All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees. Is not this what was so blue in the atmosphere yesterday afternoon?
P. M. — To Walden. A very pleasant and warm afternoon. There is a softening of the air and snow. The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance.
I observe no mouse tracks in the fields and meadows. The snow is so light and deep that they have run wholly underneath, and I see in the fields here and there a little hole in the crust where they have come to the surface.
It is very pleasant to stand now in a high pine wood where the sun shines in amid the pines and hemlocks and maples as in a warm apartment.
I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1855
Last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. See February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow, apparently last night. . .They appear to have dived or burrowed into it, then passed along a foot or more underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their heads out .”) See lso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge
A very pleasant and warm afternoon. There is a softening of the air and snow. The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance. See January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs."); January 22, 1860 ("Crows . . . are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow."); January 30, 1860 ("There are certain sounds invariably heard in warm and thawing days in winter, such as the crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and sometimes the gobbling of turkeys."); January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . . There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.");; February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm.");February 7, 1857 ("Another warm day, the snow fast going off. . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m."); February 8, 1857 ("Another very warm day, I should think warmer than the last"); February 8, 1856 ("A clear and a pleasanter and warmer day than we have had for a long time.");. February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks"); February 8. 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.");
February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks."); February 8, 1857 ("The softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter."); this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring."); February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. "); February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. "); February 9, 1854 ("There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. "); February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy."); February 9, 1856 ("Thermometer 30°. This and yesterday comparatively warm weather.");
February 11, 1856 ("I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning. "); February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance."); February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance.");January 22, 1860 (" Crows . . . are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow."); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . .I listen ever for something spring-like in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”);February 18, 1857 ("I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. The very grain of the air seems to have undergone a change "); February 21, 1855 ("I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow."); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow."); February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 12
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
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