A snow-cloud just this side of Wachusett.

November 30.

The river may be said to have frozen generally last night.

The short afternoons are come. Yonder dusky cloud mass in the northwest will not be wafted across the sky before yonder sun that lurks so low will be set. We see purple clouds in the east horizon. 

But did ever clouds flit and change, form and dissolve, so fast as in this clear, cold air?

Coming over the side of Fair Haven Hill at sunset, we saw a large, long, dusky cloud in the northwest horizon, apparently just this side of Wachusett, or at least twenty miles off, which was snowing, when all the rest was clear sky. 

It was a complete snow-cloud. 

It looked like rain falling at an equal distance, except that the snow fell less directly and the upper outline of a pat lof the cloud more like that of a dusky mist. It was [not] much of a snow-storm, just enough to partially obscure the sight of the mountains about which it was falling, while the cloud was apparently high above them, or it may have been a little this side. 

The cloud was of a dun color, and at its south end, near where the sun was just about to set, it was all aglow on its under side with a salmon fulgor, making it look warmer than a furnace at the same time that it was snowing. 

In short, I saw a cloud, quite local in the heavens, whose south end rested over the portals of the day, twenty and odd miles off, and was lit by the splendor of the departing sun, and from this lit cloud snow was falling. 

. . .. It was a rare and strange sight, that of a snow-storm twenty miles off on the verge of a perfectly clear sky. Thus local is all storm, surrounded by serenity and beauty. 

The terrestrial mountains were made ridiculous beneath that stupendous range. . . .

But it was merely an extensive flurry, though it may have lasted twenty minutes. Before we had got home I saw it in the east still further off, — not having seen it pass us, — a pale ethereal film, almost dissolved in the sky, as in distinct as a fabulous island. 

In these clear, cold days fear no cloud. They vanish and dissolve before the cloud-consuming air.

A cloud, then, which glows high above the portals of the day seven or eight minutes before the sun disappears, may be some twenty miles off only.

I cannot but see still in my mind’s eye those little striped breams poised in Walden’s glaucous water.  (continued)....

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1858

The river may be said to have frozen generally last night. See November 30, 1855 (“River skimmed over behind Dodd’s and elsewhere. Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day.”); November 30, 1854 ("Sail down river. No ice, but strong cold wind . . .")

The short afternoons are come. See note to December 11, 1854 (“The morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)

Lit by the splendor of the departing sun, . . . a snow-storm twenty miles off on the verge of a perfectly clear sky. See December 2, 1858 ("It was at the same time the most brilliant of sunsets, the clearest and crispiest of winter skies."); December 3, 1858 ("The 30th . . . .there was no reddening of the clouds after sunset, no afterglow, but the glittering clouds were almost immediately snapped up in the crisped air.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets

A large, long, dusky cloud in the northwest horizon, apparently just this side of Wachusett, or at least twenty miles off. See November 12, 1852 (" a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline — . . . distinct white caps resting on the mountains this side, for twenty miles along the horizon.”); January 27, 1858 (“I saw a cloud more distant than the mountain.”); See November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden.”)

Thus local is all storm, surrounded by serenity and beauty. See January 17, 1852 (“”Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.”); August 9, 1860("a beautiful and serene object, a sort of fortunate isle in the sunset sky, the local cloud of the mountain.”); August 7, 1860 ("I am struck by the localness of the fogs. . . .If we awake into a fog it does not occur to us that the inhabitants of a neighboring town may have none.”); June 3, 1858 ("It was pleasant enough to see one man’s farm in the shadow of a cloud, — which perhaps he thought covered all the Northern States, — while his neighbor’s farm was in sunshine.”)