2 March 1857 – 8 March 1857

At Cambridge. Very gusty day. An inch or two of snow falls, — all day about it, — and strangely blown away.

P. M. —To Fair Haven Hill. The crust of yesterday’s snow has been converted by the sun and wind into flakes of thin ice from two or three inches to a foot in diameter, scattered like a mackerel sky over the pastures, as if all the snow had been blown out from beneath. Much of this thin ice is partly opaque and has a glutinous look even, reminding me of frozen glue. Probably it has much dust mixed with it. I go along below the north end of the Cliffs. The rocks in the usual place are buttressed with icy columns, for water in almost imperceptible quantity is trickling down the rocks. It is interesting to see how the dry black or ash-colored umbilicaria, which get a little moisture when the snow melts and trickles down along a seam or shallow channel of the rock, become relaxed and turn olive-green and enjoy their spring, while a few inches on each side of this gutter or depression in the face of the rock they are dry and crisp as ever. Perhaps the greater part of this puny rill is drunk up by the herbage on its brink. These are among the consequences of the slight robin snow of yesterday. It is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers, the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny trickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks where patches of umbilicaria lichens grow, of rank growth, but now thirsty and dry as bones and hornets’ nests, dry as shells, which crackle under your feet. The more fortunate of these, which stand by the moistened seams or gutters of the rock, luxuriate in the grateful moisture — as in their spring. Their rigid nerves relax, they unbend and droop like limber infancy, and from dry ash and leather-color turn a lively olive-green. You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive-green of the lichens alone. Here and there, too, the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crowns of some little cocks- comb lichen, and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock. Skating yesterday and to-day.

P. M. — To Hill. See the tracks of a woodchuck in the sand-heap about the mouth of his hole, where he has cleared out his entry. The red ground under a large pitch pine is strewn with scales of the ashy-brown bark over a diam- eter of ten or twelve feet, where some woodpecker has searched and hammered about the stem. I scare up six male sheldrakes, with their black heads, in the Assabet,—the first ducks I have seen. Methought I heard a slight frog-like croak from them before. The sap of the buttonwood flows; how long? The lilac buds cannot have swollen any since the 25th of February, on account of the cold. On examining, they look as if they had felt the influence of the previous heat a little. There are narrow light-green spaces laid bare along the edges of the brown scales, as if they had expanded so much. This and the last four or five days very gusty. Most of the warmth of the fire is carried off by the draught, which consumes the wood very fast, faster than a much colder but still day in winter. My kindlings spend very fast now, for I do not commonly keep fire at night.

P. M. — To Hill. When I cut a white pine twig the crystalline sap in- stantly exudes. How long has it been thus? Get a glimpse of a hawk, the first of the season. The tree sparrows sing a little on this still sheltered and sunny side of the hill, but not elsewhere. A partridge goes off from amid the pitch pines. It lifts each wing so high above its back and flaps so low, and withal so rapidly, that they present the appearance of a broad wheel, almost a revolving sphere, as it whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun. Minott told me again the reason why the bushes were coming in so fast in the river meadows. Now that the mower takes nothing stronger than molasses and water, he darsn’t meddle with anything bigger than a pipe-stem.