THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL

March 30, 1855

He must have a great deal of life in him to draw upon, who can pick up a subsistence in November and March. Man comes out of his winter quarters this month as lean as a woodchuck. Not till late could the skunk find a place where the ground was thawed on the surface. Except for science, do not travel in such a climate as this in November and March. I tried if a fish would take the bait to-day; but in vain; I not get a nibble. Where are they? I read that a great many bass were taken in the Merrimack last week. Do not the suckers move at the same time? 

 

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. 

 

February 21, 1855

When I have entered the wooded hollow on the east of the Deep Cut, it is novel and pleasant to hear the sound of the dry leaves and twigs, which have so long been damp and silent, more worn and lighter than ever, crackling again under my feet, - though there is still considerable snow about, along wall-sides, etc., - and to see the holes and galleries recently made by the mice (?) in the fine withered grass of such places, the upper aralia hollow there. I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow. 

 A warmth begins to be reflected from the partially dried ground here and there in the sun in sheltered places, very cheering to invalids who have weak lungs, who think they may weather it till summer now. Nature is more genial to them. When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these, the news is told to how many myriads of grubs that underlie them! When I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along. 

 

December 14, 1855

Then I came upon a fox-track made last night, leading toward a farmhouse, - Wheeler’s, where there are many hens, - running over the side of the hill parallel with Wheeler’s new wall. He was dainty in the choice of his ground, for I observed that for a mile he had adhered to a narrow cow-path, in which the snow lay level, for smoothness. Sometimes he had cantered, and struck the snow with his foot between his tracks. Little does the farmer think of the danger which threatens his hens.

In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow, which, snuffed, reminds me of garrets full of herbs.

Now I hear, half a mile off, the hollow sound of woodchopping, the work of short winter days begun, which is gradually laying bare and impoverishing our landscape. In two or three thicker woods which I have visited this season, I was driven away by this ominous sound.

November 20, 1855

Again I hear that sharp, crackling, snapping sound and, hastening to the window, find that another of the pitch pine cones gathered November 7th, lying in the sun, or which the sun has reached, has separated its scales very slightly at the apex. It is only discoverable on a close inspection, but while I look the whole cone opens its scales with a smart crackling and rocks and seems to bristle up, scattering the dry pitch on the surface. They all thus fairly loosen and open, though they do not at once spread wide open. It is almost like the disintegration of glass. As soon as the tension is relaxed in one part, it is relaxed in every part.

A cold day. The snow that fell November 17th in the evening is still seen on the ground.

November 19, 1855

Minott had two cats on his knee. One given away without his knowledge a fortnight before had just found its way back. He says he would not kill a cat for twenty dollars, - no, not for fifty. Finally he told his women folks that he would not do it for five hundred, or any sum. He thought they loved life as well as we. Johnny Vose wouldn’t do it. He used to carry down milk to a shop every day for a litter of kittens.

November 18, 1855

I was so warmed in spirit in getting my wood that the heat it finally yielded when burnt was coldness in comparison. That first is a warmth which you cannot buy.

November 14, 1855

Minott hears geese to-day.

Heard to-day in my chamber, about 11 A. M., a singular sharp crackling sound by the window, which made me think of the snapping of an insect (with its wings, or striking something). It was produced by one of three small pitch pine cones which I gathered on the 7th, and which lay in the sun on the window-sill. I noticed a slight motion in the scales at the apex, when suddenly, with a louder crackling, it burst, or the scales separated, with a snapping sound on all sides of it. It was a general and sudden bursting or expanding of all the scales with a sharp crackling sound and motion of the whole cone, as by a force pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the whole to go off.

I was remarking to-day to Mr. Rice on the pleasantness of this November thus far, when he remarked that he remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way when his team was crossing it, and the team falling on him walking at its side.

P. M. - Up Assabet with Sophia.

A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank. The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows. My boat is two thirds full and hard to come at. The old weedy margin is covered and a new grassy one acquired. The current is stronger, though the surface is pretty smooth. Much small rubbish is drifting down and slowly turning in the eddies. The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there, as if a tortoise were tumbling through it. Leaves and sticks and billets of wood come floating down in middle of the full, still stream, turning round in the eddies, and I mistake them for ducks at first. See two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow.

June 21, 1855

Saw a white lily in Everett’s Pond.

Sparrow’s nest, four eggs, deep in the moist bank beyond cherry-bird’s nest (have three), of peculiar color. She deserted the nest after one was taken. Outside of stubble, scantily lined with fibrous roots. Clams abundant within three feet of shore, and bream-nests. The early grass is ripe or browned, and clover is drying. Peetweets make quite a noise calling to their young with alarm.

On an apple at R. W. E.’s a small pewee’s nest, on a horizontal branch, seven feet high, almost wholly of hair, cotton without, not incurved at edge; four eggs, pale cream-color.

May 14, 1855

Our peaches begin to bloom; others probably earlier. Domestic plums open; some maybe yesterday. Missouri currant open yesterday or day before. One apple on a roof open. The beech blossom in house opens; say to-morrow in woods, and probably will leaf generally by the next day. Second gooseberry in garden open. White ash begins to leaf; and waxwork. Clethra leafs. High blueberry open by Hubbard’s Bath. Black scrub oak leafs, and chinquapin. Red choke-berry leafed, say two days later than black.