Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/231

Rh To Walden. I think I may say that the snow has not been less than a foot deep on a level in open land until to-day, since January 6th, about eleven weeks. I am reassured and reminded that I am the heir of eternal inheritances which, are inalienable when I feel the warmth reflected from this sunny bank, and see the yellow sand and the reddish subsoil, and hear some dried leaves rustle and the trickling of melting snow in some sluiceway. The eternity which I detect in nature I predicate of myself also. How many springs I have had this same experience! I am encouraged, for I recognize this steady persistency and recovery of nature as a quality of myself. Now the steep south hill-sides begin to be bare, and the early sedge and the sere, but still fragrant, pennyroyal and rustling leaves are exposed, and you see where the mice have sheared off the sedge, and also made nests of its top during the winter. There, too, the partridges resort, and perhaps you hear the bark of a striped squirrel, and see him scratch toward his hole, rustling the leaves; for all the inhabitants. of nature are attracted by this bare and dry spot as well as you.

The musk-rat houses were certainly very few and small last summer, and the river has been remarkably low up to this time, while the previous fall they were very numerous and large,