Rainbow-tinted clouds forming and dispersing this clear cold afternoon.

January 9

January 9, 2024

Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon, we see to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot. 

Is the winter then such a twilight? This is about an hour and a half before sunset. 

Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 9, 1854

Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon. See December 30, 1855 ("I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer."); January 13, 1852 ("Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. . . .I see. . .in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write."); January 22, 1852 ("One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown."); January 24, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown . . . . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely.); February 24, 1860 ("Some [clouds ]most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow.").

We see to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot. Is the winter then such a twilight? See September 18, 1858 ("The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. "); November 2, 1853 ("The evening star is now very bright; and is that Jupiter near it?"); December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”) December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red."); December 27, 1853("The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun."); January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”); January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day"); May 8, 1852 ("Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visible")

Snow-fleas.  See where, methinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen."); January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.")  See also January 5, 1854( "Still thaws. This afternoon (as probably yesterday), it being warm and thawing, though fair, the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came.");J anuary 6, 1854( " I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before. Do they go into the snow at night?"); January 7, 1851("The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw . . . I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow dampI."); January 7, 1860 ("A thaw begins, with a southerly wind . . . As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., And also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

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

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

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