December 3, 2016
About as much more snow as fell on the 29th November has fallen in the night upon that, so stilly that we were not aware of it till we looked out. It has not even lodged on the window-sashes, and I am first convinced it has fallen by seeing the old tracks in the road covered and the roofs uniformly white.
It is now somewhat misty, or perhaps a fine rain beginning.
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| Yarrow in snow December 3, 2016 |
The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars.
The sight of the sedgy meadows that are not yet snowed up while the cultivated fields and pastures are a uniform white, — fenny places which are longer enabled to resist the aggressions of winter! It takes a deep snow to blot out the traces of summer there, for the grass did not get cut this year.
Mizzles and rains all day, making sloshy walking which sends us all to the shoemaker's. Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks. The shoemaker praised them because they were made a year ago.
I feel like an armed man now. The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood. There they stand beside me in the chamber, expectant, dreaming of far woods and wood-paths, of frost-bound or sloshy roads, or of being bound with skate-straps and clogged with ice-dust.
For years my appetite was so strong that I fed — I browsed — on the pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.
How cheap my diet still! Dry sand that has fallen in railroad cuts and slid on the snow beneath is a condiment to my walk. I ranged about like a gray moose, looking at the spiring tops of the trees, and fed my imagination on them, — far-away, ideal trees not disturbed by the axe of the wood-cutter, nearer and nearer fringes and eyelashes of my eye. Where was the sap, the fruit, the value of the forest for me, but in that line where it was relieved against the sky?
That was my wood-lot; that was my lot in the woods. The silvery needles of the pine straining the light.
A man killed at the fatal Lincoln Bridge died in the village the other night. The only words he uttered while he lingered in his delirium were "All right," probably the last which he had uttered before he was struck, — brave, prophetic words to go out of the world with! good as "I still live," but on no razors.
How I love the simple, reserved countrymen, my neighbors, who mind their own business and let me alone, who never waylaid nor shot at me, to my knowledge, when I crossed their fields, though each one has a gun in his house! For nearly twoscore years I have known, at a distance, these long-suffering men, whom I never spoke to, who never spoke to me, and now feel a certain tenderness for them, as if this long probation were but the prelude to an eternal friendship. What a long trial we have withstood, and how much more admirable we are to each other, perchance, than if we had been bedfellows! I am not only grateful because Veias, and Homer, and Christ, and Shakespeare have lived, but I am grateful for Minott, and Rice, and Melvin, and Goodwin, and Puffer even. I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.
Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1856
The grass did not get cut this year. See September 30, 1856 (“Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year, Minott said that the little they had got since the last flood before this was good for nothing,”)
Fewer weeds now rise above the snow. Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed. It is a uniform white napkin in many fields. Compare November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow . . . Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust."); November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)
.
Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks. See November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage"); December 4, 1856 ("When I bought my boots yesterday, Hastings ran over his usual rigmarole."); December 6, 1859 ("I I took out my boots, which I have not worn since last spring, with the mud and dust of spring still on them, and went forth in the snow. That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter."); December 8, 1852 ("One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion");Compare March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”) See also September 1, 1859 "Bought a pair of shoes the other day, and, observing that as usual they were only wooden-pegged at the toes, I required the seller to put in an extra row of iron pegs there while I waited for them. So he called to his boy to bring those zinc pegs, but I insisted on iron pegs and no zinc ones. He gave me considerable advice on the subject of shoes, but I suggested that even the wearer of shoes, of whom I was one, had an opportunity to learn some of their qualities. I have learned to respect my own opinion in this matter.")
The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars. See November 23, 1852 ("The steam of the engine hugs the earth in the Cut, concealing all objects for a great distance.”); December 29, 1851 ("In the clear atmosphere I see, far in the eastern horizon, the steam from the steam-engine, like downy clouds above the woods."); January 3, 1860 ("When a locomotive came in, just before the sun set, I saw a small cloud blown away from it which was a very rare but distinct violet purple."); February 16, 1855 ("The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine
A man killed at the fatal Lincoln Bridge. See December 10, 1856 ("Yesterday I walked under the murderous Lincoln Bridge, where at least ten men have been swept dead from the cars within as many years. I looked to see if their heads had indented the bridge,")
Hearing the whistle
of the locomotive takes
me out of body.
I see clearly what
at other times I only
dimly remember.
The earth's extent
the freedom of all nature
and the sky's depth.
- Minott. See note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know.")
- Rice.See March 11, 1857 ("I see and talk with Rice, sawing off the ends of clapboards which he has planed, to make them square, for an addition to his house. He has got a fire in his shop, and plays at house-building there. His life is poetic. He does the work himself.He combines several qualities and talents rarely combined. Though he owns houses in the city, whose repair he attends to, finds tenants for them, and collects the rent, he also has his Sudbury farm and bean-fiolds. Though he lived in a city, he would still be natural and related to primitive nature around him. Though he owned all Beacon Street, you might find that his mittens were made of the skin of a woodchuck that had ravaged his bean-field, which he had cured.")
- Melvin. See December 2, 1856 ("I thank my stars for Melvin. I think of him with gratitude when I am going to sleep, grateful that he exists, — . . . he is agreeable to me as a tinge of russet on the hillside. I would fain give thanks morning and evening for my blessings. Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him. He is my contemporary and neighbor. He is one tribe, I am another, and we are not at war. ")
- Goodwin See December 3, 1855 ("Met Goodwin going out with his gun."); October 22, 1853 ("Yesterday . . . one-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably.")
- Puffer.even. See May 17, 1858 (“While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered.”); November 8, 1858 ("Goodwin, laying wall at Miss Ripley’s, observed to me going by, “Well, it seems that [Puffer] thought that he had lived long enough.” He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. . . . Garfield said it was about time, for [Puffer] , in revenge for being sent to the house of correction, had set fire to a pile of wood of his, that long pile by the road side beyond William Wheeler’s, that I stood under in a rain once.")
Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. See October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”); see also October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter . . . flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me"); November 8, 1857 ("The chickadee / Hops near to me."); November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”); December 1, 1853 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, ”). Also A Book of the Seasons: the Chickadee in Winter
December 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 3
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
tinyurl.com/HDT561203
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