Confined by winter

January 14

January 14, 2021

When I see the dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow by the roadside, sometimes in dense masses, which carry me back in imagination to their green summer life, I put faintly a question which I do not yet hear answered, Why stand they there?

Why should the dead corn-stalks occupy the field longer than the green and living did? Many of them are granaries for the birds.

It suggests that man is not an annual. He sees the annual plants wither.

Nor does his sap cease to flow in the winter as does that of the trees, though, perhaps, even he may be slightly dormant at that season. It is to most a season to some extent of inactivity. He lays up his stores, and is perhaps a little chilled. On the approach of spring there is an increased flow of spirits, of blood, in his veins. 

Here is a dense mass of dry tansy stems, attached still to the same roots which sustained them in summer, but what an interval between these and those. Here are no yellow disks; here are no green leaves; here is no strong odor to remind some of funerals. Here is a change as great as can well be imagined. 

Bare, brown, scentless stalks, with the dry heads still adhering. Color, scent, and flavor gone.

We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate, and accordingly we share to some extent the nature of the dormant creatures. We all feel somewhat confined by the winter. The nights are longer, and we sleep more. We also wear more clothes. 

Yet the thought is not less active; perhaps it is more so. What an effect the sight of green grass in the winter has on us! as at the spring by the Corner road. 

Clouds are our mountains, and the child who had lived in a plain always and had never seen a mountain would find that he was prepared for the sight of them by his familiarity with clouds. 

As usual, there is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? When I observed it the other day, it was a rather moist air, some snow falling, the sky completely overcast, and the weather not very cold. It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter.

I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1852

The dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow . . . carry me back in imagination to their green summer life. See December 6, 1856 ("Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); December 12, 1856 ("As soon as the snow came, I naturally began to observe that portion of the plants that was left above the snow."); January 3, 1856 ("How common and conspicuous the brown spear-heads of the hardhack, above the snow, and looking black by contrast with it!"); See also January 16, 1860 ("There is no shrub nor weed which is not known to some bird."); March 14, 1855 (“This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, - that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds.”); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds Also October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us."); December 1, 1852 ("The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face. ") January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer.") 

 
We share to some extent the nature of the dormant creatures. We all feel somewhat confined by the winter. See December 30, 1853 ("In winter even man is to a slight extent dormant, just as some animals are but partially awake . . . he is more or less confined to the highway and wood-path; the weather oftener shuts him up in his burrow . . . the nights are longest; he is often satisfied if he only gets out to the post-office in the course of the day.”)

Yet the thought is not less active. See January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.")

There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter.  See January 9, 1852 ("Methinks I oftenest see this when it is snowing. At any rate the atmosphere must be in a peculiar state. Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue."); January 18, 1852 ("To-day, again. I saw some of the blue in the crevices of the snow.  It is snowing, but not a moist snow. Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”); January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”);  

Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east. See January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset."); January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me . . . The night is not black when the air is clear, but blue still.") 

January 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 14

Bare brown scentless stalks

color scent and flavor gone

dry heads adhering.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Speed perspective

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 ©  2009-2025

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