as throat yellow (apparently olive-yellow above), and its strain but little varied and short, not continuous. It has dusky legs and two very distinct white bars on wings (the male) "); s. June 9, 1854 ("How prominent a place the vireos hold! It is probably the yellow-throated vireo I hear now . . .with its prelia — prelioit . . . invisible in the tops of the tree") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-throated Vireo

It is most impressive when, looking for their nests, you first detect the presence of the bird by its shadow. See September 16, 1852("I detect the transit of the first [hawk] by his shadow on the rock, and look toward the sun for him. Though he is made light beneath to conceal him, his shadow betrays him.") See also May 5, 1855 ("A crow . . . directly over my head within thirty-five feet, caws angrily.") and note to  May 11, 1855 ("You can hardly walk in a thick pine wood now, especially a swamp, but presently you will have a crow or two over your head, either silently flitting over, to spy what you would be at and if its nest is in danger, or angrily cawing.")

Was not that a bay-wing which I heard sing.  See. April 13, 1855 (" See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing"); May 12, 1857 ("I hear from across the fields the note of the bay-wing, Come here here there there quick quick quick or I'm gone. . .   As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night . . . [S]uddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and liberates me, whets and clarifies my senses, makes me a competent witness.")

Viola pedata sheds pollen,-- the first I have chanced to see. See May 5, 1852 ("The Viola pedata budded, ready to blossom."); May 6, 1859 ("Viola pedata begins to be common about white pine woods there."); May 9, 1852 ("The first Viola pedata "); May 10, 1858 ("How much expression there is in the Viola pedata! I do not know on the whole but it is the handsomest of them all, it is so large and grows in such large masses."); May 17, 1853 ("The greatest array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are so raised above their leaves, and so close together, that they make a more indelible impression of blue on the eye; it is almost dazzling. I blink as I look at them, they seem to reflect the blue rays so forcibly, with a slight tinge of lilac."); May 18, 1854 ("The V. pedata beginning to be abundant."). May 20, 1852 ("the V. pedata is smooth and pale-blue, delicately tinged with purple reflections").  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

Looking for nests, you

detect the presence of the

bird by its shadow.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, When you first detect the bird by its shadow.

                                     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/hdt-550511

A Book of the Seasons: January 15 (blue shadows, skating, music, a song sparrow, snow fleas, open water, what is in a name?)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

January 15

A bright day not cold 

yet my shadow is a most 

celestial blue. 

 January 15, 1856

January 15, 2018

It is a rather warm and moist afternoon, and feels like rain. January 15, 1852

For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood. Wherever I go they are to be seen, especially in the deepest ruts and foot-tracks. Their number is almost infinite. January 15, 1852

The fog still continues through, and succeeding to, the rain. The third day of fog. The thermometer at 7.30 or 8 A. M. is at 33°. January 15, 1859

The snow appears considerably deeper than the 12th . . . You are sensible that you are walking at a level a foot or more above the usual one. January 15, 1856

It has just been snowing, and this lies in shallow drifts or waves on the Great Meadows, alternate snow and ice. January 15, 1855

Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet. The river-channel dark and rough with fragments of old ice, — polygons of various forms, — cemented together, not strong. January 15, 1855

I cross the river on the crust with some hesitation. January 15, 1856

A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. January 15, 1856

Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me. January 15, 1856

The tracks of the mice near the head of Well Meadow . . . The snow was so light that only one distinct track was made by all four of the feet, five or six inches apart, but the tail left a very distinct mark. January 15, 1857

So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. January 15, 1857

Cold as the weather is and has been, almost all the brook is open in the meadow there, an artery of black water in the midst of the snow. January 15, 1857

As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what I thought a tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere roof open at the side. January 15, 1857

Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. January 15, 1857

The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood.  January 15, 1857

More snow last night, and still the first that fell remains on the ground. January 15, 1861

Rice thinks that it is two feet deep on a level now. We have had no thaw yet. January 15, 1861

Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it. January 15, 1853

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? . . . let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. January 15, 1857

January 15, 2018

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

A Book of the Seasons,    by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

*****

January 15, 2014

February 12, 1860 ("Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us")

February 16, 1852 ("By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.")

February 18, 1860 ("As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.")

March 1, 1852 ("I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses, for instance. No one masters them so as to use them in writing on the subject without being far better informed than the rabble about it. . . . No man writes on lichens, using the terms of the science intelligibly, without having something to say. ");

March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only. . . It was a new light when my; guide gave me Indian names for things for which had only scientific ones before. In proportion as I understood the language, I saw them from a new point of view.")

May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night. . . .If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.”)

August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.")

December 27, 1857 ("Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks.”)

December 31, 1853 ("The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.")
December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.")
January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.")
January 5, 1854 ("It being warm and thawing, though fair, the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came")
January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”)
January 7, 1860 (" As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas . . . Last night there was not one to be seen")
January 7, 1857 ("Though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")
January 7, 1857 ("In the wood-path [the snow] is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious")

January 8, 1852 (" I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday. . . has got a dead leaf in it.")
January 13, 1857 ("I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived")

January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter.")

January 14, 1855 ("Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself.")

January 18, 1852 ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”)

January 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue. This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low.")
January 22, 1854 ("Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds.")
January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see a few snow-fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.")
January 27, 1857 ("Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at.")
January 27, 1857 ("A song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter.")
 January 28, 1857  ("Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard.") 
January 30, 1860 (" The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. ")
January 30, 1856 ("crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!")

January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding.”) 
January 31, 1856 ("The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.")
February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black.")
February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)

February 16, 1852 ("By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.")
February 18, 1860 ("As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.")
March 10, 1856 ("The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever.")
March 30, 1856 ("There are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw.")

January 15, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

January 14 <<<<<<<<    January 15  >>>>>>>>  January 16

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/HDT15Jan