Watching clouds dissolve

January 13

January 13, 2014

Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. The snow more than a foot deep over all the land. Few if any leave the beaten paths. 

A few clouds are floating overhead, downy and dark. Clear sky and bright sun.

I see a long, light-textured cloud stretching from north to south, stretching over half the heavens; and underneath it, in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write. 

Before I can complete this sentence, I look up and they are gone, like  the steam from the engine in the winter air.  

Even a considerable cloud is dissolved and dispersed in a minute or two, and nothing is left but the pure ether. Then another comes by magic, is born out of the pure blue empyrean, with beautiful mother - o '- pearl tints, where not a shred of vapor was to be seen before, not enough to stain a glass or polished steel blade. 

It grows more light and porous; the blue deeps are seen through it here and there; only a few flocks are left; and now these too have disappeared, and no one knows whither it is gone.

January 13, 2018

You are compelled to look at the sky for the earth is invisible.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1852

I look up and they are gone, like the steam from the engine in the winter air. See August 9, 1860 ("All at once a small cloud begins to form half a mile from the summit and rapidly grows in a mysterious manner till it drapes and conceals the summit above us for a few moments, then passes off and disappears northeastward just as it had come.”) ; June 24, 1852 (“What could a man learn by watching the clouds?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

Then another comes by magic, is born out of the pure blue empyrean, with beautiful mother-o'-pearl tints. See note to January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown.")

January 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 13

Clear sky and bright sun

as clouds floating overhead

dissolve and disperse.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Watching clouds dissolve

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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