The View from Mt. Misery

April 4. 

April 4, 2015

A fine morning, still and bright, with smooth water and singing of song and tree sparrows and some blackbirds. A nuthatch is heard on the elms, and two ducks fly upward in the sun over the river. 

P. M. — To Clematis Brook via Lee’s. 

A pleasant day, growing warmer; a slight haze. Now the hedges and apple trees are alive with fox colored sparrows, all over the town, and their imperfect strains are occasionally heard. Their clear, fox colored backs are very handsome. I get quite near to them. 

Stand quite near to what I call a hairy woodpecker -- but, seeing the downy afterward, I am in doubt about it. Its body certainly as big as a robin. It is a question of size between the two kinds. The rows of white spots near the end of the wings of the downy remind me of the lacings on the skirts of a soldier’s coat. 

I am surprised to find the pond, i. e. Fair Haven Pond, not yet fully open. There is a large mass of ice in the eastern bay, which will hardly melt to morrow. 

It is a fine air, but more than tempered by the snow in the northwest. All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue. A gull is circling round Fair Haven Pond, seen white against the woods and hillsides, looking as if it would dive for a fish every moment, and occasionally resting on the ice. 

The water above Lee’s Bridge is all alive with ducks. There are many flocks of eight or ten together, their black heads and white breasts seen above the water, - more of them than I have seen before this season, - and a gull with its whole body above the water, perhaps standing where it was shallow. 

Not only are the evergreens brighter, but the pools, as that upland one behind Lee’s, the ice as well as snow about their edges being now completely melted, have a peculiarly warm and bright April look, as if ready to be inhabited by frogs. 

I can now put a spade into the garden anywhere. The rain of April 1st and the warmth of to-day have taken out the frost there; but I cannot put a spade into banks by the meadow where there is the least slope to the north.

Returning from Mt. Misery, the pond and river reach presented a fine, warm view. The slight haze, which on a warmer day at this season softens the rough surfaces which the winter has left and fills the copses seemingly with life, — makes them appear to teem with life, — made the landscape remarkably fair. 

It would not be called a warm, but a pleasant day; but the water has crept partly over the meadows, and the broad border of button-bushes, etc., etc., off Wheeler’s cranberry meadow, low and nearly flat, though sloping regularly from an abrupt curving edge on the river side several rods into the meadow till it is submerged — this is isolated, but at this distance and through this air it is remarkably soft and elysian.

There is a remarkable variety in the view at present from this summit. The sun feels as warm as in June on my ear. Half a mile off in front is this elysian water, high over which two wild ducks are winging their rapid flight eastward through the bright air; on each side and beyond, the earth is clad with a warm russet, more pleasing perhaps than green; and far beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1855

In the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun. . . . See April 4, 1852  ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea.");  April 4, 1859 ("When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes  the wind so piercing cold."); February 21, 1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests. . . “)

April 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 4

Snow-covered mountains

in the northwest horizon

glisten in the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The View from Mt. Misery

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt-550404

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April 4, 2014

One of the wonderful things about living here is the mountains in every direction heading up north Main Street you see far into Chittenden and Mount Caramel, Nickwackett Mountain Lead Mine Mountain -- to the west is Mount Herrick and Birdseye-- to the south White Rocks and Dorset Peak-- viewed from West Rutland and N. Grove St. the Green Mountain ranges remarkable Pico Killington Mendon peak seen behind East Mountain and up close in downtown Rutland looking at East Mountain it is a wall sheer wall --to the south Bald Mountain to the north Blue Ridge Mountain-- all these mountains at one time or another living here these 66 years I have climbed.

hey let's go up Tom would say and we did Nickwackett East Mountain Bald Mountain Blue Ridge Killington Pico Mendon Bob’s Slide etc.

I've never been up Herrick though it sits outside my office.

Well what I'm getting around to is when the snow from this cold hard winter finally melted here, even though I've lived here all these years, I am just stunned at looking at the mountains still covered with snow and it is the whiteness and the brightness of the mountains standing all around this valley I cannot describe.

Today reading Henry Thoreau he stands on Mount Misery and looks to the northwest horizon he looks over the near landscape before him and in the"north western horizon my eyes rest on a range of snow covered mountains glistening in the sun.”

Stunning white and bright

mountains all these years standing

around this valley.

April 4, 2015. zphx