A Book of the Seasons: January 21.

January 21.

Walking at midnight

blue sky overarches me –

universal day.

January 21, 1853

Against a dark roof
I detect a single flake.
It begins to snow. 
January 21, 1855

What does it mean that
that woodcock and song sparrow
lingered late this year?
January 21, 1857

A night in which the

musical  silence thrills me -

audible silence . 

January 21, 1853 

This winter they are cutting down our woods more  seriously than ever . . .  Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds! , January 21, 1852

A January thaw, with some fog, occasioned as yet wholly by warm weather, without rain; high wind in the night; wind still south.  January 21, 1859

It is the worst or wettest of walking, requiring india-rubber boots. Great channels, eight inches deep and a foot or more wide, are worn in the ice across the street, revealing a pure, clear ice on the sides, contrasting with the dirty surface.  January 21, 1859

I do not remember so sudden a change, the effect of warmth without rain.  January 21, 1859

It begins to rain by afternoon, and rains more or less during the night. Before night I heard of the river being over the road in one place, though it was rather low before.  ntity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow. January 21, 1859

Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow. January 21, 1859

The sky has gradually become overcast, and now it is just beginning to snow. January 21, 1855

 Looking against a dark roof, I detect a single flake from time to time. January 21, 1855

But when I look at the dark side of the woods two miles off in the horizon, there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air. January 21, 1855

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail. January 21, 1855

Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression.  January 21, 1855

The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black.  January 21, 1855

The latter form commonly a reddish-brown ground out of which the former rise.   January 21, 1855

These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other.  January 21, 1855

Few twigs are conspicuous at a distance like those of the golden willow. The tree is easily distinguished at a distance by its color.   January 21, 1855

Saw in an old white pine stump, about fifteen inches from the ground, a hole peeked about an inch and a half in diameter. It was about six inches deep downward in the rotten stump and was bottomed with hypnum, rabbit’s fur, and hair, and a little dry grass.   January 21, 1855

Was it a mouse-nest? or a nuthatch’s, creeper’s, or chickadee’s nest? It has a slight musky smell.  January 21, 1855

The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day. January 21, 1853

The night is not black when the air is clear, but blue still. January 21, 1853

The great ocean of light and ether is unaffected by our partial night. January 21, 1853

Night is not universal. At midnight I see into the universal day. January 21, 1853

Walking at that hour, unless it is cloudy, still the blue sky o'erarches me. January 21, 1853

The roads are perhaps more blocked up than last winter, yet with hardly more than half as much snow. January 27, 1857

The river is now so concealed that a common eye would not suspect its existence. It is drifted on it exactly as on the meadow, i. e. successive low drifts with a bluff head toward the wind. January 27, 1857

It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. January 27, 1857

The overflow, under the snow, is generally at the bends, where the river is narrower and swifter. January 27, 1857

I noticed that several species of birds lingered late this year. The F. hyemalis, and then there was that woodcock, and song sparrow! What does it mean? January 27, 1857

As I flounder along the Corner road against the root fence, a very large flock of snow buntings alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds rising above the snow in Potter's heater piece, — a hundred or two of them.January 27, 1857

 They run restlessly amid the weeds, so that I can hardly get sight of them through my glass; then suddenly all arise and fly only two or three rods, alighting within  three rods of me. (They keep up a constant twittering.) It was as if they were any instant ready for a longer flight, but their leader had not so ordered it. January 27, 1857

Suddenly away they sweep again, and I see them alight in a distant field where the weeds rise above the snow, but in a few minutes they have left that also and gone further north. January 27, 1857

Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter, and from the loiterers you hear quite a tender peep, as they fly after the vanishing flock. January 27, 1857

What independent creatures! They go seeking their food from north to south. If New Hampshire and Maine are covered deeply with snow, they scale down to Massachusetts for their breakfasts. Not liking the grain in this field, away they dash to another distant one, attracted by the weeds rising above the snow. Who can guess in what field, by what river or mountain they breakfasted this morning.January 27, 1857

*****

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

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

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

*****

June 3, 1856 (" I observe a chickadee sitting quietly within a few feet. Suspecting a nest, I look and find it in a small hollow maple stump about five inches in diameter and two feet high.. . .. The nest is very thick and warm, of average depth, and made of the bluish-slate rabbit’s (?) fur.")
November 29, 1859 ("The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.”)
December 12, 1859 ("Seeing a little hole in the side of a dead white birch, about six feet from the ground, I broke it off and found it to be made where a rotten limb had broken off. . . .Probably it was the roosting-place of a chickadee.")
December 14, 1859 (“Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.”)
January 2, 1856 ("They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.”)

January 6, 1856 ("I am come forth to observe the drifts. . . .Neither man, woman, nor child, dog nor cat nor fowl, has stirred out to-day.”) 
January 11, 1855 ("Air so thick with snowflakes that . . .single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon.")
January 12, 1854 ("Thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”)
January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.")
January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.")
January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.")







January 22, 1852 ("It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not")
January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”)

January 22, 1859 ("Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun.")
January 23, 1853 ("It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.”) February 2, 1854; ("The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue.")
February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish.");
February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.").
February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. . . . “);
February 11, 1855 (“The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods.”)
March 11, 1852 (The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?").
March 13, 1855 ("At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail.”)

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