December 19, 2021
I rode back to Nashua in the morning — Knew the road by some yellow birch trees in a swamp and some rails set on end around a white oak in a pasture. These it seems were the objects I had noticed.
In Nashua observed, as I thought, some elms in the distance which had been whitewashed. It turned out that they were covered from top to bottom, on one side, with the frozen vapor from a fall on the canal.
Walked a little way along the bank of the Merrimack, which was frozen over, and was agreeably reminded of my voyage up it.
The night previous, in Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front. I saw several of these here in Nashua, and ran a bit of stubble into them but in no place more than five inches. This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.
Observed that the Nashua in Pepperell was frozen to the very edge of the fall, and even further in some places.
Got home at 1.30 p. m.
P. M. — To Walden.
Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the 15th there was not a particle of ice in it. In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks, which are already very numerous, but, having been made at different stages of the ice, they indicate very various thicknesses. Often one only an inch deep crosses at right angles another two and a half inches deep, the last having been recently made and indicating the real thickness of the ice.
I advance confidently toward the middle, keeping within a few feet of some distinct crack two inches or more deep, but when that fails me and I see only cracks an inch or an inch and a half deep, or none at all, I walk with great caution and timidity, though the ice may be as thick as ever, but I have no longer the means of determining its thickness.
The ice is so transparent that it is too much like walking on water by faith.
The portion of the pond which was last frozen is a thinner and darker ice stretching about across the middle from southeast to northwest, i. e. from the shoulder of the Deep Cove to nearly midway between the bar and Ice-Fort Cove Cape.
Close to the northwest end of this, there is a small and narrow place twenty feet long east and west, which is still so thin that a small stone makes a hole. The water, judging from my map, may[be] seventy or seventy-five feet deep there. It looks as if that had been the warmest place in the surface of the pond and therefore the last to yield to the frost king.
Into this, or into the thinner ice at this point, there empties, as it were, a narrow meandering creek from near the western shore, which was nearly as late to freeze as any part. All this, I think, I have noticed in previous years.
About the edge of all this more recent and darker ice, the thicker ice is white with a feathery frost, which seems to have been produced by the very fine spray, or rather the vapor, blown from the yet unfrozen surface on to the ice by the strong and cold wind. Here is where, so to speak, its last animal heat escaped, the dying breath of the pond frozen on its lips. It had the same origin with the frost about the mouth of a hole in the ground whence warm vapors had escaped.
The fluid, timid pond was encircled within an ever-narrowing circle by the icy grasp of winter, and this is a trace of the last vaporous breath that curled along its trembling surface. Here the chilled pond gave up the ghost.
As I stand here, I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? This sound, heard near at hand, is more simply animal and guttural, without resonance or reverberation, but, heard here from out the depths of the wood, it sounds peculiarly hollow and drum-like, as if it struck on a tense skin drawn around, the tympanum of the wood, through which all we denizens of nature hear.
Thus it comes to us an accredited and universal or melodious sound; is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well. The owl only touches the stops, or rather wakes the reverberations. For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. It sounds now, hoo | hoo hoo (very fast) | hoo-rer | hoo.
Withered leaves! this is our frugal winter diet, in stead of the juicy salads of spring and summer. I think I could write a lecture on "Dry Leaves," carrying a specimen of each kind that hangs on in the winter into the lecture-room as the heads of my discourse. They have long hung to some extent in vain, and have not found their poet yet.
The pine has been sung, but not, to my knowledge, the shrub oak. Most think it is useless. How glad I am that it serves no vulgar use! It is never seen on the woodman's cart. The citizen who has just bought a sprout-land on which shrub oaks alone come up only curses it. But it serves a higher use than they know. Shrub oak! how true its name!
Think first what a family it belongs to. The oak, the king of trees, is its own brother, only of ampler dimensions. The oaks, so famous for grandeur and picturesqueness, so prized for strength by the builder, for knees or for beams; and this is the oak of smaller size, the Esquimau of oaks, the shrub oak! The oaken shrub! I value it first for the noble family it belongs to.
It is not like brittle sumach or venomous dogwood, which you must beware how you touch, but wholesome to the touch, though rough; not producing any festering sores, only honest scratches and rents.
Dr. Kane says in his "Arctic Explorations," page 21, that at Fiskernaes in Greenland "the springs, which well through the mosses, frequently remain unfrozen throughout the year."
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1856
In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. See December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”)
Walden froze completely over last night. .. . See December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”); December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.”); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night.”) Also December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle"); December 21, 1855 (" Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove. It will probably be finished to-night. (No, it proved too warm.)"); December 21, 1854 ("Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th"); December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad."); December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond [Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night."); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”).
The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. See November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) Also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”)
I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks..See December 19, 1854 ("It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice; I look for cracks to see how thick it is.")
For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. See June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”); July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains.); October 26, 1851 ("The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument ")
December 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 19
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/hdt561219
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