drafty mountain hut

Still very cold. The most splendid show of ice chandeliers, casters, hour-glasses that I ever saw or imagined about the piers of the bridges, surpassing any crystal, so large. Rather like the bases of columns,

— terraced pedestals, that is it,- the prototypes of the ornaments of the copings and capitals. Perfect and regular, sharp, cone-shaped drops hang from the first figure a few inches above the water. I should have described it then. It would have filled many pages. Scared up my flock of black ducks and counted forty together. See crows along the water’s edge. What do they eat Saw a small black duck with glass, — a dipper (?). Fair Haven still covered and frozen anew in part. Shores of meadow strewn with cranberries. The now silvery willow catkins (notwithstanding the severe cold) shine along the shore, over the cold water, and C. thinks some willow osiers decidedly more yellow.

from the journals of Henry David Thoreau

How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change!

[…]

Each new year is a surprise to us.We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening; reminiscences of our sanest hours? The voice of nature is always encouraging.

from the journals of Henry David Thoreau

March began warm, and I admired the ripples made by the gusts on the dark-blue meadow flood, and the light-tawny color of the earth, and was on the alert for several days to hear the first birds. For a few days past it has been generally colder and rawer, and the ground has been whitened with snow two or three times, but it has all been windy.

A strong but warm southwesterly (?) wind, which has produced a remarkable haze. As I go along by Sleepy Hollow, this strong, warm wind, rustling the leaves on the hillsides, this blue haze, and the russet earth seen through it, remind me that a new season has come. There was the less thick, more remotely blue,  haze of the 11th February, succeeded by a thaw, beginning on the 14th. Will not rain follow this much thicker haze ?

from the journals of Henry David Thoreau

March 1. Here is our first spring morning accord- ing to the almanac. It is remarkable that the spring of the almanac and of nature should correspond so closely. The morning of the 26th was good winter, but there came a plentiful rain in the afternoon, and yesterday and today are quite springlike. This morning the air is still, and, though clear enough, a yellowish light is widely diffused throughout the east.