Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/289

Rh skunk find a place where the ground was thawed on the surface. Except for science do not travel in such a climate as this, in November and March. I tried if a fish would take the bait to-day, but in vain, I did not get a nibble. Where are they?

March 30, 1856. To Walden and Fair Haven. Still cold and blustering. I came out to see the sand and subsoil in the deep cut as I would to see a spring flower, some redness on the cheek of earth I go to Fair Haven via the Andromeda Swamp. The river is a foot and more in depth there still. There is a little bare ground in and next to the swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow, where the springs and little black rills are flowing. I see already one blade, three or four inches long, of that purple or lake grass, lying flat on some water between snow-clad banks, the first leaf with a rich bloom on it. How silent are the footsteps of spring! There, too, where there is a fraction of the meadow, two rods over, quite bare under the bank, in this warm recess at the head of the meadow, though the rest is covered with snow a foot or more in depth, I was surprised to see the skunk-cabbage, with its great spear-heads, open and ready to blossom, and the Calthia palustris bud, which shows yellowish, and the golden saxifrage green