Happy groundhog day

Although Groundhog Day in the U.S. goes back at least as far as 1841, Thoreau doesn’t seem to have been aware of the tradition of the groundhog emerging on February 2 to look for its own shadow. But he was certainly aware of the groundhog’s importance as a sign of warmer weather.

March 25, 1860
The boy’s sled gets put away in the barn or shed or garret, and there lies dormant all summer, like a woodchuck in the winter. It goes into its burrow just before woodchucks come out, so that you may say a woodchuck never sees a sled, nor a sled a woodchuck, — unless it were a prematurely risen woodchuck or a belated and unseasonable sled. Before the woodchuck comes out the sled goes in. They dwell at the antipodes of each other. Before sleds rise woodchucks have set. The ground squirrel too shares the privileges and misfortunes of the woodchuck. The sun now passes from the constellation of the sled into that of the woodchuck.

As I’ve done before, I want to suggest that fans of groundhogs or woodchucks (they’re the same thing) visit my friend Lucy’s pages (with more quotations from Thoreau), including her tribute to one charming but unfortunate young woodchuck.