29 March 1852 – 4 April 1852

An Eskimo, one of a littoral people, in- quired with surprise of Sir John Richardson, ‘“ Are not all lands islands ?” Observed yesterday that Fair Haven Pond was covered with ice. Many plants which have been covered with snow now begin to show green about the roots, and so they push forward till the green prevails over the with- ered portion of their leaves. There are many of which you are doubtful whether they have been kept fresh and green under the snow, or have recently put forth their leaves in the spring. I observe to-day the buttercup, very common, the pasture thistle, etc., etc., what per- haps are chickweeds? The radical leaves of some, like sorrel, appear never to wither. Saw sportsmen out this morning, a boat on the meadows, men who heard the geese last night. Itis but a day or two that I have seen a boat on the meadows. The water on them has looked very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind. ‘There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. Going to the Second Division Brook. There is an evident spring in the grass about springs and brooks, as at Tarbell’s. Some mosses now in fruit. Icicles still form under the banks at night on the north side of hills, from the dripping of the melting snow during the day. The leaves of the rattlesnake-plan- tain continue green but not so distinctly reticulated. Struck Second Division Brook at the old dam. It is as deep as wide, three feet or more, with a very handsome sandy bottom, rapidly flowing and mean- dering. A very attractive brook, to trout, etc., as well as men. It not only meanders as you look down on it, but the line of its bottom is very serpentine, in this wise, successively dcop) “=i nada shal- low. There is a great volume of water for so small a show asit makes. The sands, where they are rippled, are agreeably diversified with the black sediment of decayed wood and leaves in the ripple-marks. This apparently is not a deep or a peat meadow, but has a sandy foun- dation. The only obvious signs of spring in the vege- tation of this meadow are the just expanding downy buds of a rather late kind of slender willow that stands in the brook and, if this can be regarded as a spring phenomenon, the green leaves of the cowslip every- where. Saw two wood tortoises at the bottom of the brook, one upon another. ‘The upper and larger one was decidedly bronze on the back; the under one, with more sharply grooved scales. The former, perhaps the male, with a decided depression of the sternum. Their legs a reddish orange. In the deeper parts of the brook, where, in the elbow of a meander, it had gullied under the bank, the surface was narrowest, and the dead grass almost met, making coverts for the trout. These tor- toises crawled off very clumsily on the bottom. The flippers on one side were not both put forward at the ( } same time, but one moved up to the other. i Found the mayflower budded, though mostly covered with snow. ‘There commenced to fall, not hail, but cotton-like pellets of snow, or like crispy snow broken up into triangular prismical [szc] pieces. The Populus tremuloides, the round fine-toothed leaved aspen, shows the influence of the spring, this and some of the willows, more than any other trees or shrubs. Over a sandy bottom the brook water has one color; over the black sediment of decayed leaves another. What animal more clumsy than the tortoise? If it wishes to get into the brook, it crawls to its edge and then tumbles, lets itself fall, turning a somerset, per- haps, from the bank to the water, — resigns itself to mere gravity, drawing in its head and members.

Dug some parsnips this morning. They break off about ten inches from the surface, the ground being frozen there. The Greek word éep runs in my head in connec- tion with the season and Richardson’s Book. The Cliffs remind me of that narrow place in the brook where two meadows nearly meet, with floating grass, though the water is deeper there under the bank than anywhere. So the Cliffs are a place where two summers nearly meet. Put up a bluebird-box, and found a whole egg in it. Saw a pewee from the rail- road causeway. Having occasion to-day to put up a long ladder against the house, I found, from the trembling of my nerves with the exertion, that I had not exercised that part of my system this winter. How much I may have lost! It would do me good to go forth and work hard - and sweat. Though the frost is nearly out of the ground, the winter has not broken up in me. It is a backward season with me. Perhaps we grow older and older till we no longer sympathize with the revolution of the seasons, and our winters never break up. To-day, as frequently for some time past, we have a raw east wind, which is rare in winter. I see as yet very little, perhaps no, new growth in the plants in open fields, but only the green radical leaves which have been kept fresh under the snow; but if I should explore carefully about their roots, I should find some expanding buds and even new-rising shoots. ‘The farmers are making haste to clear up their wood-lots, which they have cut off the past winter, to get off the tops and brush, that they may not be too late and injure the young sprouts and lose a year’s growth in the opera- tion, also that they may be ready for their spring work. From the Cliffs I see that Fair Haven Pond is open over the channel of the river, — which is in fact thus only revealed, of the same width as elsewhere, run- ning from the end of Baker’s Wood to the point of the Island. The slight current there has worn away the ice. I never knew before exactly where the channel was. It is pretty central. I perceive the hollow sound from the rocky ground as I tread and stamp about the Cliffs, and am reminded how much more sure children are to notice this peculiarity than grown persons. I remember when I used to make this a regular part of the entertainment when I conducted a stranger to the Cliffs. On the warm slope of the Cliffs the radical (?) leaves of the St. John’s-wort (somewhat spurge-like), small on slender sprigs, have been evergreen under the snow. In this warm locality there is some recent growth nearest the ground. The leaves of the Sazv- fraga vernalis on the most mossy rocks are quite fresh. That large evergreen leaf sometimes mistaken for the mayflower is the Pyrola rotundifolia and perhaps some other species. What are those leaves in rounded beds, curled and hoary beneath, reddish-brown above, :look- ing as if covered with frost? It is now budded, —a white, downy bud.’

Intended to get up early this morning and commence a series of spring walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented. Early, however, I saw the clouds in the west, — for my window looks west, — suffused with rosy light, but that “flattery” is all forgotten ' The Gnaphalium plantaginijolium and G. purpureum. : § now. How can one help being an early riser and walker in that season when the birds begin to twitter and sing in the morning? The expedition in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850 landed at Cape Riley on the north side of Lan- caster Sound, and one vessel brought off relics of Franklin, viz. “five pieces of beef, mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of rope, a small rag of can- vas, and a chip of wood cut by an ax.” Richardson says: “From a careful examination of the beef bones, I came to the conclusion that they had belonged to pieces of salt-beef ordinarily supplied to the Navy, and that probably they and the other bones had been exposed to the atmosphere and to friction in rivulets - of melted snow for four or five summers. The rope was proved by the ropemaker who examined it to have been made at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subse- quent to 1841. The fragment of canvas, which seemed to have been part of a boat’s swab, had the Queen’s broad arrow painted on it; and the chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not grow on the banks of any river that falls into the Arctic Sea. It had, however, been long exposed to the weather, and was likely to have been cut from a piece of drift-timber found lying on the spot, as the mark of the ax was recent com- pared to the surface of the wood, which might have been exposed to the weather for a century.” “The grounds of these conclusions were fully stated in a re- port made to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, my- self, and other officers.”” Is not here an instance of the civilized man detecting the traces of a friend or foe with a skill at least equal to that of the savage? Indeed it is in both cases but a common sense applied to the objects, and in a manner most familiar to the parties. The skill of the savage is just such a science, though referred sometimes to instinct. Perhaps after the thawing of the trees their buds universally swell before they can be said to spring. Perchance as we grow old we cease to spring with the spring, and we are indifferent to the succession of years, and they go by without epoch as months. Woe be to us when we cease to form new resolutions on the opening of a new year! A cold, raw day with alternating hail-like snow and rain. According to Gilpin, a copse is composed of forest trees mixed with brushwood, which last is periodically cut down in twelve or fourteen years. What Gilpin says about copses, glens, etc., suggests that the different places to which the walker resorts ° may be profitably classified and suggest many things to be said. Gilpin prefers the continuous song of the insects in the shade of a copse to the buzzing vagrant fly in the glare of day. He says the pools in the forest must receive their black hue from clearness. I sup- pose he means they may have a muddy bottom or covered with dark dead leaves, but the water above must be clear to reflect the trees. It would be worth the while to tell why a swamp pleases us, what kinds please us, also what weather, etc., etc., — analyze our impressions. Why the moan- ing of the storm gives me pleasure. Methinks it is be- cause it puts to rout the trivialness of our fair-weather life and gives it at least a tragic interest. The sound has the effect of a pleasing challenge, to call forth our energy to resist the invaders of our life’s territory. It is musical and thrilling, as the sound of an enemy’s bugle. Our spirits revive like lichens in the storm. There is something worth living for when we are re- sisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our des- tiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, — of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks’ storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system. The spring has its windy March to usher it in, with many soak- ing rains reaching into April. Methinks I would share every creature’s suffering for the sake of its experience and joy. The song sparrow and the transient fox- colored sparrow, — have they brought me no message this year? Do they go to lead heroic lives in Rupert’s Land? They are so small, I think their destinies must be large. Have I heard what this tiny passenger has to say, while it flits thus from tree to tree? Is not the coming of the fox-colored sparrow something more earnest and significant than I have dreamed of? Can I forgive myself if I let it go to Rupert’s Land before I have appreciated it? God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference. These migrating spar- rows all bear messages that concern my life. I do not pluck the fruits in their season. I love the birds and beasts because they are mythologically in earnest. I see that the sparrow cheeps and flits and sings ade- quately to the great design of the universe; that man does not communicate with it, understand its language, because he is not at one with nature. I reproach my- self because I have regarded with indifference the passage of the birds; I have thought them no better than I. What philosopher can estimate the different values of a waking thought and a dream? I hear late to-night the unspeakable rain, mingled with rattling snow against the windows, preparing the ground for spring.

Gilpin says well that the object of a light mist is a “nearer distance.” Among winter plants, regarded as component parts of the forest, he thinks the fern the most picturesque. He says: “We are often at a loss to distinguish in pictures, the rising from the setting sun; though their characters are very different, both in the lights and shadows. The ruddy lights indeed of the evening are more easily distinguished: but it is not perhaps always sufficiently observed, that the shadows of the evening are much less opaque, than those of the morning.” This morning, the ground was completely covered with snow, and the water on the meadows looked dark and stormy and contrasted well with the white land- scape. Now, at noon, the ground is once more as bare as before. He is in the lowest scale of laborers who is merely an. able-bodied man and can compete with others only in physical strength. Woodchoppers in this neighbor- hood get but fifty cents a cord, but, though many can chop two cords in a day in pleasant weather and un- der favorable circumstances, yet most do not average more than seventy-five cents a day, take the months together. But one among them of only equal physical strength and skill as a chopper, having more wit, buys a cross-cut saw for four dollars, hires a man to help him at a dollar a day, and saws down trees all winter at ten cents apiece and thirty or forty a day, and clears two or more dollars a day by it. Yet as long as the world may last few will be found to buy the cross-cut saw, and probably the wages of the sawyer will never be reduced to a level with those of the chopper. 2 p. M. — To Flint’s Pond cedar woods via railroad, returning by C. Smith’s orchard. Saw the first bee of the season on the railroad cause- way, also a small red butterfly and, later, a large dark one with buff-edged wings. Gilpin’s “Forest Scenery” is a pleasing book, so moderate, temperate, graceful, roomy, like a gladed wood; not condensed; with a certain religion in its manners and respect for all the good of the past, rare in more recent books; and it is grateful to read after them. Somewhat spare indeed in the thoughts as in the sentences. Some of the cool wind of the copses con- verted into grammatical and graceful sentences, with- out heat. Not one of those humors come to a head which some modern books are, but some of the natural sur- face of a healthy mind. Walden is all white ice, but little Ca about the shores. The very sight of it, when I get so far on the causeway, though I hear the spring note of the chick- adee from over the ice, carries my thoughts back at once some weeks toward winter, and a chill comes over them. There is an early willow on sand-bank of the rail- road, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above. The railroad men have dug around the sleepers that the sun may thaw the ground and let them down. It is not yet out. Cut across near Baker’s barn. The swollen buds of some trees now give a new tint to their tops seen at a distance, — to the maples at least. Baker’s peach orchard looks at this distance purplish below and red above, the color of the last year’s twigs. The geranium (?) ’ is the most common green leaf to be seen everywhere on the sur- face now the snow is gone. They have been shooting great numbers of musk- rats the last day or two. Is that the red osier (cornel or viburnum) near the grape-vine on the Bare Hill road? How sure the farmer is to find out what bush affords the best withes, little of a botanist as he is! The mountains seen from Bare Hill are very fine now in the horizon, so evanescent, being broadly spotted white and blue like the skins of some animals, the white pre- dominating. The Peterboro Hills to the north are al- most all white. The snow has melted more on the more southern mountains. With their white mantles, not- withstanding the alternating dark patches, they melt into the sky. Yet perhaps the white portions may be distinguished by the peculiar light of the sun shining on them. They are like a narrow strip of broadly spotted leopard-skin, the saddle-cloth of the sun spread along the horizon. I am surprised to find Flint’s Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago. The Great Sud- bury Meadows covered with water are revealed. Blue they look over the woods. Each part of the river seen further north shines like silver in the sun, and the little pond in the woods west of this hill is half open water. Cheering, that water with its reflections, compared with this opaque dumb pond. How unexpectedly dumb and poor and cold does Nature look, when, where we had expected to find a glassy lake reflecting the skies and trees in the spring, we find only dull, white ice! Such am I, no doubt, to many friends. But, now that I have reached the cedar hill, I see that there is about an acre of open water, perhaps, over Bush Island in the middle of the pond, and there are some water-fowl there on the edge of the ice, — mere black spots, though I detect their character by discovering a relative mo- tion, — and some are swimming about in the water. The pond is, perhaps, the handsomer, after all, for this distant patch only of blue water, in the midst of the field of white ice. Each enhances the other. It is an azure spot, an elysian feature, in your cold companion, making the imagined concealed depths seem deeper and rarer. This pond is worth coming to, if only be- cause it is larger than Walden. I can so easily fancy it indefinitely large. It represents to me that Icy Sea of which I have been reading in Sir J. Richardson’s book. The prevailing color of the woods at present, except- ing the evergreens, is russet, a little more red or gray- ish, as the case may be, than the earth, for those are’ the colors of the withered leaves and the branches; the earth has the lighter hue of withered grass. Let me 1852} THE ODORIFEROUS WOODS 373 see how soon the woods will have acquired a new color. Went over the hill toward the eastern end of the pond. What is the significance of odors, of the odoriferous woods? Sweet and yellow birch, sassafras, fever-bush, etc., are an interesting clan to me. When we bruise them in our walk, we are suddenly exhilarated by their odor. This sweet scent soon evaporates, and you must break the twig afresh. If you cut it, it is not as if you break it. Some, like the sassafras, have brought a great price as articles of commerce. No wonder that men thought they might have some effect toward renovating their lives. Gosnold, the discoverer of Cape Cod, car- ried home a cargo of sassafras. What could be more grateful to the discoverer of a new country than a new- fragrant wood ? Gilpin’s is a book in which first there is nothing to offend, and secondly something to attract and please. The branches of the young black birch grow very upright, as it were appressed to the main stem. Their buds appear a little expanded now. Saw the fox-col- ored sparrows and slate-colored snowbirds on Smith’s Hill, the latter singing in the sun, — a pleasant jingle. The mountains, which an hour ago were white, are now all blue, the mistiness has increased so much in the horizon, and crept even into the vales of the distant woods. The mist is in wreaths or stripes because we see the mist of successive vales. There could not easily be a greater contrast than between this morning’s and this evening’s landscapes. The sun now an hour high. Now I see the river-reach, far in the north. The more distant river is ever the most ethereal.

6 a. M.— To the riverside and Merrick’s pasture. The sun is up. The water on the meadows is per- fectly smooth and placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of the notes of birds, — song sparrows, red-wings, robins (singing a strain), blue- birds, — and I hear also a lark, —as if all the earth had burst forth into song. The influence of this April morning has reached them, for they live out-of-doors all the night, and there is no danger that 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 semiprophecy of it, and last night I attended mentally as if I heard the spray- like dreaming sound of the midsummer frog and real- ized how glorious and full of revelations it was. Ex- pectation may amount to prophecy. 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 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 the stranger now. So is it with our minds.

They call that northernmost sea, thought to be free from ice, “Polina,’” — whither the musk oxen migrate. The coldest natures, persevere with them, go far enough, are found to have open sea in the highest latitudes. It is a clear day with a cold westerly wind, the snow of yesterday being melted. When the sun shines un- obstructedly the landscape is full of light, for it is re- flected from the withered fawn-colored grass, as it can- not be from the green grass of summer. (On the back of the hill behind Gourgas’s.) The bluebird carries the sky on his back. I am going over the hills in the rear of the windmill site and along Peter’s path. This path through the rolling stubble-fields, with the woods rather distant and the horizon distant in front on account of the intervention of the river and meadow, reminds me a little of the downs of Cape Cod, of the Plains of Nau- set. This is the only walk of the kind that we have in Concord. Perhaps it should be called Czesar’s Path. The maple at the brook by this path has not expanded its buds, though that by the Red Bridge had so long ago. What the cause? Are they different species ? I have observed much snow lately on the north slopes where shrub oaks grow, where probably the ground is frozen, more snow, I think, than lies in the woods in such positions. It is even two or three feet deep in many such places, though few villagers would believe it. One side of the village street, which runs east and west, appears a month in advance of the other. I go down the street on the wintry side; I return through summer. How agreeable the contrasts of light and shade, especially when the successive swells of a hill- side produce the shade! ‘The clouds are important to-day for their shadows. If it were not for them, the landscape would be one glare of light without variety. By their motion they still more vary the scene. Man’s eye is so placed as to look straight forward on a level best, or rather down than up. His eye de- mands the sober colors of the earth for its daily diet. He does not look up at a great angle but with an effort. Many clouds go over without our noticing them, for it would not profit us much to notice it, but few cattle pass by in the street or the field without our knowing it.