What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day, from the aspect it wore when you were at its base, or generally, as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.
I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1854
What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day. See January 26, 1860 ("Though you walk every day, you do not foresee the kind of walking you will have the next day");May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has.") See also Farewell, my friend
I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas. See February 11, 1854 ("Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip.")
Jan. 10. I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state. How much food they must afford to small birds, – chickadees, etc.
The snow went off remarkably fast in the thaw before the 7th , but it is still deep , lying light in swamps and sprout - lands , somewhat hollow beneath . The thaw produced those yellowish pools in hollows in the fields , where water never stands else , and now perhaps there is a bottom of snow ; and now for the last three days they have afforded good sliding . You got a start by running over the snow - crust . In one place , where the depression was inconsiderable but more extensive than usual , I found that it was mere glazed snow on which I slid , it having rapidly frozen dry .
The sportsmen chose the late thaw to go after quails . They come out at such times to pick the horse - dung in the roads , and can be traced thence to their haunts .
When we were walking last evening , Tappan admired the soft rippling of the Assabet under Tarbell's bank . One could have lain all night under the oaks there listening to it . Westward forty rods , the surface of the stream reflected a silvery whiteness , but gradually darkened thence eastward , till beneath us it was almost quite black .
What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day , as the mountain chain differs in appearance , looking back the next day , from the aspect it wore when you were at its base , or generally , as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance . ·
With Tappan , his speech is frequently so frugal and reserved , in monosyllables not fairly uttered clear of his thought , that I doubt if he did not cough merely , or let it pass for such , instead of asking what he said or meant , for fear it might turn out that he coughed merely .
Channing showed me last night on a map where , as he said , he “ used to walk ” in Rome . He was there sixteen days .
I mistook the creaking of a tree in the woods the other day for the scream of a hawk . How numerous the resemblances of the animate to the inanimate !
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
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