A Book of the Seasons: January 4.

in addition

to my solitude

frost on the window

Issa

January 4

Snapping cold this night,
frost on windows sparkles as
I pass with a light.
January 4, 1856

Passing with a light 

frost on the windows sparkle –

snapping cold this night.

January 4, 1856

High wind in the night
so cold the snow dries and is
drifted this morning.
January 3-4, 1857

Deep and drifted snow.

Burdock burs adhere to the

lining of my coat.

January 4, 1857

A northeast snow-storm,
or rather a north snow-storm,
very hard to face.
January 4, 1859

Wind shakes the trees and 

great clouds of fine snow, like steam, 

roll down the wood-side.

January 4, 1859

The woods are nightly
thronged with little creatures which
most have never seen.
January 4, 1860

But to my surprise a high wind arose in the night and that and the cold so dried the snow that Jan 4 this morning it is a good deal drifted January 3-4, 1857


It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light January 4, 1856


January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.")

January 4, 2019

January 4.  The small white pines stand thus, the lower branches loaded and bent down the ground, while the upper are commonly free and erect:

January 4, 1859

January 4. I especially feel the necessity of putting myself in communication with nature again, to recover my tone, to withdraw out of the wearying and unprofitable world of affairs. The things I have been doing have but a fleeting and accidental importance, however much men are immersed in them, and yield very little valuable fruit. I would fain have been wading through the woods and fields and conversing with the sane snow. 

Having waded in the very shallowest stream of time, I would now bathe my temples in eternity. I wish again to participate in the serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the river and the woods. 

I thus from time to time break off my connection with eternal truths and go with the shallow stream of human affairs, grinding at the mill of the Philistines; but when my task is done, with never-failing confidence I devote myself to the infinite again. January 4, 1857

I must call that swamp of E. Hubbard's west of the Hunt Pasture, Yellow Birch Swamp.  There are more of those trees than anywhere else in town that I know. How pleasing to stand beside a new or rare tree! And few are so handsome as this.  . . ..In the twilight I went through the swamp, and yellow birches sent forth a dull-yellow gleam which each time made my heart beat faster. . . .I walked with the yellow birch..  . .If there were Druids whose temples were the oak groves, my temple is the swamp. Sometimes I was in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned smooth and dark, till I came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was off.  January 4, 1853

 When I get down near to Cardinal Shore, the sun near setting, its light is wonderfully reflected from a narrow edging of yellowish stubble at the edge of the meadow ice . . .It is surprising how much sunny light a little straw that survives the winter will reflect. . . .That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble . . . It was remarkable that, looking eastward, this was the only evidence of the light in the west.   January 4, 1858 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.") January 5, 1854 ("There is also some blueness now in the snow. The blueness is more distinct after sunset.")

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