Winter air.

December 4.

Fair Haven Pond is now open, and there is no snow.

It is a beautiful, almost Indian summer, afternoon, though the air is more pure and glassy.

The shrub oak fire burns briskly as seen from the Cliffs.

The evergreens are greener than ever.

I notice the row of dwarf willows advanced into the water in Fair Haven, three or four rods from the dry land, just at the lowest water-mark.

You can get no disease but cold in such an atmosphere.

Though the sun is now an hour high, there is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems. The lichens on their bark reflect it.

In the horizon I see a succession of the brows of hills, bare or covered with wood, -- look over the eyebrows of the recumbent earth. These are separated by long valleys filled with vapory haze.

If there is a little more warmth than usual at this season, then the beautiful air which belongs to winter is perceived and appreciated.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 4, 1850

Fair Haven Pond is now open, and there is no snow. See December 4, 1855 ("A pleasant day and yet no snow nor ice. ") Compare December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.") December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening."); December 5, 1853 ("Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); November 25, 1850 (“I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over. . . ice on the water and winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground “; December 8, 1850 ("A week or two ago Fair Haven Pond was frozen and the ground was still bare. Now the Pond is open and ground is covered with snow and ice. This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

The shrub oak fire burns briskly as seen from the Cliffs.  See October 22, 1858 ("I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree");  December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch")

Though the sun is now an hour high, there is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems. The lichens on their bark reflect it. See November 1, 1857 ("I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light");  December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist. . . . They eclipse the trees they cover.")

The beautiful air which belongs to winter. See November 25, 1850 (“This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be cold, I thought that there was a finer and purer warmth . . .The landscape looked singularly clean and pure and dry, the air, like a pure glass, being laid over the picture. . . ice on the water and winter in the air“)

December 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 4; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022