This project was conceived in early April of 2005 at Walden Woods Project's Thoreau Institute. As we smelled spring in the air, after a long and snowy winter, we wanted to capture every single opening bud, the excitement of the first flowers, and the brilliant green of young leaves. We hope you will take time to scroll through these images and notice how the plants have miraculously changed in the matter of days. We think Thoreau would like us to capture the seasons, as he did so meticulously in his Journals. We use a different medium, but with as much delight and excitement!

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 14, 1852 [entire entry]

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 13, 1852

What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?  Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards.  It consists mainly of rocky pastures.  It contains what I call the Boulder Filed, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark’s.  Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south.  There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman’s Pond on its edge.  What shall the whole be called?  The old Carlisle road, which runs through the middle of it, is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many if not most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are for the most part concealed by birches and pines.  These archards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples.  It is a paradise for walkers in the fall.  There are also boundless huckleberry pastures as well as many blueberry swamps.  Shall we call it Easterbrooks Country?

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 10, 1852

Surveying for Sam. Pierce.  Found piece of an Indian soapstone pot.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 7, 1852 (entire entry)

The nepeta by Deacon Brown’s, a pretty blue flower.  It has been a sultry day, and a slight thunder-shower, and now I see fireflies in the meadows at evening.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 3, 1852 (entire entry)

Measured C. Davis’s elm at the top of his fence, just built, five feet from the ground.  It is fifteen and two twelfths feet in circumsference and much larger and many feet higher.  Buttercups now spot the churchyard.  The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage.  You see darkness in them.”

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 2, 1852

The sounds I hear by the bridge: the midsummer frog (I think it is not the toad), the nighthawk, crickets, the peetweet (it is early), the hum of dor-bugs, and the whip-poor-will.  The boys are coming home from fishing, for the river is down at last.  The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights, and never-failing entertainment of nightly travelers.  You can never foretell the fate of the moon, -- whether she will prevail over or be obscured by the clouds half an hour hence.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, June 1, 1852

A wet day.  The veery sings nevertheless.  The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes.  The dogwood is coming out.  Ladies’-slippers out.  They perfume the air.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 27, 1852

The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms, yet the air is fresh as from the salt water.  The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown.  To-night I hear many crickets.  They have commenced their song.  They bring in the summer.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 26, 1852

The cooing of a dove reminded me of an owl this morning.  Counted just fifty violets (pedata) in a little bunch, three and a half by five inches, and as many buds, there being six plants close together; on the hill where Billington climbed a tree.  A calabash at Pilgrim’s Hall nearly two feet high, in the form of a jar, showed what these fruits were made for.  Nature’s jars and vases.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 24, 1852

Some ponds have outlets; some have not.  So some men.  Singular that so many ponds should have connection with the sea.  The inkberry is late.  The red-eyed vireo is a steady singer, sitting near the top of a tree a long time alone, -- as the robin sings at morning and evening on an elm in the village.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 23, 1852

So many birds that I have not attended much to any of late.  A barn swallow accompanied me across the Depot Field, methinks attracted by the insects which I started, though I saw them not, wheeling and tacking incessantly on all sides and repeatedly dashing within a rod of me.  It is an agreeable sight to watch one.  Nothing lives in the air but is in rapid motion.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 20, 1852

Up to about the 14^th of May I watched the progress of the season very closely, - though not so carefully the earliest birds, - but since that date, both from poor health and multiplicity of objects, I have noted little but what fell under my observation.  The pear trees are in bloom before the apples.  The cherries appear to have been blasted by the winter.  The lilac has begun to blossom.  There was the first lightning we have noticed this year, last Sunday evening, and a thunder-storm in Walpole, N.H.  Lightning here this evening and an aurora in form of a segment of a circle.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 19, 1852 [Entire Entry]

[T]he dark-green pines, wonderfully distinct, near and erect, with their distinct dark stems, spiring tops, regularly disposed branches, and silvery light on their needles.  They seem to wear an aspect as much fresher and livelier as the other trees, -- though their growth can hardly be perceptible yet. – as if they had been washed by the rains and the air.  They are now being invested with the light, sunny, yellowish-green of the deciduous trees.  This tender foliage, putting so much light and life into the landscape, is the remarkable feature at this date.  The week when the deciduous trees are generally and conspicuously expanding their leaves.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 18, 1852

I see dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.  There is life in these fresh and varied colors, life in the motion of the wind and waves; all make it a flowing, washing day.  It is a good day to saunter.  … After a storm at this season the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland.”

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 17, 1852

The muskrat has piled his shells high up the bank this year, on account of the freshet.  Even our river shells will have some black, purple, or green tints, telling of distant skies, like shells from the Indies.  How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the shells of the fresh-water clam buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?  Even the sea-bottom tells of the upper skies.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 16, 1852

Currant and gooseberries are in bloom in the garden.  The mountain-ash leafed out as much as two days ago.  The elms have been leafing out for two or three days.  Sugar maples on the common are in blossom.  Hear the peepers in the rain to-night (9:30), but not the dream toad.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 12, 1852

The Salix alba [white willow] has a spicier fragrance than the earliest willows [weeping willows, Salix babylonica].  We have so much causeway planted with willows, - set with them on each side to prevent its washing away, - that they make a great show, and are obvious now before other trees are so advanced.  The birches at a distance appear as in a thin green veil, in their expanding leaves.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 11, 1852

The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, - its blades, - and you can almost see it grow. For some reason I now remember the autumn, -- the succory and the goldenrod. We remember the autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. … Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others – others regard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 10, 1852

It is impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe [forgetfulness] flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another.

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 9, 1852

Henry David Thoreau Journal, May 5, 1852

Plenty of birds in the woods this morning.  The huckleberry birds and the chickadees are as numerous, if not as loud, as any.  The flicker taps a dead tree as some one uses a knocker on a door in the village street.  In his note he begins low, rising higher and higher.  Is it a wood pewee or a vireo that I hear, something like pewi pewit chowy chow? It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I am willing to omit the gun.

Henry David Thoreau Journal May 3, 1852

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