The voice of the woods

January 7.

Cold last night; rough walking; snow crusted. 

Now that the snow has lain more than a week, it begins to be spotted and darkened in the woods, with various dry leaves and scales from the trees. The wind and thaw have brought down a fresh crop of dry pine and spruce needles. The little roundish and stemmed scales of the alder catkins spot it thickly. 

The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees. 

I see also the wings of pine seeds, — the seed being gone, — which look exactly like the wings of ants. 

I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, — a voice which we call the owl, — and yet so rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound; is louder than the voice of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily and the owl but few times in our lives.  It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1854

The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees. See January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it”); January 7, 1853 (“Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, — a hawk or dove. The least touch or jar shakes them off, and it is difficult to bring the female catkins home in your pocket. They cover the snow like coarse bran. On breaking the male catkins, I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct, promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so sure a promise or prophecy of spring. These are frozen in December or earlier, — the anthers of spring, filled with their fertilizing dust.”)

Strange that we should hear this sound so often . . . and [see] the owl but few times in our lives. It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes. See December 9, 1856 (“ I do not see the bird more than once in ten years.”) December 19, 1856 (“[it] is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well.”)

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

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