The morning light

December 16. 

Friday. 

December 16, 2022

The elms covered with hoar frost, seen in the east against the morning light, are very beautiful. These days, when the earth is still bare and the weather is so warm as to create much vapor by day, are the best for these frost works. 

Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature. 

J. E. Cabot says the lunxus is a wolverene. 

Some creature has killed ten, at least, of H. Wheeler's doves and left them together in the dove-house. I think it was my short-eared owl, which flew thither.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1853

The elms covered with hoar frost, seen in the east against the morning light. See December 16, 1837 ("The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor"); December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time.") See also December 26, 1855 ("Trees seen in the West against the dark cloud, the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as frostwork, and their outlines very perfectly and distinctly revealed, with recurved twigs.")

Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature. See June 22, 1851 (“My pulse must beat with Nature”); August 23, 1853 ("Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health."); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”); November 18, 1857 (“Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health. You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind”);  January 23, 1858 (“To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one”). See also Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.")

I think it was my short-eared owl. See December 8, 1853 ("At midday (3 p. m.) see an owl fly from toward the river and alight on Mrs. Richardson's front-yard fence . . .I am inclined to think it the short-eared owl, though I could see no ears ")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

Would you be well

see that you are attuned to

each mood of nature.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The morning light

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt531216