27 April 1857 – 3 May 1857

[hear the prolonged che che che che che, etc., of the chip-bird this morning as I go down the street. It is a true April morning with east wind, the sky over- cast with wet-looking clouds, and already some drops have fallen. It will surely rain to-day, but when it will begin in earnest and how long it will last, none can tell. The gardener makes haste to get in his peas, getting his son to drop them. He who requires fair weather puts off his enterprises and resumes them in his mind many times in the forenoon, as the clouds fall lower and sprinkle the fields, or lift higher and show light streaks. He goes half a mile and is overtaken by thick sprinkling drops, falling faster and faster. He pauses and says to himself, this may be merely a shower, which will soon be over, or it may come to a steady rain and last all day. He goes a few steps further, thinking over the condition of a wet man, and then returns. Again it holds up and he regrets that he had not persevered; but the next hour it is stiller and darker, with mist beneath the investing cloud, and then commences a gentle, deliberate rain, which will probably last all day. So he puts on patience and the house. I dig up those reddish-brown dor-bugs in the garden. They stir a little. Ricketson frequents his shanty by day and evening as much as his house, but does not sleep there, partly on account of his fear of lightning, which he cannot overcome. His timidity in this respect amounts to an idiosyncrasy. I was awaked there in a thunder-storm at midnight by Ricketson rushing about the house, calling to his sons to come down out of the attic where they slept and bolting in to leave a light in my room. His fear of death is equally singular. The thought of it troubles him more perhaps than anything else. He says that he knows nothing about another life, he would like to stay here always. He does not know what to think of the Creator that made the lightning and established death.

A. M. — Surveying for Willard Farrar by Walden. While standing by my compass over the supposed town bound beyond Wyman’s, Farrar having just gone along northeast on the town line, I saw with the side of my eye some black creature crossing the road, re- minding me of a black cat two thirds grown. Turn- ing, I saw it plainly for half a minute. It crossed to my side about twenty-five feet off, apparently not observ- ing me, and disappeared in the woods. It was per- fectly black, for aught I could see (not brown), some eighteen or twenty inches or more in length from tip to tip, and I first thought of a large black weasel, then of a large black squirrel, then wondered if it could be a pine marten. I now try to think it a mink; yet it appeared larger and with a shorter body. It had a straight, low, bushy tail about two inches thick, short legs, and carried its tail and legs about on the same level. It was nearly, if not quite, as large as a muskrat. Has the mink such a tail? ., nw eseans Looking for an “old OE Oe pine stump” mentioned in a deed and digging into a hillock with our hands to discover it, we turned up, amid the red- dish virgin mould, —quite turned to soil, —a large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants, say five twelfths (? ) of an inch long, with their white larve (?). I perceived at more than a foot distant a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy. It reminded me at first of the cherry pectoral; but it was not that; it was very strong lemon-peel. The “Library of Enter- taining Knowledge” says that the odor of the wood ant will suffocate a frog dropped among them. Are not these the American “wood ant”? Icy cold northwest wind, and snow whitening the mountains.

Purple finch sings on R. W. E.’s trees. P. M. — To Dugan Desert. At Tarbell’s watering-place, see a dandelion, its con- spicuous bright-yellow disk in the midst of a green space on the moist bank. It is thus I commonly meet with the earliest dandelion set in the midst of some liquid green patch. It seems a sudden and decided progress in the season. On the pitch pines beyond John Hosmer’s, I see old cones within two feet of the ground on the trunk, — sometimes a circle of them around it, — which must have been formed on the young tree some fifteen years ago. Sweet-fern at en- trance of Ministerial Swamp. A partridge there drums incessantly. C. says it makes his heart beat with it, or he feels it in his breast. I find that that clayey-looking soil on which the bzeomyces grows is a very thin crust on common sand only. I have seen that pretty little hair-cap moss (Pogo- natum brevicaule?*) for a fortnight out at least; like little pine trees; the staminate pretty, cup-shaped and shorter. A steel-blue-black flattish beetle, which, handled, im- parted a very disagreeable carrion-like scent to fingers. Miles’s Pond is running off. The sweet-gale, willows, etc., which have been submerged and put back, begin to show themselves and are trying to catch up with their fellows. I am surprised to see how some blackberry pastures and other fields are filling up with pines, trees which I thought the cows had almost killed two or three years ago; so that what was then a pasture is now a young wood-lot. A little snow still lies in the road in one place, the relic of the snow of the 21st.

Thursday. A. M. — Surveying for Farrar and Heywood by Walden. Hear a kingfisher at Goose Pond. Hear again the same bird heard at Conantum April 18th, which I think must be the ruby-crowned wren. As we stood looking for a bound by the edge of Goose Pond, a pretty large hawk alighted on an oak close by us. It probably has a nest near by and was concerned for its young.

Friday. 2 p. m. — First notice the ring of the toad, as I am crossing the Common in front of the meeting-house. There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most, as the mill-brook empties into the river and the voyager cannot tell if he is above or below its mouth. The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but none heard this older and more universal bell, rung by more native Americans all the land over. It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind, taken into the lungs instead of being heard by the ears. It comes from far over or through the troughs of the aerial sea, like a petrel, and who can guess by what pool the singer sits? whether behind the meeting-house horse-sheds, or from over the burying- ground hill, or from the riverside? A new reign has commenced. Bufo the First has ascended to his throne, the surface of the earth, led into office by the south wind. Bufo the Double-chinned inflates his throat. Attend to his message. Take off your greatcoats, swains! and prepare for the summer campaign. Hop a few paces further toward your goals. The measures I shall advocate are warmth, moisture, and low-flying insects. White-throated sparrow in shrub oaks by Walden road. Is that moss with little green pendulous fruit on reddish stems Bryum pyriforme? Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path. How they ransack the paths these nights! The ground is spotted with their probings. Plucked the Arum triphyllum, three inches high, with its acrid corm (solid bulb), from the edge of Saw Mill Brook. It is foolish for a man to accumulate material wealth chiefly, houses and land. Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount of thought which we have had, which we have thought out. The ground we have thus created is forever pasturage for our thoughts. I fall back on to visions which I have had. What else adds to my possessions and makes me rich in all lands? If you have ever done any work with these finest tools, the imagination and fancy and reason, it is a new crea- tion, independent on the world, and a possession forever. You have laid up something against a rainy day. You have to that extent cleared the wilderness. Is a house but a gall on the face of the earth, a nidus which some insect has provided for its young?

Saturday. Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson. In digging the holes I find the roots of small apple trees, seven or eight feet distant and four or more inches in diameter, two feet underground, and as big as my little finger. This is two or three feet beyond any branches. They reach at least twice as far as the branches. The branches get trimmed, the roots do not.

Sunday. A remarkably warm and pleasant morning. A. M. — To Battle-Ground by river.