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| January 25, 2015 |
It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves.
I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice. It is covered with snow. I push it away with my hands and feet.
At first I detect no rose tint, and suspect it may have disappeared, —faded or bleached out,—or it was a dream. At length I detect a faint tinge; I cut down a young white oak and sweep bare a larger space; I then cut out a cake.
The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope, as if it had dried on. Little balloons, with some old paint almost sealed off their spheres. It has no beauty nor brightness thus seen, no more than brick-dust.
And this it is which gave the ice so delicate a tinge, seen through that inch of clear white ice. What is it? Can it be blood?
For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1855
Rose-colored ice. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...")
It is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in. See January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.") See also January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”); January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; the days are sensibly longer.
The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope, as if it had dried on. Little balloons, with some old paint almost sealed off their spheres. It has no beauty nor brightness thus seen, no more than brick-dust.
And this it is which gave the ice so delicate a tinge, seen through that inch of clear white ice. What is it? Can it be blood?
For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1855
Rose-colored ice. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...")
It is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in. See January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.") See also January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”); January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; the days are sensibly longer.
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