The sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth.

January 8.

Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. The streets are washed bare down to the ice. 

It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth.

10 A. M. — To Easterbrooks place 'via old mill site. 

It is now a clear warm and sunny day. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him. Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness.

I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow and in one place a reddish ant about a third of an inch long walking off. In the swamps you see the mouths of squirrels’ holes in the snow, with dirt and leaves and perhaps pine scales about them. 

The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1855

The sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth. See December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

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 ©  2009-2023