Mornings of Creation

January 26. 

A sharp, cutting air. This is a pretty good winter morning, however. Not one of the rarer.

There are from time to time mornings, 

both in summer and winter,
when especially the world seems to begin anew,

mornings beyond which memory need not go, 

for not behind them is yesterday and our past life;

when, as in the morning of a hoar frost,

there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy, 

the world has visibly been recreated in the night.

Mornings of creation, 

I call them. 

In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, 

while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, 
I look back,- 

I look back for the era of this creation, 

not into the night, 

but to a dawn
for which no man ever rose early enough. 

A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation,
where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted.

It is the poet's hour. 

Mornings when men are new-born, 

men who have the seeds of life in them. 

This is not one of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1853

There are from time to time mornings. . .when especially the world seems to begin anew,. See January 23, 1860 ("Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.”); January 7, 1858 ("These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past')

See also, Walden, Where I Lived, And What I Lived For  ("The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.")

Jan. 26. 

Up river on ice 9 A. M., above Pantry,

  A sharp, cutting air,

  This is a pretty good winter  morning, however.  Not one of the rarer,

  There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and win ter, when especially the world seems to begin anew, beyond which memory need not go, for not behind them is yesterday and our past life; when, as in the morning of a hoar frost, there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy, the world has visibly been recreated in the night,

 Mornings of creation, I call them,

  In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back, — I look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough,

  A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted,

  It is the poet's hour,

  Mornings when men are new - born, men who have the seeds of life in them,

  It should be a part of my religion to [ be ] abroad then,

  This is not one of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter day,

 

  It is surprising how much room there is in nature, if a man will follow his proper path.

  In these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on this stretching river, I never meet a walker,

  Passing behind the farmhouses, I see no man out.

  Perhaps I do not meet so many men as I should have met three centuries ago, when the Indian hunter roamed these woods.

  I enjoy the retirement and solitude of an early settler.

  Men have cleared some of the earth, which no doubt is an advantage to the walker.

  I see a man sometimes chopping in the woods, or planting or hoeing in a field, at a distance; and yet there may be a lyceum in the evening, and there  is a book - shop and library in the village, and five times a day I can be whirled to Boston within an hour.

  There is a little thin ice on the meadows.

  I see the bubbles underneath, looking like coin.

  A slight, fine snow has fallen in the night and drifted before the wind.

  I observe that it is so distributed over the ice as [ to ] show equal spaces of bare ice and of snow at pretty regular distances.

  I have seen the same phenomenon on the surface of snow in fields, as if the surface of the snow disposed itself according to the same law that makes waves of water.

  There is now a fine steam - like snow blowing over the ice, which continually lodges here and there, and forthwith a little drift accumulates.

  But why does it lodge at such regular intervals ? I see this fine drifting snow in the air ten or twelve feet high at a distance.

  Perhaps it may have to do with the manner in, or the angle at, which the wind strikes the earth.

  Made a roaring fire on the edge of the meadow at Ware ( ? ) Hill in Sudbury.

  A piece of paper, birch bark, and dry leaves started it, and then we depended on the dead maple twigs and limbs to kindle the large dead wood.

  Green wood will burn better than the damp and rotten wood that lies on the ground.

  We chose a place which afforded a prospect, but it turned out that we looked only at the fire.

  It made all places indifferent.

  The color of the coals, in a glowing heap or seen through the white ashes on the brands, like rubies.

  The shadows, coming and going, of the flame passing over the white ashes of the brands.

  I burnt off my eye lashes when the fire suddenly blazed up with the wind, without knowing that I had come very near it.

  Though  our fuel was dead and rotten wood found in the snow, it made very little smoke, which may have been owing to the state of the atmosphere, clear and cold.

  The sound of the air or steam escaping from a brand, its sighing or dying shriek, fine and sharp as a cambric needle, is the music we hear.

  One half the pleasure is in making the fire.

  But then we should have something to cook by it.

  Collecting fresh fuel from time to time is very pleasant.

  The smoke ever and anon compelled us to move round to the opposite side.

  The sap which flowed from some maple boughs which I cut froze in large drops at the end.

  How came sap there now ?

 It is remarkable that many men will go with eagerness to Walden Pond in the winter to fish for pickerel and yet not seem to care for the landscape.

  Of course it cannot be merely for the pickerel they may catch; there is some adventure in it; but any love of nature which they may feel is certainly very slight and indefinite.

  They call it going a - fishing, and so indeed it is, though, perchance, their natures know better.

  Now I go a - fishing and a - hunting every day, but omit the fish and the game, which are the least important part.

  I have learned to do without them.

  They were indispensable only as long as I was a boy. 

 I am encouraged when I see a dozen villagers drawn to Walden Pond to spend a day in fishing through the ice, and suspect that I have more fellows than I knew, but I am disappointed and surprised to find that they lay all the stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught.

  When we got off at some distance from our fire, returning, we saw a light bluish smoke rising as high as the woods above it, though we had not perceived it before, and thought that no one could have detected us.

  At the fall on Clematis Brook the forms of the ice were admirable.

  The coarse spray had frozen as it fell on the rocks, and formed shell - like crusts over them, with irregular but beautifully clear and sparkling surfaces like egg - shaped diamonds, each being the top of a club - shaped and branched fungus icicle.

  This spray had improved the least core —as the dead and slender rushes drooping over the water - and formed larger icicles about them, shaped exactly like horns, skulls often attached, or roots On similar slight limbs there out from the shore and rocks all fantastic forms, with broader ter bases, from which hung stalactites of ice; and on logs in the water were perfect ice fungi with the of horns.

  were built sorts of and flat of all sizes, under which the water gurgled, flat underneath and hemi spherical.

  A form like this would project over the six inches deep by four or five in and a foot long, held by the but with a slight weed for core.

  could take off the incrustations rocks, water : width rocks, You on the turn Looking down on it them up, and they were perfect shells.

 

 

 

 

**** 

 

The only birds I have seen to-day were some jays, one whistled clearly, — some of my mewing red frontlets, and some familiar chickadees. They are inquisitive, and fly along after the traveller to inspect him.

  In civilized nations there are those answering to the rain - makers and sorcerers of savages,

  Also this office ' is universal among savage tribes.

Bitter, cutting, cold northwest wind on causeway, stiffening the face, freezing the ears.