Sunrise from the mountain-top

October 20. 

October 20, 2014

See the sun rise from the mountain-top. This is the time to look westward. All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.

It was worth the while to see westward the countless hills and fields now white with frost. A little white fog marked the site of many a lake and the course of the Nashua, and in the east horizon the great pond had its own fog mark in a long, low bank of cloud. 

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State, its apex resting on the Green or Hoosac Mountains, appearing as a deep-blue section of a cone there. It rapidly contracted, and its apex approached the mountain itself, and when about three miles distant the whole conical shadow was very distinct. 

The shadow of the mountain makes some minutes’ difference in the time of sunrise to the inhabitants of Hubbardston, within a few miles west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1854

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State. See October 19, 1857 ("Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon"); June 3, 1858 ("It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short.")