This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow.

January 16. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

This morning was one of the coldest. It improves the walking on the river, freezing the overflow beneath the snow. 

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. The ice therefor a few feet in width slants up to it, and, owing to this, the snow is blown off it. This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow, methinks. So, too, where the ice, settling, has rested on a rock which has burst it and now holds it high above the surrounding level. The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north. 

I observe that the holes which I bored in the white maples last spring were nearly grown over last summer, commonly to within a quarter or an eighth of an inch, but in one or two instances, in very thriftily growing trees, they were entirely closed. 

When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day, McManus, who was helping me, said that they would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more if it were not for the willow-rows which bound and separate them, for you could not plow parallel with them within five rods on account of the roots, you must plow at right angles with them. Yet it is not many years since they were set out, as I remember. However, there should be a great amount of root to account for their wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year when trimmed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1857

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice. See January 1, 1857 (" I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze"); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight."); February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.");  February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places.")

The wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year, of Shattuck's willow row. See December 4, 1855 ("The younger osiers on Shattuck’s row do shine."); January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.")


As I pass the Island (Egg Rock). . .Egg Rock is an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Thoreau surveyed Nawshawtuct Hill in December 1856 and January 1857, producing a map which included Egg Rock. ~ Wikipedia

January 16 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022