7 March 1853 – 13 March 1853

The lichen on the earth and stones amid mosses which I have thought a collema, is, I now think, a peltigera, perhaps P. canina (mad-dog peltigera of Hooker?). The catkins of the sweet-gale have now, after nine days, opened, and drop their sulphury pollen more perfectly than the alders and poplars, methinks, which soon dried up and the last turned black, 2. e. the anthers. I doubt if the willow catkins gathered at the same time (February 27) will blossom, though they have expanded. P. M. — To Walden, Goose, and Flint’s Ponds, and chestnut wood by Turnpike. The silk of the most forward willows does not gener- ally project the length of the scale beyond the scale yet, and I am in doubt whether they give any indication of spring; but I saw one whose catkins projected more than the length of the scale, and revealed a tinge of red through their silk, which I think have felt the influence of the new year. Also the dark chocolate-colored alder catkins — what I have called A. incana — are not only relaxed, but there is an obvious looseness and space between the scales. I doubt if I have detected the speckled alder in flower. I see, however, some with short thick reddish catkins and a dull opaque bark, others with a fresh glossy and speckled bark and long, rather more forward (?), dark-chocolate catkins. These may be only a more recent and vigorous growth of the other. There is one of these a few rods east of the Peak clear- ing, on the shore of Walden. On the side of the Peak, I see now small radical (?) or lower leaves of a goldenrod, as fresh as anything, the dark mulberry, claret, or lake colored radical leaves of the hawkweed,' and the greenish radical leaves of the bushy gerardia. What is the earliest sign of spring? The motion of worms and insects? The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds? Do not the insects awake with the flow of the sap? Bluebirds, etc., probably do not come till insects come out. Or are there earlier signs in the water ? — the tortoises, frogs, etc. The little cup and cocciferze lichens, mixed with other cladonias of the reindeer moss kind, are full of fresh fruit to-day. The scarlet apothecia of the cocciferz on the stumps and earth partly covered with snow, with which they contrast, I never saw more fresh and bril- liant, but they shrivel up and lose their brightness by the time you get them home. The only birds I see to-day are the lesser redpolls. I have not seen a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla hyemalis. In the Flint’s Pond Mill Brook ditch, I see where the green conferva is left 1 ?? Was it not Aster undulatus ? suspended vertically to the twigs, the water having gone down, and, being blanched, looks like very dense cob- webs. There are still a few pretty bright sumach berries left. Gathered a few chestnuts. A good many, if not most, are now turned black and soured or spoiled and softened by the wet. Where they are less exposed to moisture, close to the base’‘of the [sic], or on stumps where the ground is more elevated, or where they are protected under a very thick heap of light-lying leaves, they are perfectly sound and sweet and fresh yet, neither shriv- elled nor soured (?). This peculiar condition is prob- ably requisite to preserve their life for sprouting. I planted some in Sophia’s pot. No doubt the mice and squirrels put many in secure, sufficiently dry and sufh- ciently moist places for this purpose, and so do a service. I find whitish grubs stretching themselves under the moist chestnut leaves, but they were in the same state in January.

10 a. m.— Rode to Saxonville with F. Brown to look at a small place for sale, via Wayland. Return by Sudbury. On wheels in snow. A spring sheen on the snow. The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike. The snow pure white, but full of water and dissolving through the heat of the sun. Saw a mink run across the road in Sudbury, a large 1853) THE SAP OF THE EARTH 11 black weasel, to appearance, worming its supple way over the snow. Where it ran, its tracks were thus: = = = = the intervals between the fore and hind feet sixteen or eighteen inches by two and a half. The distant view of the open flooded Sudbury mead- ows, all dark blue, surrounded by a landscape of white snow, gave an impulse to the dormant sap in my veins. Dark-blue and angry waves, contrasting with the white but melting winter landscape. Ponds, of course, do not yet afford this water prospect; only the flooded mead- ows. There is no ice over or near the stream, and the flood has covered or broken up much of the ice on the meadows. The aspect of these waters at sunset, when the air is still, begins to be unspeakably soothing and promising. Waters are at length, and begin to reflect, and, instead of looking into the sky, I look into the placid reflecting water for the signs and promise of the morrow. These meadows are the most of ocean that I have fairly. learned. Now, when the sap of the trees is probably beginning to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, overflows and bursts its icy fetters. This is the sap of which I make my sugar after the frosty nights, boil- ing it down and crystallizing it. I must be on the look- out now for the gulls and the ducks. That dark-blue meadowy revelation. It is as when the sap of the maple bursts forth early and runs down the trunk to the snow.

Wednesday. Rain, dissolving the snow and raising the river. I do not perceive that the early elm or the white maple buds have swollen yet. So the re- laxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed. Minott thinks, and quotes some old worthy as authority for saying, that the bark of the striped squirrel is the, or a, first sure sign of decided spring weather.

This is the first really spring day. The sun is brightly reflected from all surfaces, and the north side of the street begins to be a little more passable to foot- travellers. You do not think it necessary to button up your coat. P. M. — To Second Division Brook. As I stand looking over the swollen river, looking from the bridge into the flowing, eddying tide, — the almost strange chocolate-colored water, — the sound of distant crows and cocks is full of spring. As Anacreon says “the works of men shine,” so the sounds of men and birds are musical. Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air. At the end of winter there is a season in which we are daily expecting spring, and finally a day when it arrives. I see many middling-sized black spiders on the edge of the snow, very active. By John Hosmer’s ditch by the riverside I see the skunk-cabbage springing freshly, the points of the spathes just peeping out of the ground, in some other places three inches high even. The radical leaves of innumerable plants (as here a dock in and near the water) are evidently affected by the spring influ- ences. Many plants are to some extent evergreen, like the buttercup now beginning to start. Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins, then the pushing up of skunk-cabbage spathes (and pads at the bottom of water). This is the order I am inclined to, though perhaps any of these may take precedence of all the rest in any particular case.! What is that dark pickle-green alga (?) at the bottom of this ditch, looking somewhat like a decaying cress, with fruit like a lichen? At Nut Meadow Brook crossing we rest awhile on the rail, gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom, where silver spangles shine in the river with black wrecks of caddis-cases lodged under each shelving sand, the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom, the minnows already stemming the current with restless, wiggling tails, ever and anon darting aside, probably to secure some invisible mote in the water, whose shadows we do not at first detect on the sandy bottom, — when de- tected so much more obvious as well as larger and more interesting than the substance, — in which each fin is distinctly seen, though scarcely to be detected in the substance; these are all very beautiful and exhilarating sights, a sort of diet drink to heal our winter discontent. Have the minnows played thus all winter? The equise- tum at the bottom has freshly grown several inches. Then should I not have given the precedence on the last page to this and some other water-plants? I suspect that I should, and the flags appear to be starting. I am surprised to find on the rail a young tortoise, an inch and one sixteenth long in the shell, which has crawled out to sun, or perchance is on its way to the water, which I think must be the Emys guttata, for there is a large and distinct yellow spot on each dorsal and lateral plate, and the third dorsal plate is hexa- gonal and not quadrangular, as the E. picta is described to be, though in my specimen I can’t make it out to be so. Yet the edges of the plates are prominent, as is de- scribed in the E. tnsculpta, which, but for the spots and two yellow spots on each side of the hind head and one fainter on the top of the head, I should take it to be. It is about seven eighths of an inch wide. Very inactive. When was it hatched and where? What is the theory of these sudden pitches, or steep shelving places, in the sandy bottom of the brook? It is 1853) THE BOTTOM OF A BROOK 15 very interesting to walk along such a brook as this in the midst of the meadow, which you can better do now before the frost is quite out of the sod, and gaze into the deep holes in its irregular bottom and the dark gulfs under the banks. Where it rushes rapidly over the edge of a steep slope | in the bottom, alieaietagt tn: -4itlgale the shadow of the disturbed surface is like sand hurried forward in the water. The bottom, being of shifting sand, is exceedingly irregular and interesting. What was that sound that came on the softened air? It was the warble of the first bluebird from that scraggy apple orchard yonder. When this is heard, then has - spring arrived. It must be that the willow twigs, both the yellow and green, are brighter-colored than before. I cannot be deceived. They shine as if the sap were already flow- ing under the bark; a certain lively and glossy hue they have. The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows.

Last night it snowed, a sleety snow again, and now the ground is whitened with it, and where are gone the bluebirds whose warble was wafted to me so lately like a blue wavelet through the air? The greater part of the alder catkins (as well as the willow) are still in their winter condition, but some have their scales conspicuously loosened and elevated, show- ing their lighter-colored edges and interstices. ‘They are actually beginning to blossom, certainly in advance of the willows. The sweet-gale is the prettiest flower which I have [found] expanded yet. It is essential that a man confine himself to pursuits —a scholar, for instance, to studies — which lie next to and conduce to his life, which do not go against the grain, either of his will or his imagination. The scholar finds in his experience some studies to be most fertile and radiant with light, others dry, barren, and dark. If he is wise, he will not persevere in the last, as a plant in a cellar will strive toward the light. He will confine the observations of his mind as closely as possible to the experience or life of his senses. His thought must live with and be inspired with the life of the body. ‘The death- bed scenes and observations even of the best and wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life, to subject their whole lives to their wills, as he who said he would give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off, — but he gave no sign. Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. A man may associate with such com- panions, he may pursue such employments, as will darken the day for him. Men choose darkness rather than light. P. M. — To Cliffs and Fair Haven. The sleety snow has whitened the north sides of the oaks, giving a wintry aspect as well to the wood as to the ground. Saw the first lark rise from the railroad causeway and sail on quivering wing over the meadow to alight on a heap of dirt. Was that a mink we saw at the Boiling Spring? The senecio was very forward there in the water, and it still scents my fingers; avery lasting odorit leaves. These melting snows, so saturated with water, their white contrasting so strongly with the dark spaces, wet the feet most of any. The farmer says that no composition will keep out snow-water. The snow rests on your feet to melt. There has been no regular breaking up of the river, it has been so transiently closed the past winter. Fair Haven Pond is nearly half open. But I see no gulls nor ducks. The young oaks on the plain under the Cliffs appear still full of leaves. It is a rare lichen day. The usnea with its large fruit is very rich on the maples in the swamp, luxuriating in this moist, overcast, melting day, but it is impossible to get it home in good condition. Looking behind the bark of a dead white pine, I find plenty of small gnats quite lively and ready to issue forth as soon as the sun comes out. The grubs there are sluggish, buried in the chankings. I took off some pieces of bark more than three feet long and one foot wide. Between this and the wood, in the dust left by borers, the gnats were concealed, ready to swarm. This their hibernaculum. The rich red-brown leaves of the gnaphalium, downy white beneath in circles, begin to attract me where the snow is off. If I were to make a study of the tracks of animals and represent them by plates, I should conclude with the track of man. Everywhere I see the track of the dog and within it that of the game he is pursuing.

6 a. mM. — To Cliffs. There begins to be a greater depth of saffron in the morning sky. The morning and evening horizon fires are warmer to the eye. I go to the Cliffs to hear if any new spring birds have arrived, for not only they are more sure to sing in the morning, but it is stiller and you can hear them better then. I hear only crows and blue jays and chickadees lisping. Excepting a few blue- birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still. But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter velter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch? Yet I thought it the voice of the bird and not a tapping. It reminds me of the pine warbler (?), if that is it. I see the nuphar pushing up faintly, and I see some of my little gnats of yesterday in the morn- ing sun, somewhat mosquito-like. P. M. — No sap flows yet from my hole in the white maple by the bridge. Found on the Great Fields a frag- ment of Indian soapstone ware, which, judging from its curve and thinness, for a vestige of the rim remains, was a dish of the’form and size of a saucer, only three times as thick. Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone. All enterprises must be self-supporting, must pay for themselves. The great art of life is how to turn the sur- plus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. For instance, a poet must sustain his body with his poetry. As is said of the merchants, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the life of men is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied. You must get your living by loving. To be supported by the charity of friends or a government pension is to go into the almshouse. To inherit property is not to be born, — is to be still-born rather. And the other, as I said, provided you continue to breathe, is to go into the alms- house. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to take an account of stock, and finds his outgoes greater than his income. In the Catholic Church especially they go into chancery.’ As is the sun to the vegetable, so is virtue to the bodily health.