The landscape covered with snow two feet thick
seen by moonlight from these Cliffs –
my owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O.
Henry Thoreau, February 3, 1852
February 2. Snows again half an inch more in the evening, after which, at ten o’clock, the moon still obscured, I skate on the river and meadows . . . Our skates make but little sound in this coating of snow about an inch thick, as if we had on woollen skates and we can easily see our tracks in the night . . . In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl, and the distant rumbling of approaching or retreating cars sounds like a constant waterfall. February 2, 1855
February 3. The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west. Venus is now like a little moon in the west, and the lights in the village twinkle like stars. It is perfectly still and not very cold. The shadows of the trees on the snow are more minutely distinct than at any other season, finely reticulated, each limb and twig represented, as cannot be in summer. The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, — rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky. I hear my old acquaintance, the owl, from the Causeway. As I stand over Deep Cut the cars do not make much noise, or else I am used to it. And now whizzes the boiling, sizzling kettle by me, in which the passengers make me think of potatoes, which a fork would show to be done by this time. The steam is denser for the cold, and more white; like the purest downy clouds in the summer sky, its volumes roll up between me and the moon, and far behind, when the cars are a mile off, it still goes shading the fields with its wreaths, - the breath of the panting traveller. I now cross from the railroad to the road. This snow, the last of which fell day before yesterday, is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface. Here, in the midst of a clearing, where the choppers have been leaving the woods in pieces to-day, I hear the hooting of an owl, whose haunts the chopper is laying waste. The ground is all pure white powdery snow, which his sled, etc., has stirred up. I can see every track distinctly where the teamster drove his oxen to the choppers' piles and loaded his sled, and even the tracks of his dog in the moonlight, and plainly to write this. The moonlight now is very splendid in the untouched pine woods above the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light. The light has almost the brightness of sunlight. The stems of the trees are more obvious than by day, being simple black against the moonlight and the snow. I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter. The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic. It looks as if the snow and ice of the arctic world, travelling like a glacier, had crept down southward and overwhelmed and buried New England. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now. But the evening star is preparing to set, and I will return. Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle, my owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O. February 3, 1852
February 4. 11 P. M. — Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, it seems one of the most glorious nights I ever beheld. Though the pure snow is so deep around, the air, by contrast perhaps with the recent days, is mild and even balmy to my senses, and the snow is still sticky to my feet and hands . And the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day, while small white, fleecy clouds, at long intervals, are drifting from west-north west to south-southeast. If you would know the direction of the wind, look not at the clouds, which are such large bodies and confuse you , but consider in what direction the moon appears to be wading through them. The outlines of the elms were never more distinctly seen than now. It seems a slighting of the gifts of God to go to sleep now; as if we could better afford to close our eyes to daylight, of which we see so much. Has not this blueness of the sky the same cause with the blue ness in the holes in the snow, and in some distant shadows on the snow? — if, indeed, it is true that the sky is bluer in winter when the ground is covered with snow. February 4, 1852
February 14. Higginson told me yesterday . . . of a person in West Newbury, who told him that he once saw the moon rising out of the sea from his house in that place, and on the moonlight in his room the distinct shadow of a vessel which was somewhere on the sea between him and the moon!! February 14, 1857
February 27. To-night a circle round the moon. February 27, 1852
See also:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January Moonlight
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 © 2009-2025
