Sheeny snow-crust to-day.

High winds last night and this morning. The house shakes, and the beds and tables rock. It clears off in the night, and this morning is clear and cold.

The high wind takes off the oak leaves. I see them scrambling up the slopes of the Deep Cut, hurry-scurry over the slippery snow-crust, like a flock of squirrels.

The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color.

From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach, – snow which fell but yesterday morning; then, before night, came the rain; then, in the night, the freezing northwest wind. 

Where day before yesterday was half the ground bare, is this sheeny snow-crust to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 29, 1852

Late winter storm

February 28.

To-day it snows again, covering the ground. To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be as it were turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.


The snow finally turns to a drenching rain.


H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, February 28, 1852

We must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we become storm men. See December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”); March 8, 1859 ("If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage thus browsing along the edge of some near wood which would scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and you will be as far away there as at the end of your longest fair-weather walk, and come home as if from an adventure.")

Feb. 28. To - day it snows again , covering the ground . To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it , so that it may fairly pene trate our skin , and we be as it were turned inside out to it , and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten , so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men . Some men speak of having been wetted to the skin once as a memorable event in their lives , which , notwithstanding the croakers , they survived . The snow is finally turned to a drenching rain .

A silvery sparkle as from a stream

February 27.

The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae.

Half the ground is covered with snow. It is a moderately, cool and pleasant day near the end of winter. We have almost completely forgotten summer. This has truly been a month of crusted snow. Now the snow-patches, which partially melt one part of the day or week, freeze at another, so that the walker traverses them with tolerable ease.

Cross the river on ice. Near Tarbell's and Harrington's the North Branch has burst its icy fetters. This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. As I stand looking up it westward for half a mile where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up with a fine-grained silvery sparkle. If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope?

To-night a circle round the moon.


H. D Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1852

The mosses now are in fruit. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Mosses Bright Green 

This restless and now swollen stream, flowing with with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air. . . .shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope? See March 20, 1853 ("The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. . . .")

Now we begin to see lichens..

February 26.

Now we begin to see the Cladonia rangiferina ("reindeer moss") in the dry pastures.

Observe for the first time on and about Bear Hill in Lincoln the "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen, which every child has admired. I love to find it where the rocks will split into their laminae so that I can easily carry away a specimen.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1852

The "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen. See  February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, - ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly . . . Found three or fourparmelias caperata) in fruit on a white oak on the high river-bank between Tarbell's and Harrington’s."); March 18, 1852 ("There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst .

Railroad geology

November 3

November 3. 

A violent easterly storm in the night clears up at noon.

I notice that the surface of the railroad causeway, composed of gravel, is singularly marked, as if stratified like some slate rocks, on their edges, so that I can tell within a small fraction of a degree from what quarter the rain came. These lines, as it were of stratification, are perfectly parallel, and straight as a ruler, diagonally across the flat surface of the causeway for its whole length. 

Behind each little pebble, as a protecting boulder, an eighth or a tenth of an inch in diameter, extends northwest a ridge of sand an inch or more, which it has protected from being washed away, while the heavy drops driven almost horizontally have washed out a furrow on each side, and on all sides are these ridges, half an inch apart and perfectly parallel.

All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.*

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, November 3, 1861

*[This is the final entry; Thoreau dies May 6, 1862.]

The surface of the railroad causeway. . .is singularly marked, as if stratified . . . so that I can tell . . . from what quarter the rain came. See December 31 1850 ("In the cut by the Pond the . . . the stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter can permanently be distinguished from the summer one . . ..")

Unnoticed by most. See March 27, 1853 ("so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); August 19, 1856 (“a careless observer would look through their thin flowery panicles without observing any flower at all.”)

May 1850

In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever.  It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his clear and thrilling strain, - it sounds as it did the first time I heard it. The sight of these budding woods intoxicates me, - this diet drink.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1850

[See November 21, 1850  and February 14, 1851 and April 14, 1852]

P.M. Railroad causeway.

February 24.

I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.

I am too late by a day or two for the sand foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut. The frost is partly come out of this bank, and it is become dry again in the sun. It is glorious to see the soil again, here where a shovel, perchance, will enter it and find no frost.

I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.

Observe the poplar's swollen buds and the brightness of the willow's bark. It is a natural resurrection, an experience of immortality.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1852

I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. See February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air . . .  striking on the rails at a distance.”); April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, as in the sultry days of summer, -- resounds, as it were, from the hazy sky as a roof, -- a more confined and . . . domestic sound echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)

Observe the poplar's swollen buds and the brightness of the willow's bark. See February 24, 1855 ("The brightening of the willows or of osiers, —that is a season in the spring, showing that the dormant sap is awakened. . . . You will often fancy that they look brighter before the spring has come, and when there has been no change in them.”)

Drifting snow, blue sky.

February 16. 

This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. The sky is a much fairer and undimmed blue than usual. The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes. 

I see the steam-like snow-dust curling up and careering along over the fields. As I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west, lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind.

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.

Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1852

Clear, bright air, undimmed blue sky. See January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! "); February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds")

I see the steam-like snow-dust . . . like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind. See February 9, 1855 ("The snow is so light and dry that it rises like spray or foam before the legs of the horses.")

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants. Seee January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . ."); August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing."); February 18, 1860 ("As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.")

Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. Compare February 18, 1852 ("It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science."); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)  [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).]

February 15, 1852 <<<<<                                                                            >>>>> February 17, 1852

Walden road to pond, thence to Cliffs.

February 14.

This winter was remarkable for the long continuance of severe cold weather after it had once set in. Latterly, i.e. within a week, we have had crusted snow made by thaw and rain. Now we have the swollen river, and yellow water over the meadow ice.


The slight snow of last night, lodging on the limbs of the oaks, has given them the wintry and cobwebbed appearance that distinguishes them so plainly from the pines.  

The seeds or seed-vessels of wintergreen are conspicuous above the snow.


At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; icicles at once hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock. The melting ice and snow now drips from their points with a slight clinking and lapsing sound. Where the icicles have reached the ground they are like thick pillars or the legs of tables and bed-posts. The shadow of the water flowing and pulsating behind this transparent icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole.


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

icicles . . .hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes . . . See January 11, 1854 ("Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes . . .”)

Ice and bubbles.

February 13.

The rain has diminished the snow and hardened the crust, and made bare ground in many places. A yellow water, a foot or two deep, covers the ice on the meadows, but is not frozen quite hard enough to bear.

 As the river swells, the ice cracks along both sides over the edge of its channel, often defined by willows, and that part of the river rises with the water.

I now sit by the little brook in Conant's meadow, where it falls over an oak rail between some boards that partially dam it, - eight or nine inches. Bubbles on the surface make a coarse foam. These bubbles closely push up and crowd one another, each making haste to expand and burst. It is difficult to count them, they are so restless and burst so soon. In one place this froth had been frozen into the form of little hollow towers larger at top than at bottom, six inches high, and the bubbles are now incessantly rising through and bursting at their top, - overflowing with bubbles.

Deeper bubbles are formed by air being carried down by the force of this little fall and mixed with the water. These rise up further down and are flattened against the transparent ice, through which they appear like coins poured out of a miser's pot, hesitating at first which way to troop. Coins of all sizes from a pin-head to a dollar, the coin-like bubbles of the brook.


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

As the river swells, the ice cracks along both sides over the edge of its channel, . . . and that part of the river rises with the water. See February 1, 1855 ("Apparently the thin recent ice of the night, which connects the main body with the shore, bends and breaks with the rising of the mass, especially in the morning, under the influence of the sun and wind, and the water establishes itself at a new level.”)

How the light gets in.

Walking to work, cutting lots near the library, something in the corner of my eye draws my attention. I look in time see myself disappear around the back of the building. It is uncanny to see yourself so, through a fracture in the universe. There is no use following. I disappeared yesterday walking to work. 


There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.


Zphx 20120210

Climate change

February 11.

February 11, 2019

It now rains, - a drizzling rain mixed with mist, which ever and anon fills the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet.

Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate - at least that the snows are less deep than formerly - is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1852

It now rains. See February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on"); February 8, 1853 ("The warm rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice, the color of the water, only three or four inches thick"); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice."); February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow."); February 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night"); February 8, 1857 ("The last two days have been misty or rainy without sun.")

The snows are less deep than formerly. Compare February 11, 1856 ("Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter.”)

February 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 11

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 ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt520211

The inverted head experiment

February 9.

At 9 A. M. up river to Fair Haven Pond. 

This is our month of the crusted snow. Was this the Indians? I get over the half-buried fences at a stride, and the drifts slope up to the tops of the walls on each side. The crust is melted on the south slopes and lets me in, or where the sun has been reflected (yesterday) from a wood-side and rotted it, but the least inclination to the north is evidence of a hard surface. On the meadows and in level open fields away from the reflection of pines and oak leaves, it will generally bear.

Met Sudbury Haines on the river before the Cliffs , come a - fishing . Wearing an old coat, much patched, with many colors . . . He tells me that he caught three pickerel here the other day that weighed seven pounds all together. 

It is the old story. The fisherman is a natural story-teller. No man's imagination plays more pranks than his, while he is tending his reels and trotting from one to another, or watching his cork in summer. He is ever waiting for the sky to fall. He has sent out a venture. He has a ticket in the lottery of fate, and who knows what it may draw? He ever expects to catch a bigger fish yet. 

He is the most patient and believing of men. Who else will stand so long in wet places? When the haymaker runs to shelter, he takes down his pole and bends his steps to the river, glad to have a leisure day. He is more like an inhabitant of nature. The weather concerns him. He is an observer of her phenomena. 

February 9, 2022

The inverted head experiment

A man goes to the end of his garden, inverts his head, and does not know his own cottage. The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant.

The state of the atmosphere is continually varying. If we incline our heads never so little, the most familiar things begin to put on some new aspect. If we invert our heads completely our wood-lot appears far off. But if I invert my head this morning and look at the woods in the horizon, they do not look so far off as in the afternoon. The prospect is a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations.

Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 9, 1852

If we invert our heads completely our wood-lot appears far off. But if I invert my head this morning and look at the woods in the horizon, they do not look so far off as in the afternoon. The prospect is a constantly varying mirage. See 1850 ("What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape ?");  August 8, 1851 ("Turning away from the sun, we get this enchanting view, as when a man looks at the landscape with inverted head ."); January 25, 1852 ("when I invert my head and look at the woods down the stream, I seem to see every stem and twig with beautiful distinctness, the fine tops of the trees relieved against the sky.”); March 4, 1852 ("I look between my legs up the river across Fair Haven. The landscape thus at this season is a plain white field hence to the horizon.");  January 8, 1854 ("Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . .I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head."); April 20, 1854 (" I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.");  September 18, 1858 ("Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. . . .And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment.") See Also December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment.

The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.. See September 10, 1851 ("As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I see how differently they look at different hours of the day."); February 5, 1852 ("The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night.”); July 14, 1851 ("If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later or earlier in the evening, it is as good as a different one."); July 23, 1851("The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth."); February 18, 1860 ("Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts.")

February 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 9

Lichens in the shade

and an owl behind sitting

in the bright sunlight.

February 9, 2022

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt520902

The ease of winter walking

February 8. 

In this winter I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new. 

No difference between rivers, ponds, and fields.

Night before last,

our first rain 

for a long time;

this afternoon,

the first crust 

to walk on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1852

I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new. see January 24, 1856 ("When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! So we soar.")

Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on. February 8, 1853 ("The warm rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice"); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice"); February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees,  . . .and thin crust over all the snow. At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points . . .The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks.."); February 8, 1857 ("The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. ") February 8, 1858 ("The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden . . .Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring."); February 8, 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring. ")

Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on.

 It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new. 

Is not all music a hum more or less divine? I hear something new at every telegraph - post.

I have not got out of hearing of one before I hear a new harp. 

Thoughts of different dates will not cohere. 

Carried a new cloak to Johnny Riordan.

I found that the shanty was warmed by the simple social relations of the Irish.

On Sunday they come from the town and stand in the doorway and so keep out the cold.

One is not cold among his brothers and sisters.

What if there is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the heart! 

These Irish are not succeeding so ill after all.

The little boy goes to the primary school and proves a for ward boy there, and the mother's brother , whohas let himself in the village, tells me that he takes the Flag of our Union ( if that is the paper edited by an Irish man ).

It is musical news to hear that Johnny does not love to be kept at home from school in deep snows. 

In this winter often no apparent difference between rivers, ponds  and fields.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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 ©  2009-2023

Round by C. Miles's place.

February 6.

It is still thawy. A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing.

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1852

A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing. See  November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist..."); April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."); January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 7, 1856  ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); February 7, 1859 ("Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture.")

February  6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6

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

I am detained to contemplate Hubbard's hillside.

February 5.

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day.

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night. The oaks bare of leaves on Hubbard's hillside are now a light gray in the sun, and their boughs, seen against the pines behind, are a very agreeable maze.

The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens. The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1852

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day. See February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day."); January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me."); May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.")

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night. See September 10, 1851 ("As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I see how differently they look at different hours of the day."); February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.”) See also January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue."); January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter."); February 7, 1856 (" During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

Feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually. . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.") and note to December 8, 1855 ("the silvery sheen . . . from masses of white pine needles.")

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. See  January 27, 1858 ("Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward."); March 8, 1859 ("Such a day as this, I. . . explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing"); see also Walden  ("Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet, I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.")

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains. See December 16, 1859 ("[Gerard] describes according to his natural delight in the plants. It is a man's knowledge added to a child's keen joy who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends.")

The sameness of now that is always new.

Reading my journal from a year ago I am reminded  of Thoreau's statement that  a man tracks himself through life; that one can understand only what one already knows --  and can know only what one ceases to  understand: I  have stumbled on something i had forgotten. 

It is a reference to the "sameness of now."   An opaque but  obviously important  discussion of the nature of the present moment. The sameness of now / the strangeness of now.  Sheep. 

Thoreau deliberately getting lost.  Turn around with eyes closed he says and, lost, one is confronted with the vastness - and otherness- of nature.

HDT 160 years ago today is out in the sun looking at the changing colors light and shade of pine needles on a breezy warm winter day.

To get out and observe for myself.  

Zphx, 20120204

But first here are the quotes:

A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.

            Journal, January 5, 1860

I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. 
        Journal November 21, 1850

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see.   
         Journal, February 14, 1851

It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.

Journal, March 29, 1853

... a mode of knowledge that consists of the chronic presence of change, chronic loss-- loss of chronology-- all within the sameness of every now, repetition of the now, the sameness of now that is always new.

Una Chaudhuri,Land/scape/theater, p366

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.
EB White