A Book of the Seasons: January 31.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 31

Clear mild winter day.

The sun's warmth now prevails and

is felt on the back.

January 31, 1854

Clear mild winter day,

the warmth of the sun prevails.

Snow softens and melts.

January 31, 1854

A  southerly wind

and now the warmth of the sun

is felt on the back.

January 31, 1854

But I do not melt; 

there is no thaw in me; 

I am bound out still.

January 31, 1854

A small pitch pine with

more than a hundred cones of

different ages.

January 31, 1860

It is a beautiful clear and mild winter day. January 31, 1854

A clear, cold, beautiful day  January 31, 1855 

The wind is more southerly, and now the warmth of the sun prevails, and is felt on the back. The snow softens and melts.  January 31, 1854

the sun is ready to do his part, and let the wind be right, and it will be warm and pleasant-like, at least now that the sun runs so high a course. January 31, 1854

We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. There is a freshet which carries away dams of accumulated ice.  January 31, 1854

But I do not melt; there is no thaw in me; I am bound out still. January 31, 1854

Saw one faint tinge of red on red ice pond-hole, six inches over. January 31, 1858

*****

A Book of the Seasons, The Pitch Pine in Winter

*****

 

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 © 2009-2021

A new leaf of Nature’s Album.

January 31.

P. M. —Up North Branch. 

There are a few inches of light snow on top of the little, hard and crusted, that I walked on here last, above the snow ice. The old tracks are blotted out, and new and fresher ones are to be discerned. It is a tabula rasa. 

These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album. At first you detect no track of beast or bird, and Nature looks more than commonly silent and blank. You doubt if anything has been abroad, though the snow fell three days ago, but ere long the track of a squirrel is seen making to or from the base of a tree, or the hole where he dug for acorns, and the shells he dropped on the snow around that stump. 

The wind of yesterday has shaken down countless oak leaves, which have been driven hurry-scurry over this smooth and delicate and unspotted surface, and now there is hardly a square foot which does not show some faint trace of them. They still spot the snow thickly in many places, though few can be traced to their lairs. 

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. 

The fall of these withered leaves after each rude blast, so clean and dry that they do not soil the snow, is a phenomenon quite in harmony with the winter.

Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. Here is where one has come down the bank and hopped meanderingly across the river. Another an inch and a quarter wide by five, six, or seven apart from centre to centre. 

The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side.

But what track is this, just under the bank? 

It must be a bird, which at last struck the snow with its wings and took to flight. There are but four hops in all, and then it ends, though there is nothing near enough for it to hop upon from the snow. The form of the foot is somewhat like that of a squirrel, though only the outline is distinguished. The foot is about two inches long, and it about two inches from outside of one foot to outside of the other. Sixteen inches from hop to hop, the rest in proportion. Looking narrowly, I see where one wing struck the bank ten feet ahead as it passed. A quarter of a mile down-stream it occurs again, and near by still less of a track, but marks as if it had pecked in the snow.

Could it be the track of a crow with its toes unusually close together? Or was it an owl? [Probably a crow. Vide Feb. 1st. Hardly a doubt of it.]   

Some creature has been eating elm blossom-buds and dropping them over the snow. 

See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1856

More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ... See January 24, 1856 (“A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill.”); February 3, 1856 ("See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.")

The track of a crow with its toes unusually close together.  See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow, the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably,"); January 24, 1856 (“The tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart.”);  February 1, 1856 ("The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons: January 30.

January 30.

Winter was made to

concentrate and harden the

kernel of man's brain.

January 30, 1854

Hooting of an owl!

full round sonorous – waking

echoes of the wood. 

January 30, 1859

Walking knee-deep in 

these perfect six-rayed crystals

fallen from the sky.

January 30, 1860 

Crystalline mirrors

on the surface of the snow --

Beauty surrounds us!

January 30, 1860

January 30, 2019

Said the raccoon made a track very much like a young child’s foot. He had often seen it in the mud of a ditch. January 30, 1855

Hooting of an owl! It is not shrill and sharp like the scream of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, waking the echoes of the wood.  January 30, 1859

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 30, 1860

The crow, flying high, touches the tympanum of the sky for us, and reveals the tone of it. January 30, 1860

He informs me that Nature is in the tenderest mood possible, and I hear the very flutterings of her heart. January 30, 1860

Crows have singular wild and suspicious ways.January 30, 1860

 You will [see] a couple flying high, as if about their business, but lo, they turn and circle and caw over your head again and again for a mile; and this is their business, — as if a mile and an afternoon were nothing for them to throw away. January 30, 1860

The seasons were not made in vain. It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was not given to us for no purpose. January 30, 1854


We are tasked to find out and appropriate all the nutriment it yields. January 30, 1854

The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. January 30, 1854


This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. January 30, 1854


The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. January 30, 1854


Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars. January 30, 1854

I knew a crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday and, taking up a hymn-book, remarked:

"We have had a good fall for getting in corn and potatoes. Let us sing Winter."

So I say, "Let us sing winter." January 30, 1854

What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season? January 30, 1854

Yesterday's slight snow is all gone, leaving the ice, old snow, and bare ground; and as I walk up the river side, there is a brilliant sheen from the wet ice toward the sun, instead of the crystalline rainbow of yesterday. January 30, 1860

Think of that (of yesterday), — to have constantly before you, receding as fast as you advance, a bow formed of a myriad crystalline mirrors on the surface of the snow! ! What miracles, what beauty surrounds us! January 30, 1860

Then, another day, to do all your walking knee-deep in perfect six-rayed crystals of surpassing beauty but of ephemeral duration, which have fallen from the sky. January 30, 1860

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

The snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads.

January 30.

8 A. M. -- It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot.  Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.

As I walked above the old stone bridge on the 27th, I saw where the river had recently been open under the wooded bank on the west side; and recent sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory, and also the ends of saplings and limbs of trees which had been bent down by the ice, were frozen in. In some places some water stood above the ice, and as I stood there, I saw and heard it gurgle up through a crevice and spread over the ice. This was the influence of Loring’s Brook, far above.

P. M. -- Measure to see what difference there is in the depth of the snow . . .

. . .  The Andromeda calyculata is now quite covered, and I walk on the crust over an almost uninterrupted plain there; only a few blueberries and last, I break through. It is so light beneath that the crust breaks there in great cakes under my feet, and immediately falls about a foot, making a great hole, so that once pushing my way through — for regularly stepping is out of the question in the weak places —makes a pretty good path. 

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. It repeatedly hops to a bunch of berries, takes one, and, hopping to a more horizontal twig, places it under one foot and hammers at it with its bill. The snow is strewn with the berries under its foot, but I can see no shells of the fruit. Perhaps it clears off the crimson only. Some of the bunches are very large and quite upright there still. 

Again, I suspect that on meadows the snow is not so deep and has a firmer crust. In an ordinary storm the depth of the snow will be affected by a wood twenty or more rods distant, or as far as the wood is a fence.

There is a strong wind this afternoon from northwest, and the snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads. On the railroad causeway it lies in perfectly straight and regular ridges a few feet apart, northwest and southeast. It is dry and scaly, like coarse bran. Now that there is so much snow, it slopes up to the tops of the walls on both sides. 

What a difference between life in the city and in the country at present, — between walking in Washington Street, threading your way between countless sledges and travellers, over the discolored snow, and crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1856

It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything. See December 14, 1859 (" . . . Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it.")
 
sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory. . . .   See “Pail-stuff"

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. See Janaury 30, 1854("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day,.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter 

What a solemn silence reigns here! See January 21, 1853 ("The silence rings; it is musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible."); August 11, 1853 ("What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, . . ..The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence."); August 2, 1854 ("As I go up the hill, surrounded by its shadow, while the sun is setting, I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening, . . . .It is the first silence I have heard for a month")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

A Book of the Seasons: January 29

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 29

Snow collects upon

the pitch pine plumes in the form

of a pineapple. 

January 29, 1841

The stinging cold bites

my ears and face -- but the stars

shine all the brighter.

January 30, 1854

The rainbow-colored 

reflections from myriad

crystals of the snow. 

January 29, 1860 

January 29, 2018

A very cold morning. Thermometer, or mercury, 18° below zero. January 29, 1854

Not cold. Sun comes out at noon. January 29, 1855

It is considerably colder. January 29, 1858

Colder than before, and not a cloud in the sky to-day. January 29, 1860

Half an inch or more of snow fell last night, the ground being half bare before. It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped.  January 29, 1860

As usual, I now see, walking on the river and river-meadow ice, thus thinly covered with the fresh snow, that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, i. e., as I walk toward the sun, — always a little in advance of me, of course, angle of reflection being equal to that of incidence.  January 29, 1860

The rainbow-colored
reflections from myriad
crystals of the snow.
January 29, 1860

Since the 13th there has been at no time less than one foot on a level in open fields. January 29, 1856

The snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter. January 29, 1856

The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple.  January 29, 1841

Tonight I feel it stinging cold as I come up the street at 9 o'clock; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter. January 29, 1854

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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

The depth of the snow.

January 29.

P. M. — Measure the snow in the same places measured the 16th and 23d, having had, except yesterday, fair weather and no thaw.

As I measured oftener west than east of railroad, the snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter. Yet it has apparently been settling a little the last six days. In the woods, apparently, it has also been settling, but it is not so deep there as on the 16th, because it settled rapidly soon after that date. It is deeper east of railroad, evidently because it lies behind it like a wall, though I measure from six to ten or twelve rods off on that side. Since the 13th there has been at no time less than one foot on a level in open fields. 

It is interesting to see near the sources, even of small streams or brooks, which now flow through an open country, perhaps shrunken in their volume, the traces of ancient mills, which have devoured the primitive forest, the earthen dams and old sluiceways, and ditches and banks for obtaining a supply of water. These relics of a more primitive period are still frequent in our midst. Such, too, probably, has been the history of the most thickly settled and cleared countries of Europe. The saw-miller is neighbor and successor to the Indian. 

It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic “no-see-em.” 

How imperfect a notion have we commonly of what was the actual condition of the place where we dwell, three centuries ago!

For the most part the farmers have not been able to get into the woods for the last fortnight or more, on account of the snow, and some who had not got up their wood before are now put to their trumps, for though it may not be more than eighteen inches deep on a level in sprout-lands, the crust cuts the legs of the cattle, and the occasional drifts are impassable.

Sometimes, with two yoke of oxen and a horse attached to the sled, the farmer attempts to break his way into his lot, one driving while another walks before with a shovel, treading and making a path for the horse, but they must take off the cattle at last and turn the sled with their hands. 

Miss Minott has been obliged to have some of her locusts about the house cut down. She remembers when the whole top of the elm north of the road close to Dr. Heywood’s broke off, —when she was a little girl. It must have been there before 1800.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1856

The snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter.   See February 12, 1856 ("From January 6th to January 13th, not less than a foot of snow on a level in open land, and from January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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

A Book of the Seasons: January 28.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 28

See three ducks sailing

in the river this afternoon –

black with white on wings.

January 28, 1853

The sun-sparkles where

the river is open are

cheerful to behold.

January 28, 1853 

Cheerful to behold 

the sun-sparkles these coldest 

days of the winter. 

January 28, 1853 

A song sparrow sits 

in the midst of snow on our 

wood-pile in the yard.

January 28, 1857

About Brister's Spring

the ferns and the grass

are still quite green.

January 28, 1852

White pine. Red pine.
January 28, 2018

Though somewhat cool, it has been remarkably pleasant to-day, and the sun-sparkles where the river is open are very cheerful to behold. January 28, 1853


See three ducks sailing in the river behind Prichard's this afternoon, black with white on wings, though these two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed. January 28, 1853

Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard. January 28, 1857

About Brister's Spring the ferns, which have been covered with snow, and the grass are still quite green. January 28, 1852

The skunk-cabbage in the water is already pushed up, and I find the pinkish head of flowers within its spathe bigger than a pea. January 28, 1852

These warmer days the woodchopper finds that the wood cuts easier than when it had the frost in its sap-wood, though it does not split so readily. January 28, 1852

Thus every change in the weather has its influence on him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar way. January 28, 1852

Coming through the village at 11 P.M., the sky is completely overcast, and the (perhaps thin) clouds are very distinctly pink or reddish, somewhat as if reflecting a distant fire, but this phenomenon is universal all round and overhead. I suspect there is a red aurora borealis behind. January 28, 1858

January 28, 2018

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,    by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow 

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

January 28, 2018

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 © 2009-2016

50, 51 54, 60

Snow all day.

January 28.

January 28, 2016

Snows all day, about two inches falling. They say it snowed about the same all yesterday in New York. 

Clears up at night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1856

A Book of the Seasons: January 27

I do not know but thoughts written down in a journal

 might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than

 if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.

 Henry Thoreau, January 27, 1852

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 27

A wild man is a

willed man – a man of hope and

of the future tense.

January 27, 1853

The fates are wild, for 

they will – and the Almighty 

is wild above all. 

January 27, 1853

I have some good friends

who neither care what I think 

nor mind what I say. 

(The greatest compliment 

that was ever paid me was when 

one asked me what I thought, 

and attended to my answer.)

January 27, 1854

Followed a fox track

to its den under a rock –

sat here many times.

January 27, 1855

I remember or

anticipate one of those

warm spring rain-storms

when the wind is south

the cladonia lichens

swollen and lusty

you wander wet to 

the skin indefinitely

in a serene rain

sit on moss-clad rocks

and stumps sit long at a time

still and have your thoughts –

the part of you that

is wettest is fullest of

life like the lichens

and when the rain comes 

thicker and faster you are

more comfortable 

you can not go home –

you stay and sit in the rain

free as the sparrow

you glide along the

distant wood-side full of joy

and expectation

wind blows and warms you

the mist drives and clears your sight

eternal rain falls –

drip, drip, drip – sitting 

there by the edge of the

wood that April day.

Time never passes 

so quickly as when I am 

writing down my thoughts.

January 27, 1858

January 27, 1858

The part of you that

is wettest is fullest of 

life — like the lichens. 

January 27, 1858

JANUARY 27, 2017

The lodging snow of January 13th, just a fortnight ago, still adheres in deep and conspicuous ridges to large exposed trees, too stubborn to be shaken by the wind, showing from which side the storm came.  January 27, 1856

As I came home day before yesterday, over the railroad causeway, at sunset, the sky was overcast, but beneath the edge of the cloud, far in the west, was a narrow stripe of clear amber sky coextensive with the horizon, which reached no higher than the top of Wachusett. I wished to know how far off the cloud was by comparing it with the mountain. It had somewhat the appearance of resting on the mountain, concealing a part of its summit. I did not suppose it did, because the clouds over my head were too high for that, but when I turned my head I saw the whole outline of the mountain distinctly. I could not tell how far the edge of the cloud was beyond it, but I think it likely that that amber light came to me through a low narrow skylight, the upper sash of whose frame was forty miles distant. The amount of it is that I saw a cloud more distant than the mountain. January 27, 1858

 

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust that bears where the snow is very shallow, but lets you through to water in many places on the meadow. January 27, 1855

Trench says a wild man is a willed man.  January 27, 1853

Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. January 27, 1853

The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all. January 27, 1853

What are our fields but felds or felled woods. They bear a more recent name than the woods, suggesting that previously the earth was covered with woods. Always in the new country a field is a clearing.  January 27, 1853

I have just sawed a wheel an inch and three quarters thick off the end of (apparently) a stick of red oak in my pile. I count twenty-nine rings, and about the same number of rings, or divisions of some kind, with more or less distinctness, in the bark, which is about a quarter of an inch thick.  January 27, 1856

Thawing a little at last. Thermometer 35°.  January 27, 1857

Fair and hardly a cloud to be seen. Thermometer 28. (But it is overcast from the northwest before sun set.)  January 27, 1860

Have we not more finely divided clouds in winter than in summer? . . . What hieroglyphics in the winter sky! January 27, 1860

Such clouds as the above are the very thin advance-guard of the cloud behind. It soon comes on more densely from the northwest, and darkens all. January 27, 1860

See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. January 7, 1860

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance.  January 27, 1854

The river ice inclines to a more opaque white.  January 27, 1854

[The river] is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. January 27, 1856  

I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. It was made last night, after the sleet and probably the rain was over, before it froze; it must have been at midnight or after. The tracks are commonly ten or twelve inches apart and each one and three quarters or two inches wide. Some times there is a longer interval and two feet fell nearer together, as if in a canter. Their tracks are larger than you would expect, as large as those of a much heavier dog, I should think. It doubles directly on its track in one place for a rod or two, then goes up the north end of the Cliff where it is low and went along southward just on its edge, ascending gradually. In one place it made water like a dog, and I perceive the peculiar rank fox odor without stooping. It did not wind round the prominent rocks, but leaped upon them as if to reconnoitre. Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock which seems to lie loose on the top of the ledge and about two feet from the nearest track. By stooping it had probably squeezed under this and passed into its den beneath. I can find no track leading from it. What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning! With what relish they must relate their midnight adventures to one another there in their dens by day, if they have society! I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.  January 27, 1855

 I see some of those little cells, perhaps, of a wasp or bee, made of clay or clayey mud. It suggests that these insects were the first potters. They look somewhat like small stone jugs. January 27, 1859

As I go along the edge of Hubbard's Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun — and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy!  January 27, 1860

It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring, when the earth is just laid bare, the wind is south, and the cladonia lichens are swollen and lusty with moisture

•  your foot sinking into them and pressing the water out as from a sponge, and the sandy places also are drinking it in. 
• You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat, wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of migrating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. 
• A rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggesting fairer weather than was ever seen. . . . 
• You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind. 
• The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. 
• You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. 
• You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life. 
• . .. And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and 
• you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, sinking at each step deep into the thawing earth, gladly breaking through the gray rotting ice. 
• The dullest sounds seem sweetly modulated by the air. 
• You leave your tracks in fields of spring rye, scaring the fox-colored sparrows along the wood-sides. 
• You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. 
• You glide along the distant wood-side, full of joy and expectation, seeing nothing but beauty, hearing nothing but music, as free as the fox-colored sparrow. . .

January 27, 1858

These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. January 27, 1860

Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. . . . They perch on the slender twigs which are beaded with cones, and swing and teeter there while they perseveringly peck at them. January 27, 1860

I walk in the woods, where the snow is not so deep, part having been caught in the trees and dissipated in the air, and a part melted by the warmth of the wood and the reflection. January 27, 1852

When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open. January 27, 1860

No bright sunset to-night. What fine and pure reds we see in the sunset sky! Yet earth is not ransacked for dye-stuffs. It is all accomplished by the sunlight on vapor at the right angle, and the sunset sky is constant if you are at the right angle. The sunset sky is sometimes more northerly, sometimes more southerly.  January 27, 1860

I saw one the other day occupying only the south horizon, but very fine, and reaching more than half-way to the zenith from west to east. This may either be for want of clouds or from excess of them on certain sides.  January 27, 1860

10 p. m. — Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at. January 27, 1857

The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.~ January 27, 1857

Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward. January 27, 1858

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Larch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Walden ("Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers.)
November 11, 1858 ("Certain localities are thus distinguished. And they retain this peculiarity permanently, unless it depends on a wood which may be cut. Thousands of years hence this may still be the warmest and sunniest spot in the spring and fall.")
December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . .Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain. ")
December 19, 1856 ("[T]he ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep.")
January 7, 1857 ("But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,. . . I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine")

January 8, 1860 ("Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? ]")

January 9, 1852 (Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water?)
January 13, 1857 (“I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.”)
January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?).");
January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown)
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")
January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse")
January 26, 1852 (About 2 o'clock P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon , there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens , but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast .")

January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.")
January 30, 1854 (Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers);
February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.”);
February 5, 1854 ("I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.”)
February 29, 1852 (The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color);
March 8, 1859 ("Such a day as this, I. . . explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing")
May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, . . .");
June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home")

January 27, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

January 26  <<<<<<<<      January 27   >>>>>>>>  January 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

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

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 © 2009-2021