A fog so thick.

February 16 

A thick fog without rain. 

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. 

In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak.  

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond. 

Rattlesnake plantain. January 22, 2017

The ground is more than half bare, especially in open fields and level evergreen woods. It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor, undimmed by the snow, — the Wintergreen, the great leaved pyrola, the shin-leaf, the rattlesnake-plantain, and the lycopodiums. I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen. 

It is pleasant to see elsewhere, in fields and on banks, so many green radical leaves only half killed by the winter.

I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs. They are white with them, some half an inch long and stout in proportion. Perhaps they are apple twigs. 

February 17, 2013

The bark ( and bud, if there was any ) has been entirely digested, leaving the bare, white, hard wood of the twig. Some of the ends of apple twigs looked as if they had been bitten off. It is surprising what a quantity of this wood they swallow with their buds. 

What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs! Where apple buds are just freshly bitten off they do not seem to have taken so much twig with them. 

The drooping oak leaves show more red amid the pines this wet day, - agreeably so, — and I feel as if I stood a little nearer to the heart of nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1855

Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. See February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical."); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”); April 9, 1853 ("The sound of the laborers' striking the iron rails of the railroad with their sledges, . . . echoing along between the earth and the low heavens.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:  The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. See August 17, 1852 ("Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods."); December 3, 1856 ("The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor,  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

The leavings of the partridges. See February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow. . .and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.");  January 31, 1854 ("Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and between the stems of trees. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 16

February 15, 1855 <<<<<                                                                          >>>>> February 17, 1855

The fog is so thick

we cannot see the engine

almost upon us.

My voice is distinct

under the pines draped with mist –

you hear yourself speak.

Oak leaves show more red

 amid the pines this wet day –

 agreeably so. 

And I feel as if 

I stood a little nearer –

 the heart of nature.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A fog so thick.

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 © 2009-2025

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