Feb. 27, 1854.
Morning. - Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded. The rain-water and melted snow have run swiftly over the frozen ground into the river, and raised it with the ice on it and flooded the meadows, covering the ice there which remains on the bottom; so that you have, on the male side, the narrow canal above the ice, then a floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. ....
I remarked yesterday the rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground sought its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river.
It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, - beside melting all the snow, - and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground.
-H.D.T.
Feb. 27, 2021. 4:30 p.m., 37 degrees.
While Thoreau provides no clear indicator of the location of his observations on this date of 1854, he is most likey referring to the Sudbury River and Wheeler Meadow on its north bank (referred to today by the Concord Conservation Land Trust as French’s Meadow), which would be across the street from his Main Street address. I can imagine him strolling across the roadway to his canoe launch on the river behind his friend Ellery Channing’s house in the morning to take a brief look at the river, possibly with a cup of coffee or tea in hand.
A short snowfall this morning quickly turned to a full downpour of rain most of the day, but has now abated. The rainstorm has brought me bitter sweet feelings, initially a poignant feeling of disappointment with the loss of our days of snow, followed by some placation upon realizing the silver lining - that these weather conditions closely match Thoreau's on this calendar day.
In the late afternoon as the day is darkening, I visit the bridge (not here in Thoreau’s time, and just upriver from Thoreau’s boat launch) over the Sudbury on Nashatuc Road and can hear water rushing into the river through the inlet on the south bank. The tones of the day are of a sepia photograph, an effect developed in the 1800s by photograph developers to add richness to otherwise plain and more stark black and white images. It's fitting then, that my sepia tinted views today, without any application of a photographic imaging effect, have naturally created my modern-day 1800s imagery for a project dedicated to reliving that era. A dark river, reflects the dark brown silhouettes of trees against white snowfields, and gray to yellow-brown ice. The water is very high having absorbed all the new rain and melted snow. (This swollen river is almost two feet higher than the level I measure on the date of publication of this entry, May 20, 2023.)
At the inner corner of French’s Meadow near Squaw Sachem Trail I look out and see the snow-covered ice fields in this state of change. Vast puddles of rain and snow melt cover large portions of this vast field.
I walk further to the end of the Reformatory Branch Trail where it meets the river on the far other end of the meadow to the north. The trail is washed out bare as I enter the woods and very slippery as I tread. Out on this promontory I enter a thicker fog, which I can see and feel on my skin. The landscape feels washed and rinsed. My views through low branches are adorned by rain drops still clinging on, my soundscape a soundtrack of pattering drips against the hood and shoulders of my coat, and surrounding water logged ground. The sepia tones here are strong again on the downriver side of the causeway, indicative of the mixing of the run-off from the land and overflow and flooding of the brown, swollen river - a winter freshet. The meadow side, with melted sections of flooded waters on the ice covered snow, shows in a hues of soft blue with more subtle tints of yellows and browns.
Today feels as if a turning point. The spring melt, now underway, has had a significant jump start.
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