Probably the coldest morning yet, our thermometer 6° below zero at 8 A.M.; yet there is quite a mist in the air. The neighbors say it was 10° below zero at 7 A.M.
P.M. — To Walden.
As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for, tracing back the rabbit, I found that it had first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.
There were many white rabbits’ tracks in those woods, and many more of the gray rabbit, but the former broke through and made a deep track, except where there was a little crust on the south slope, while the latter made but a faint impression on the surface. The latter run very much in the same path, which is well trodden, and you would think you were in the midst of quite a settlement of them.
I walk through the western most Heywood swamp. There are the tracks of many rabbits, both gray and white, which have run about the edges of these swamps since this snow came, amid the alders and shrub oaks, and one white one has crossed it.
The cat-tails rise high above the snow in the swamp, their brown heads bursting on one side into creamy (?) billows and wreaths, or partly bare. Also the rattlesnake grass is still gracefully drooping on every side, with the weight of its seeds, — a rich, wild grain. And other wild grasses and rushes rise above the snow.
There is the wild-looking remnant of a white pine, quite dead, rising fifteen or twenty feet, which the woodpeckers have bored; and it is still clad with sulphur lichens and many dark-colored tufts of cetraria in the forks of its branches.
Returning, I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed, picking them from the snow,-- apparently flat on the snow, their legs so short, -- and, when I approach, alighting on the rail fence. They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1856
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| January 2, 2016 |
The cat-tails rise high above the snow in the swamp, their brown heads bursting on one side into creamy (?) billows and wreaths, or partly bare. Also the rattlesnake grass is still gracefully drooping on every side, with the weight of its seeds, — a rich, wild grain. And other wild grasses and rushes rise above the snow.
There is the wild-looking remnant of a white pine, quite dead, rising fifteen or twenty feet, which the woodpeckers have bored; and it is still clad with sulphur lichens and many dark-colored tufts of cetraria in the forks of its branches.
Returning, I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed, picking them from the snow,-- apparently flat on the snow, their legs so short, -- and, when I approach, alighting on the rail fence. They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1856
Probably the coldest morning yet, our thermometer 6° below zero at 8 A.M. See January 2, 1860 ("8 a.m. -15° below . . . the coldest thus far.")
The wild-looking remnant of a white pine, quite dead, still clad with sulphur lichens and many dark-colored tufts of cetraria. See December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist. The trees appear all at once covered with their crop of lichens and mosses of all kinds, the livid green of some, the fruit of others. They eclipse the trees they cover. “)
They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. See December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
The wild-looking remnant of a white pine, quite dead, still clad with sulphur lichens and many dark-colored tufts of cetraria. See December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist. The trees appear all at once covered with their crop of lichens and mosses of all kinds, the livid green of some, the fruit of others. They eclipse the trees they cover. “)
They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. See December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 2.
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
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