THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL

March 28, 1855

P. M. - To Cliffs, along river.

 It is colder than yesterday; wind strong from northwest. The mountains are still covered with snow. They have not once been bare. I go looking for meadow mice nests, but the ground is frozen so hard, except in the meadow below the banks, that I cannot come at them. That portion of the meadow next the upland, which is now thawed, has already many earthworms in it. I can dig a quantity of them, - I suspect more than in summer. Moles might already get their living there. A yellow-spotted tortoise in a still ditch, which has a little ice also. It at first glance reminds me of a bright freckled leaf, skunk-cabbage scape, perhaps. They are generally quite still at this season, or only slowly put their heads out (of their shells). I see where a skunk (apparently) has been probing the sod, though it is thawed but a few inches, and all around this spot frozen hard still. I dig up there a frozen and dead white grub, the large potato grub; this I think he was after. The skunk’s nose has made small round holes such as a stick or cane would make. The river has not yet quite worn its way through Fair Haven Pond, but probably will to-morrow. 

 

March 10, 1856

I have not seen a tree sparrow, methinks, since January. Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they have migrated further south. There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll. I saw perhaps one redpoll in the town; that is all. The pinched crows are feeding in the road to-day in front of the house and alighting on the elms, and blue jays also, as in the middle of the hardest winter, for such is this weather. The blue jays hop about in yards. 

 The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days. 

 I go over the fields now in any direction, sinking but an inch or two to the old solid snow of the winter. In the road you are on a level with the fences, and often considerably higher, and sometimes, where it is a level causeway in summer, you climb up and coast down great swells of hard-frozen snow, much higher than the fences. I may say that I have not had to climb a fence this winter, but have stepped over them on the snow. 

 

March 5, 1856

Snowed an inch or two in the night.

 Went to Carlisle, surveying.

 It is very hard turning out, there is so much snow in the road. Your horse springs and flounders in it. The snow in the wood-lot which I measured was about two feet on a level. 

 

March 4, 1856

To Carlisle, surveying.

 I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation. He would not meet me on equal terms, but only be to some extent my patron. He would not come to see me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He would not readily accept a favor, but would gladly confer one. He treated me with ceremony occasionally, though he could be simple and downright sometimes; and from time to time acted a part, treating me as if I were a distinguished stranger; was on stilts, using made words. Our relation was one long tragedy, yet I did not directly speak of it. I do not believe in complaint, nor in explanation. The whole is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that we do not love each other, that we cannot confide in each other. I could not bring myself to speak, and so recognize an obstacle to our affection. 

 I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuseness, perchance, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever. 

 

March 2, 1856

Has snowed three or four inches - very damp snow - in the night; stops about 9 A. M. This will probably help carry off the old snow, so solid and deep.

 P. M. - Walking up the river by Prichard’s, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring. There was one seed or scale to a square foot, yet the nearest birches were, about fifteen of them, along the wall thirty rods east. As I advanced toward them, the seeds became thicker and thicker, till they quite discolored the snow half a dozen rods distant, while east of the birches there was not one. The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet. As I went home up the river, I saw some of the seeds forty rods off, and perhaps, in a more favorable direction, I might have found them much further. It suggested how unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds. Even the spring does not find her unprovided with birch, aye, and alder and pine seed. A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows. 

 The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places.

 I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year. 

 

February 29, 1852

P. M. - To Pine Hill across Walden.

 The high wind takes off the oak leaves. I see them scrambling up the slopes of the Deep Cut, hurry-scurry over the slippery snow-crust, like a flock of squirrels. The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color. 

 For the past month there has been more sea-room in the day, without so great danger of running aground on one of those two promontories that make it arduous to navigate the winter day, the morning or the evening. It is a narrow pass, and you must go through with the tide. Might not some of my pages by called “The Short Days of Winter”?

 

February 27, 1854

They who live in the outskirts of the town do not like to have woods very near their houses, but cut them down. They are more of a bugbear than an ornament in their eyes. They who live on the village street take still more pains to rear a pine grove about their houses. 

 

February 26, 1852

We are told to-day that civilization is making rapid progress; the tendency is ever upward; substantial justice is done even by human courts; you may trust the good intentions of mankind. We read to-morrow in the newspapers that the French nation is on the eve of going to war with England to give employment to her army. What is the influence of men of principle, or how numerous are they? How many moral teachers has society? This Russian war is popular. Of course so many as she has will resist her. How many resist her? How many have I heard speak with warning voice? utter wise warnings? The preacher’s standard of morality is no higher than that of his audience. He studies to conciliate his hearers and never to offend them. Does the threatened war between France and England evince any more enlightenment than a war between two savage tribes, as the Iroquois and the Hurons? Is it founded in better reason? 

 

February 24, 1852

P. M. - Railroad causeway.

 I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, though the ground is for the most part covered with snow. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality. Observe the poplar’s swollen buds and the brightness of the willow’s bark.

 The telegraph harp reminds me of Anacreon. That is the glory of Greece, that we are reminded of her only when in our best estate, our elysian days, when our senses are young and healthy again. I could find a name for every strain or intonation of the harp from one or other of the Grecian bards. I often hear Mimnermus, often Menander. 

 

February 22, 1854

I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the new Bedford road, about half-way up the hill. They dig under the frozen surface and then crack it off with iron wedges, with much labor, in pieces from three to six feet square. It was eighteen inches thick and more there - thicker higher up, not so thick lower down the hill.

 Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant. This was the way the wound was healed. The cut surface of the stump was completely and thickly covered. Our neighbor Wetherbee was J. Moore’s companion when he took that great weight of pickerel this winter. He says it was fifty-six pounds in Flint’s, in one day, and that four of them weighed eighteen pounds and seven ounces. My alder catkins in the pitcher have shed their pollen for a day or two, and the willow catkins have pushed out half an inch or more and show red and yellowish.