Black ice, Hard walking

January 12.

It still rains very finely. The ground is covered with a black glaze, wet and shiny like water, like an invisible armor, a quarter of an inch or more thick. 

Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots. Walking, or wading, very bad.

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. They pressed the snow down four or five inches, consolidated it, and now endure two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1854

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct . . . two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. See January 8, 1860 (" Those [tracks] of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. . . .There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there . . . like white stepping-stones"); January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,").

January 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 12

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