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

Crossing Walden Pond –

spotless snow, blue shadows and

a solemn silence.

January 30, 1856

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






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! January 30, 1856

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

Nature's tender mood,

the flutterings of her heart.

The crow flying high.

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