in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would it not be a fine office to preserve the vert of this forest in which I ramble?

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The different parts of Fair Haven Pond—the meadow beyond the Buttonbush & willow curve—the Island, & meadow between the island & mainland with its own defining lines—are all parted off like the parts of a mirror…

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A driving snowstorm in the night & still raging—5 or 6 inches deep on a level at 7 AM.  All birds are turned into snow birds. Trees and houses have put on the aspect of winter. The travelers carriage wheels, the farmer’s wagon are converted into white disks of snow through which the spokes hardly appear. But it is good now to stay in the house & read & write.

We do not now go wandering all abroad & dissipated—but the imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts— I can hear the clock tick as not in pleasant weather—  My life is enriched—  

Snowed all day till the ground was covered 8 inches deep.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I look closely I perceive the sward beginning to be green under my feet—very slightly. It rains with sleet & hail yet not enough to color the ground. At this season I can walk in the fields without wetting my feet in grass.

April 12, 2016

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A pure brook is a very beautiful object to study minutely. 

It will bear the closest inspection, even to the fine air-bubbles, like minute globules of quicksilver, that lie on its bottom.

The minute particles or spangles of golden mica in these sands, when the sun shines on them, remind one of the golden sands we read of. Everything is washed clean and bright, and the water is the best glass through which to see it…

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The saxifrage is beginning to be abundant, elevating its flowers somewhat, pure trustful white amid its pretty notched and reddish cup of leaves.

The white saxifrage is a response from the earth to the increased light of the year….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Watching the ripples fall and dart across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the amusements of these windy March and April days….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I stood by the foot of a middling-sized white pine the other day, one of the very windy days, I felt the ground rise and fall under my feet, being lifted by the roots of the pine, which was waving in the wind, so loosely are they planted.

The epigea is not quite out.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:  

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The robin is the singer at present, such is its power and universality being heard in garden and wood.

Morning and evening he does not fail, perched on some elm or the like, and in rainy days it is one long morning or evening.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Begin to look off the hills and see the landscape again through a slight haze, with warm wind on the cheek.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The birds are eager to sing as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

I see small flocks of robins running on the bared portions of the meadow….

April 2, 2018 Photo

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To the river-side and Merrick’s pasture. The sun is up. The water in the meadows is perfectly smooth and placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of the notes of birds, song-sparrows, redwings, robins (singing a strain) bluebirds, and I hear also a lark, as if all the earth had burst forth into song. The influence of this April light has reached them, for they live out-of-doors all the night, and there is no danger they will oversleep themselves such a morning.

A few weeks ago, before the birds had come, there came to my mind in the night the twittering sound of birds in the early dawn of a spring morning––a semi-prophecy of it––and last night I attended mentally, as if I heard the spray-like dreaming sound of the mid-summer frog, and realized how glorious and full of revelations it was. The clouds are white, watery, not such as we had in the winter. I see in this fresh morning the shells left by the muskrats along the shore, and their galleries leading into the meadow, and the bright red cranberries washed up along the the shore in the old water-mark. Suddenly there is a blur on the placid surface of the waters, a rippling mistiness produced, as it were, by a slight morning breeze, and I should be sorry to show it to a stranger now. So is it with our minds.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walden is all white ice, but little melted about the shore.

The very sight of it when I get so far on the causeway, though I hear the spring note of the chickadee from over the ice, carries my thoughts back at once some weeks toward winter, and a chill comes over them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is suddenly warm, and this amelioration of the weather is incomparably the most important fact in this vicinity. It is incredible what a revolution in our feelings and in the aspect of nature this warmer weather has produced. Yesterday the earth was simple to barrenness, and dead, bound out. Out of doors there was nothing but the wind and withered grass, and the cold though sparkling blue water, and you were driven in upon yourself. 

Now, you would think there was a sudden awakening in the very crust of the earth, as if flowers were expanding and leaves putting forth; but not so….No, the change is mainly in us. We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I go to Fair Haven via the Andromeda Swamps. The snow is a foot and more in depth there still. There is a little bare ground in and next to the swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow, where the springs and little black rills are flowing. I see already one blade, three or four inches long, of that purple or lake grass, lying flat on some water, between snow-clad banks, – the first leaf with a rich bloom on it.

dosa

How silent are the footsteps of Spring! …The spring advances in spite of snow and ice and cold even….In warm recesses in meadows and clefts, in rocks in the midst of ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vegetation commences and steadily advances.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I sit two thirds up the sunny side of Ball Hill, looking over the meadows, now almost completely bare, the crows, by their swift flight and scolding, reveal to me some large bird of prey hovering over the river.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

I run about these cold, blustering days, on the whole, perhaps, the worst to bear in the year (partly because they disappoint expectation) looking almost in vain for some animal or vegetable life stirring…

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is remarkable how modest and unobtrusive these early flowers are.