Another rather warm morning, still more overcast than yesterday’s. There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails, — slight leaves or feathers, a quarter to a half inch long by an eighth wide, standing out around the slightest core. I think it is owing to the warmer nights. At nine last evening and at nine this morning, the thermometer stood at 20°. These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like.
February 14, 2024
Aunt Louisa says that her cousin Nahum Jones, son to that Nathan whom her mother and sisters visited with her down east, carried a cat to the West Indies, sold his vessel there; and though the same vessel did not return, and he came back in another vessel without the cat, the cat got home to Gouldsboro somehow, unaccountably, about the same time that he did. Captain Woodard told her that he carried the same cat three times round the world.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1855
Another leaf or feather frost . . . These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like. See February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”); See also January 1, 1853 ("These ghost-like trees make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen . . . The fine grasses and shrubs in the meadow rise to meet and mingle with the drooping willows, and the whole make an indistinct impression like a mist, and between this the road runs toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in the distance, — toward spirit-land."); January 6, 1853 ("This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost."); December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. "); Compare February 16, 1854 ("By this time in the winter I do not look for those clear, sparkling mornings and delicate leaf frosts, which, methinks, occur earlier in the winter, as if the air of winter was somewhat tarnished and debauched, — had lost its virgin purity. ")
February 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 14
And another leaf
or feather frost on the trees –
handsome ghosts of trees.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Another leaf or feather frost
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550214
No comments:
Post a Comment