27 February 1860 – 4 March 1860

2 p.m. — Thermometer 50. To Abner Buttrick’s Hill. The river has been breaking up for several days, 1860} THE BLOOD OF THE EARTH 163 and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt’s and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. For a week or more you could not go to Ball’s Hill by the south side of the river. The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball’s Hill,’ except the masses of ice moving in it; but the ice generally rests on the bottom of the meadows, — such as was there before the water rose, — and the freshet is for the most part covered with a thin ice except where the wind has broke[n] it up. The high wind for several days has prevented this water from freezing hard. There are many cranberries washed far on to a large cake of ice which stretches across the river at Hunt’s Bridge. The wind subsiding leaves them conspicuous. on the middle of the cake. I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. Heywood says that when the ground is regularly descending from the north to the railroad, a low fence a quarter of a mile off has been found to answer perfectly ; if it slopes upward, it must be very near the road. I walk down the river below Flint’s on the north side. The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now. I see, from far over the meadows, white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream, —a novel sight. They are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light, as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc., is more springlike than anything of late. For several days the earth generally has been bare. I see the tawny and brown earth, the fescue- and lichen-clad hills behind Dakin’s and A. Buttrick’s. Among the radical leaves most common, and there- fore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle, — green in the midst of brown and decayed; and at the bottom of little hollows in pastures, now perhaps nearly covered with ice and water, you see some greener leafets of clover. I find myself cut off by that arm of our meadow sea which makes up toward A. Buttrick’s. The walker ‘now by the river valley is often compelled to go far round by the water, driven far toward the farmers’ door-yards. I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the water. Instead of a piece of ice I find it to be the breast of the sheldrake, which so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, steadily sailing this way and that with its companion, who is diving from time to time. They have chosen the opening farthest removed from all shores. As I look I see the ice drifting in upon them and contracting their water, till finally they have but a few square rods left, while there are forty or fifty acres near by. This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard’s Close brook in woods to-day.

2 p.M.— Thermometer 52; wind easterly. To Conantum. I am surprised to see how my English brook cress has expanded or extended since I saw it last fall to a bed four feet in diameter, as if it had grown in the water, though it is quite dirty or muddied with sediment. Many of the sprigs turn upwards and just rest on the water at their ends, as if they might be growing. It has also been eaten considerably by some inhabitant of the water. I am inclined to think it must grow in the winter. What is that bluish bulb now apparently beginning to shoot in the water there, floating loose (not the water- purslane) ?

Rain all day. This will apparently take the frost out very much and still further settle the ways. It was already yesterday pretty good bare-ground walking on the north side the street. Yesterday was a dark, louring, moist day and still. The afternoon before, the wind was east, and I think that a storm (snow or rain) always succeeds. To-day is a still, dripping spring rain, but more fell in the night. It makes the walking worse for the time, but if it does not freeze again, will greatly help to settle the ways. I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down. The most valuable thoughts which I entertain are anything but what If thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness [ am sure to be filled.

Notice the brightness of a row of osiers this morning. This phenomenon, whether referable to a change in the condition of the twig or to the spring air and light, or even to our imaginations, is not the less a real phenomenon, affecting us annually at this season. This is one compensation for having them lopped so often along the causeways, that it is only these new and vigorous growths which shine thus. Frequently within ten days it has been uncomfort- able walking in a greatcoat. 2 p.mM.— Thermometer 50°. To Witherell Glade via Clamshell; thence to Hubbard’s Close. Thinking to look at the cabbage as I pass under Clamshell, I find it very inconspicuous. Most would have said that there was none there. The few tallest and slenderest but tender ones were frost-bitten and far from blooming, but I found three or four more, broad and stout, —a hardy mahogany-colored one, but very low, half covered with the withered sedge, which it lifted up with it, and not apparently open. Putting my finger into one, the broadest and lowest, which opened about half an inch and stood with its back to the west (while they are all sheltered by the hill on the north), I was surprised when I drew it forth to see it covered with pollen. It was fairly in bloom, and probably yesterday too. Evidently some buds are further advanced than others even when the winter comes, and then these are further expanded and ma- tured in advance of the others in the very warm days in the winter. No doubt it may have bloomed in some places in this neighborhood in the last day or two of February this year. Unusually warm weather in February, with bare ground where they grow, may cause them to bloom before February is over. Most would not have detected any change in it since the fall. The grass has evidently sprung and grown a little, a very little, of late, say the very last of February, in warm wet places at the south base of hills, like this. It has a healthy but dark-green look. The (apparently) Epilobium coloratum has conspicuous green radical leaves there. I see several minute glaucous sort of grasshoppers — skipping over the grass and water. Men =< shooting musquash these days. All the grass-stubble in fields not mown is conspic- uous pointed eastward, and reflects the light from a thousand parallel lances. Probably blown thus by the prevailing winds through the winter. Now and for some days look for arrowheads where it is not too soft. There is a strong westerly wind to-day, though warm, and we sit under Dennis’s Lupine Promontory, to ob- serve the water. The great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. The flooded meadows are ripple lakes on a large scale. The landscape, though no growth is visible in it, is bright and springlike. There is the tawny earth (almost completely bare) of different shades, lighter or darker, the light very light in this air, more so than the surface of the earth ever is (2. e. without snow), bleached as it were; and, in the hollows of it, set round by the tawny hills and banks, is this copious living and sparkling blue water of various shades. It is more dashing, rippling, sparkling, living, this windy but clear day; never smooth, but ever varying in its degree of motion and depth of blue as the wind is . more or less strong, rising and falling. All along the shore next us is a strip a few feet wide of very light and smooth sky-blue, for so much is sheltered even by the lowest shore, but the rest is all more or less agitated and dark-blue. In it are, floating or stationary, here and there, cakes of white ice, the least looking like ducks, and large patches of water have a dirty-white or even tawny look, where the ice still lies on the bottom of the meadow. Tyhus even the meadow flood is parded, and of various patches of color. Ever and anon the wind seems to drop down from over the hill in strong puffs, and then spread and diffuse itself in dark fan- shaped figures-over the surface of the water. It is glo- rious to see how it sports on the watery surface. You see a hundred such nimble-footed puffs drop and spread on all sides at once, and dash off, sweeping the surface of the water for forty rods in [a] few seconds, as if so many invisible spirits were playing tag there. It even suggests some fine dust swept along just above the surface, and reminds me of snow blowing over ice and vapor curling along a roof, — meandering like that, often. Like hair, like the crown of the head, curl- ing various ways. The before dark blue is now diver- sified with much darker or blackish patches with a suggestion of red, — purplish even. Then the wind blows with stronger gust down the Nut Meadow valley on our right, and I am sur- prised to see that the billows which it makes are concentric curves apparently reaching round from shore to shore of this broad bay, forty rods wide or more : — yo N This is conspicuously the form of them. For which two things may account, — the greater force of the wind in the middle and the friction of the shores. And when it blows hardest, each successive billow (four or five feet apart or more) is crowned with yellowish or dirty- white foam. The wind blows around each side of the hill, the opposite currents meeting perchance, or it falls over the hill. So you have a field of ever-varying color, — dark blue, blackish, yellowish, light blue, and smooth sky-blue, and purplish, and yellowish foam, all at once. Sometimes the wind visibly catches up the surface and blows it along and about in spray four or five feet high. Now and then, when the gust increases, there comes a top of fly-away grass from over the hill, goes dancing over the waves, and soon is lost. The requisites are high water mostly clear of ice, ground bare and sufficiently dry, weather warm enough, and wind strong and gusty; then you may sit or stand on a hill and watch this play of the wind with the water. I know of no checker-board more interesting to watch. The wind, the gusts, comb the hair of the water- nymphs. You never tire of seeing it drop, spread, and sweep over the yielding and sensitive surface. The water is so full of life, now rising into higher billows which would make your mast crack if you had any, now subsiding into lesser, dashing against and wear- ing away the still anchored ice, setting many small cakes adrift. How they entertain us with ever-changing scenes, in the sky above or on the earth below! If the plowman lean on his plow-handle and look up or down, there is danger that he will forget his labor on that day. These are ripple days begun, — not yet in woodland pools, where is ice yet. I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light. The red maple sap flows freely, and probably has for several days. I begin to notice the reddish stems of moss on low ground, not bright yet. C. has seen good beeomyces (?) lately. There is none however at Beomyces Bank. In Hosmer’s ditches in the moraine meadow, the grass just peeps above the surface, apparently begun to grow a little. I see on [ste] a small round last year’s turtle with a yellowish spot on each scale and a yellow-pink breast centred with black. Also see a yellow-spot turtle there. Some of those tufts of andropogon radical leaves make excellent seats now when the earth is moist. We see one or two gnats in the air. See thirty or more crows come flying in the usual irregular zigzag manner in the strong wind, from over M. Miles’s, going northeast, —the first migration of them, — without cawing. See a little conferva in ditches. Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, —and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th. Hayden thinks he has seen bluebirds for a fortnight !! Say that he has possibly for a week (?), and that will agree with Wheeler. Ed. Hoar says he heard one Feb- ruary 27th." At Brister Spring, and especially below, at the cow- slip, the dense bedded green moss is very fresh and handsome, and the cowslip leaves, though unfolded, rise to the surface. See a little frog in one of the spring-holes. See a hen-hawk. Two or three tufts of carex have shot up in Hosmer’s cold spring ditch and been frost-bitten. Ed. Hoar says he heard a phoebe February 27th.

2 p.m. — 650°; overcast and somewhat rain-threatening; wind southwest. To Abner Buttrick and Tarbell Hills. See a flock of large ducks in a line, — maybe black? — over Great Meadows; also a few sheldrakes. It was pleasant to hear the tinkling of very coarse brash — broken honeycombed dark ice — rattling one piece against another along the northeast shores, to which it has drifted. Scarcely any ice now about river except what rests on the bottom of the meadows, dirty with sediment. The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away. When I read Topsell’s account of the ichneumon eating his way out of the crocodile, I think that, though it be not true in fact, it is very true in fancy, and it is no small gift to be able to give it so good a setting-forth. What a pity that our modern natu- ralists cannot tell their truths with half this zest and spirit! Nowadays we have rain, and then high wind directly after it. C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. I saw this afternoon a meadow below Flint’s willow- row still frozen over (at 3 p. M.), — frozen last night, —and the frozen part corresponded generally to the anchor ice on the bottom, while there was an open canal all around and beyond the edge of the anchor ice; but when I returned two hours later, the wind had broken up and dissipated every vestige of this surface ice; 2. €., it was an ice formed last night which it took the whole day with a strong wind to break up in this rather sheltered place. Our muddiest and wettest walking thus far was the last week of February. I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready. The last skating was on Walden the 26th February. The next day it was soft. Sleighing ended February 22d, and there had not been much a long time before. I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon.

Sunday. 2 p. m.— To Conantum via Clamshell. Thermometer 44; very strong and gusty northwest wind, with electric-looking wind-clouds. One spits a little rain, but mostly clear. The frost is all out of the upper part of the garden. These wind-clouds come up and disappear fast, and have a more or less perpendicular fibre. Sit under Lupine Promontory again, to see the rip- ples. The wind is too strong, the waves run too high and incessantly, to allow the distinct puffs or gusts that drop from over the hill to be seen distinctly enough on tumultuous surface. Yet it is interesting. It spreads and runs as a bird spreads its tail suddenly, or it is as if a gust fell on a head of dark hair and made dimples or “crowns” in it, or it is as when dust before a brisk sweeper curls along over a floor. There is much less of that yellowish anchor ice than on the 2d. Cakes of it successively rise, being separated by warmth from the bottom, and are driven off to the leeward shore. In some places that shore is lined with such cakes now, which have risen and been blown clear across the meadow and river, — large masses. Some portions of them are singularly saturated, of a yellow- ish or clay-color, and an uneven upper surface, with a finely divided perpendicular grain, looking (in form) just like some kinds of fungi (that com- monly yellowish kind). There Fuga Ott, the smaller pieces, of irregular form, strike against one another and make a pleasant musical, or tinkling, sound. Some of the ice will occasionally be lifted up on its edge two feet high and very conspicuous afar. That reddish-purple tinge in the meadow ripples ap- pears to be owing to a reflection in some cases from the somewhat russet bottom. I see some curled dock, just started. The earth is never lighter-colored than now, — the hillsides reflecting the sun when first dried after the win- ter, — especially, methinks, where the sheep’s fescue grows (?). It contrasts finely with the rich blue of the water. I saw half a dozen crows on a cake of ice in the middle of the Great Meadows yesterday, evidently looking for some favorite food which is washed on to it, — snails, or cranberries perhaps. I see a bush of the early willow — by wall far in front of the C. Miles house — whose catkins are conspicuous thirty rods off, very decidedly green, three eighths of an inch by measure. ‘The bush at this distance had quite a silvery look, and the catkins show some redness within. Many of the scales as usual had fallen. A hen-hawk rises and sails away over the Holden Wood as in summer. Saw and heard one scream the 2d. I notice, where (ice or) snow has recently melted, a very thin dirty-white web like a dense cobweb, left flat on the grass, such as I saw some years ago.