Muddy, wet, and slippery.

January 13.

Warm and wet, with rain-threatening clouds drifting from southwest. Muddy, wet, and slippery. 

Surprised to see oak balls on a red oak. 

Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel. The successive grooves made by his teeth while probably he bent it down were quite distinct. The woody stem was a quarter of an inch thick, and I counted eight strokes of his chisel.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1855

A pitch pine cone cut off by a squirrel. See March 3, 1855 (“A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. . . . Most fallen pitch pine cones show the marks of squirrels’ teeth, showing they were cut off.”); January 8, 1856 (“All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open.”); January 22, 1856 (“At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead.”)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 13

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