23 February 1857 – 1 March 1857

P. M. — See two yellow-spotted tortoises in the ditch south of Trillium Wood. You saunter ex- pectant in the mild air along the soft edge of a ditch filled with melted snow and paved with leaves, in some sheltered place, yet perhaps with some ice at one end still, and are thrilled to see stirring amid the leaves at the bottom, sluggishly burying themselves from your sight again, these brilliantly spotted creatures. There are commonly two, at least. The tortoise is stirring in the ditches again. In your latest spring they still look incredibly strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants and contemporaries of yours. I say in my thought to my neighbor, who was once my friend, “It is of no use to speak the truth to you, you will not hear it. What, then, shall I say to you?” At the instant that I seem to be saying farewell forever to one who has been my friend, I find myself unex- pectedly near to him, and it is our very nearness and dearness to each other that gives depth and significance to that forever. Thus I am a helpless prisoner, and these chains I have no skill to break. While I think I have broken one link, I have been forging another. I have not yet known a friendship to cease, I think. I fear I have experienced its decaying. Morning, noon, and night, I suffer a physical pain, an aching of the breast which unfits me for my tasks. It is perhaps most intense at evening. With respect to Friendship I feel like a wreck that is driving before the gale, with a crew suffering from hunger and thirst, not knowing what shore, if any, they may reach, so long have I breasted the conflicting waves of this sentiment, my seams open, my timbers laid bare. I float on Friendship’s sea simply because my specific gravity is less than its, but no longer that stanch and graceful vessel that careered so buoy- antly over it. My planks and timbers are scattered. At most [ hope to make a sort of raft of Friendship, on which, with a few of our treasures, we may float to some firm land. That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage. You cheat me, you keep me at a distance with your manners. I know of no other dishonesty, no other devil. Why this doubleness, these compliments? They are the worst of lies. A lie is not worse between traders than a compliment between friends. I would not, I can- not speak. I will let you feel my thought, my feeling. Friends! they are united for good and for evil. They can delight each other as none other can. ‘They can distress each other as none other can. Lying on lower levels is but a trivial offense compared with civility and compliments on the level of Friendship. I visit my friend for joy, not for disturbance. If my coming hinders him in the least conceivable degree, I will exert myself to the utmost to stay away, I will get the Titans to help me stand aloof, I will labor night and day to construct a rampart between us. If my coming casts but the shadow of a shadow before it, I will retreat swifter than the wind and more untrackable. . I will be gone irrevocably, if possible, before he fears that I am coming. If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out? Must friends then expect the fate of those Oriental twins, — that one shall at last bear about the corpse of the other, by that same ligature that bound him to a living companion ? Look before you leap. Let the isthmus be cut through, unless sea meets sea at exactly the same level, unless a perfect understanding and equilibrium has been es- tablished from the beginning around Cape Horn and the unnamed northern cape. What a tumult! It is Atlantic and Atlantic, or it is Atlantic and Pacific. What mean these turtles, these coins of the muddy mint issued in early spring? The bright spots on their backs are vain unless I behold them. The spots seem brighter than ever when first beheld in the spring, as does the bark of the willow. I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the sur- face as he leapt in. I have seen the brilliant spotted tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple.

A fine spring morning. The ground is almost completely bare again. There has been a frost in the night. Now, at 8.30, it is melted and wets my feet like a dew. The water on the meadow this still, bright morning is smooth as in April. I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside, and as I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one’s note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts. Their short, rich, crispy warble curls through the air. Its grain now lies parallel to the curve of the bluebird’s warble, like boards of the same lot. It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced. Perhaps they are fabulous. I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. I now see where one has pawed out the worm-dust or other chankings from a hole in base of a walnut and torn open the fungi, etc., there, exploring for grubs or insects. They are very busy these nights. If I should make the least concession, my friend would spurn me. I am obeying his law as well as my own. Where is the actual friend you love? Ask from what hill the rainbow’s arch springs! It adorns and crowns the earth. Our friends are our kindred, of our species. There are very few of our species on the globe. Between me and my friend what unfathomable distance! All mankind, like motes [?] and insects, are between us. If my friend says in his mind, I will never see you again, I translate it of necessity into ever. That is its definition in Love’s lexicon. | Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent. P. M. — To Walden. The railroad in the Deep Cut is dry as in spring, almost dusty. The best of the sand foliage is already gone. I walk without a greatcoat. A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth. Walden is still covered with thick ice, though melted a foot from the shore. The French (in the Jesuit Relations) say fil de l’eau for that part of the current of a river in which any float- ing thing would be carried, generally about equidistant from the two banks. It is a convenient expression, for which I think we have no equivalent.’ Get my boat out the cellar.

I hear of lilac buds expanding, but have not looked at them. I go through the woods behind the Kettle place. The leaves rustle and look all dry on the ground in the woods, as if quite ready to burn. The flies buzz out of doors. Though I left my outside coat at home, this single thick one is too much. I go across the Great Fields to Peter’s, but can see no ducks on the meadows. I suspect they have not come yet, in spite of the openness. The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter. That mildew, or gossamer-like scum, of the 18th is still visible here and there. It is like very thin and frail isinglass. Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning. The thermometer is at 65° at noon.

Cold and windy. The river fast going down. Paint the bottom of my boat. What an accursed land, methinks unfit for the habita- tion of man, where the wild animals are monkeys! I saw Mrs. Brooks’s spirzeas to-day grown half an inch (!!), whose starting I heard of on the 18th.!

Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were’ premature. P. M. — To the Hill. The river has skimmed over again in many places. I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains. They have done this in so many places that it looks as if the farmer had been at work with his maul. They must save him some trouble thus.” I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house! Yet it was quite a damp night, after rain in the afternoon, and rather still. They are all curled by the heat, so that you can tell which side was first exposed to it. The grain is more distinct than ever. Nature so abhors a straight line that she curls each cinder as she launches it on the fiery whirlwind. All the lightness and ethereal spirit of the wood is gone, and this black earthy residuum alone returned. The russet hillside is spotted with them. They suggest some affinity with the cawing crows. I see some of those large purplish chocolate-colored puffballs. They grow in dry pastures. They are in various states. I do not understand their changes.’ Some are quite pulverulent, and emitting a cloud of dust at every touch. Others present a firm, very light ash-colored surface above, in a shallow saucer, with a narrow, wrinkled, crenate border, and beneath this firm skin is a perfectly dry spongy mass, less ashy, more reddish than the last, and fibrous, with very little dust in it but many small ribbed grubs. The surface often looks as if it had been pecked by birds in search of these grubs. Sometimes there is, above the white skin of the saucer, considerable pulverulent substance, as if in the other case this had been dissipated. Sometimes two large ones are joined at the root. Was there any portion (now dissipated) above this light-colored skin ? Did the portion beneath the skin originally contain more dust, which has escaped? Or will it yet come to dust? Are not fungi the best hygrometers ?

Nearly two inches of snow in the night. P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff. I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (? ),—about- five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little mill in the Miles meadow. It was following up this rill, often not more than thrice as wide as itself, and sometimes its precise locality concealed under ice and snow, yet he kept exactly above it on the snow through all its windings, where it was open occasionally taking to the water and sometimes swimming under the ice a rod or two. It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late. It takes several years’ faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.