in Thoreau’s Journal:

What is the earliest sign of spring?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The water is pretty high on the meadows (though the ground is covered with snow) so that we get a little of the peculiar still like view at evening when the wind goes down.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A misty afternoon….This kind of weather is very favorable to our landscape. I must not forget the lichen-painted boles of the beeches….Surely I might take wider views. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk….

To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the apothecium) of lichen disproportionately large compared with the universe?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings. Now I can take that walk along the river highway and the meadow which leads me under the boughs of the maples and the swamp white oaks, etc., which in summer overhang the water. I can now stand at my ease and study their phenomena amid the sweet gale and button bushes projecting above the snow and ice.

I see the shore from the water side; a liberal walk, so level, wide, and smooth, without underbrush….The sun has got a new power in his rays after all, cold as the weather is. He could not have warmed me so much a month ago, nor should I have heard such rumblings of the ice in December. I see where a maple has been wounded, the sap is flowing out. Now, then, is the time to make sugar.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The slight robin snow of yesterday is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny, trickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks where patches of umbilicaria lichens grow, of rank growth, but now thirsty and dry as bones and hornets’ nests, dry as shells which crackle under your feet. The more fortunate of these, which stand by the moistened seam or gutter of the rock, luxuriate in the grateful moisture as in the spring, their rigid nerves relax, they unbend and droop like limber infancy, and from dry ash and leather color turn a lively olive green.

You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive green of the lichens alone. Here and there the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crown of some little cockscomb lichen, and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ pipes, of a ringed structure, which run together buttressing the rock. Skating yesterday and today.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-Maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water; and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with the distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them towards the rising sun and rubbing them. We listen to the February cock-crowing and turkey gobbling as to a first course or prelude.

The bluebird, which some woodchopper or inspired walker is said to have seen in the sunny interval between the snow storms, is like a speck of clear blue sky seen near the end of a storm, reminding us of an ethereal region, and a heaven which we have forgotten. Princes and magistrates are often styled serene, but what is their turbid serenity to that ethereal serenity which the bluebird embodies. His most serene Birdship! His soft warble melts in the ear as the snow is melting in the valleys around. The bluebird comes, and with his warble drills the ice, and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground. As the sand flows down the slopes a little way, assuming the forms of foliage when the frost comes out of the ground, so this little rill of melody flows a short way down the concave of the sky.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a very pleasant a warm day, the finest.

Yet, with considerable coolness in the air, however.

Winter still.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound from some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, a distinct rattling din….not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle or a hunter rattles…

As it is important to consider nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and systems of men, and so, if possible go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children, and natural men do.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Though it was a dry, powdery snow storm yesterday, the sun is now so high that the snow is soft and sticky…The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.

You are surprised to see them lying with perpendicular edges a foot thick on bare, grassy upland where there is no other sign of water, sometimes wholly isolated by bare grass there.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,

know that the morning and spring of your life are past.

Thus you may feel your pulse.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Clear, but very cold and windy for the season. Northerly wind; smokes blown southerly. Ground frozen harder still; but probably now and hereafter what ground freezes at night will in great part melt by middle of the day. However, it is so cold this afternoon that there is no melting of the ground throughout the day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The snow drives horizontally from the north or N westerly–

in long waving lines like the outline of a swell or billow….

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A mild misty day….it is a true Lichen day.  They take the place of leaves in the winter…

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

You cannot walk too early in new fallen snow—

to get the sense of purity, novelty & unexploredness.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

We have had but one, no more, this winter (and that I think was the first) of those

gentle moist snows which lodge perfectly on the trees––

and make perhaps the most beautiful sight

of any.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The hips of the late rose though more or less shrivelled are still red & handsome–

It outlasts other hips–

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I remember January we had one? Great thaw succeeded by severe cold— It was harder getting about—though there may have been no more snow because it was light—& there was more continuous cold & clear sparkling weather– But the last part of January & all February thus far has been alternate thaw & freeze & snow.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow–but after January perhaps–when the snow banks had settled & their surfaces many times thawed & frozen–become indurated in fact–you could walk on the snow crust pretty well.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

My eyes nibble the piny Sierra

which makes the horizon’s edge as a hungry man nibbles a cracker….