Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/310

296 and White Pond road. Thermometer +45°. Fair, with a few cumuli of indefinite outline in the N. and S., and dusky under sides. A gentle west wind and a blue haze. Thaws. The ice has so melted on the meadows that I see where the muskrat has left his clamshells in a heap near the river side where there was a hollow in the bank.—The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook. It is pleasant also to see the very distinct ripple marks in the sand at the bottom, of late so rare a sight. I go through the piny field N. W. of Martial Miles's. There are no more beautiful natural parks than these pastures in which the white pines have sprung up spontaneously, standing at handsome intervals, where the wind chanced to let the seed lie at last, and the grass and blackberry vines have not yet been killed by them.

There are certain sounds invariably heard in warm and thawing days in winter, such as the crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and sometimes the gobbling of turkeys. The crow, flying high, touches the tympanum of the sky for us, and reveals the tone of it. What does it avail to look at a thermometer or barometer compared with listening to his note! He informs me that nature is in the tenderest mood possible, and I hear the very flutterings of her heart.—Crows