The Whortleberry Family

The blue horizon,

the blueness of the mountain.

Blueberry blueness!

August 5, 1860

It is remarkable how universally, as it respects soil and exposure, the whortleberry family is distributed with us, one kind or another (of those of which I am speaking) flourishing in every soil and locality, — the Pennsylvania and Canada blueberries especially in elevated cool and airy places-on hills and mountains, and in openings in the woods and in sprout-lands; the high blueberry in swamps, and the second low blueberry in intermediate places, or almost anywhere but in swamps hereabouts; while we have two kinds confined to the Alpine tops of our highest mountains. 

The family thus ranges from the highest mountain-tops to the lowest swamps and forms the prevailing small shrubs of a great part of New England. Not only is this true of the family, but hereabouts of the genus Gaylussacia, or the huckleberries proper, alone. 

I do not know of a spot where any shrub grows in this neighborhood but one or another species or variety of the Gaylussacia may also grow there. 

It is stated in Loudon ( page 1076 ) that all the plants of this order “require a peat soil, or a soil of a close cohesive nature,” but this is not the case with the huckleberry. 

The huckleberry grows on the tops of our highest hills; no pasture is too rocky or barren for it; it grows in such deserts as we have, standing in pure sand; and, at the same time, it flourishes in the strongest and most fertile soil. 

One variety is peculiar to quaking bogs where there can hardly be said to be any soil beneath, not to mention another but unpalatable species, the hairy huckleberry, which is found in bogs. 

It extends through all our woods more or less thinly, and a distinct species, the dangle-berry, belongs especially to moist woods and the edges of swamps. 

Such care has nature taken to furnish to birds and quadrupeds, and to men, a palatable berry of this kind, slightly modified by soil and climate, wherever the consumer may chance to be. 

Corn and potatoes, apples and pears, have comparatively a narrow range, but we can fill our basket with whortleberries on the summit of Mt. Washington, above almost all the shrubs with which we are familiar, the same kind which they have in Greenland,-and again, when we get home, with another species in Beck Stow's Swamp. 

I find that in Bomare's “Dictionnaire Raisonné" the Vitis Idæa (of many kinds) is called “raisin des boi.” 

Our word “ berry,” according to lexicographers, is from the Saxon beria, a grape or cluster of grapes; but it must acquire a new significance here, if a new word is not substituted for it. 

According to Father Rasles' Dictionary, the Abenaki word for bluets ' was, fresh, satar in another place saté, tar ); dry, sakisatar. 

First there is the early dwarf blueberry, the smallest of the whortleberry shrubs with us, and the first to ripen its fruit, not commonly an erect shrub, but more or less reclined and drooping, often covering the earth with a sort of dense matting. 

The twigs are green, the flowers commonly white. 

Both the shrub and its fruit are the most tender and delicate of any that we have. 

The Vaccinium Canadense may be considered a more northern form of the same. 

Some ten days later comes the high blueberry, or swamp blueberry, the commonest stout shrub of our swamps, of which I have been obliged to cut down not a few when running lines as a surveyor through the low woods. 

They are a pretty sure indication of water, and, when I see their dense curving tops ahead, I prepare to wade, or for a wet foot. 

The flowers have an agreeable sweet and berry-promising fragrance, and a handful of them plucked and eaten have a subacid taste agreeable to some palates. 

At the same time with the last the common low blueberry is ripe. 

This is an upright slender shrub with a few long wand-like branches, with green bark and pink-colored recent shoots and glaucous-green leaves. 

The flowers have a considerable rosy tinge, of a delicate tint. 

The last two more densely flowered than the others. 

The huckleberry, as you know, is an upright shrub, more or less stout depending on the exposure to the sun and air, with a spreading, bushy top, a dark-brown bark, and red recent shoots, with thick leaves. 

The flowers are much more red than those of the others. 

As in old times they who dwelt on the heath remote from towns were backward to adopt the doctrines which prevailed there, and were therefore called heathen in a bad sense, so we dwellers in the huckleberry pastures, which are our heath lands, are slow to adopt the notions of large towns and cities and may perchance be nick named huckleberry people. 

But the worst of it is that the emissaries of the towns care more for our berries than for our salvation. 

In those days the very race had got a bad name, and ethnicus was only another name for heathen. 

All our hills are or have been huckleberry hills, the three hills of Boston and, no doubt, Bunker Hill among the rest. 

In May and June all our hills and fields are adorned with a profusion of the pretty little more or less bell-shaped flowers of this family, commonly turned toward the earth and more or less tinged with red or pink and resounding with the hum of insects, each one the fore runner of a berry the most natural, wholesome, palatable that the soil can produce. 

The early low blueberry, which I will call "bluet," adopting the name from the Canadians, is probably the prevailing kind of whortleberry in New England, for the high blueberry and huckleberry are unknown in many sections. 

In many New Hampshire towns a neighboring mountain-top is the common berry-field of many villages, and in the berry season such a summit will be swarming with pickers. 

A hundred at once will rush thither from all the surrounding villages, with pails and buckets of all descriptions, especially on a Sunday, which is their leisure day. 

When camping on such ground, thinking myself quite out of the world, I have had my solitude very unexpectedly interrupted by such an advent, and found that the week-days were the only Sabbath-days there. 

For a mile or more on such a rocky mountain-top this will be the prevailing shrub, occupying every little shelf from several rods down to a few inches only in width, and then the berries droop in short wreaths over the rocks, sometimes the thickest and largest along a seam in a shelving rock,-either that light mealy-blue, or a shining black, or an intermediate blue, without bloom. 

When, at that season, I look from Concord toward the blue mountain-tops in the horizon, I am reminded that near at hand they are equally blue with berries. The mountain-tops of New England, often lifted above the clouds, are thus covered with this beautiful blue fruit, in greater profusion than in any garden. 

What though the woods be cut down, this emergency was long ago foreseen and provided for by Nature, and the interregnum is not allowed to be a barren one. 

She is full of resources: she not only begins instantly to heal that scar, but she consoles (compensates ?) and refreshes us with fruits such as the forest did not produce. 

To console us she heaps our baskets with berries. 

The timid or ill-shod confine themselves to the land side, where they get comparatively few berries and many scratches, but the more adventurous, making their way through the open swamp, which the bushes overhang, wading amid the water andromeda and sphagnum, where the surface quakes for a rod around, obtain access to those great drooping clusters of berries which no hand has disturbed. 

There is no wilder and richer sight than is afforded from such a point of view, of the edge of a blueberry swamp where various wild berries are intermixed. 

As the sandalwood is said to diffuse its perfume around the woodman who cuts it, so in this case Nature rewards with unexpected fruits the hand that lays her waste. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1860 

The family thus ranges from the highest mountain-tops to the lowest swamps and forms the prevailing small shrubs of a great part of New England. See May 28, 1854 ("The huckleberries, excepting the late, are now generally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves; frequented by honey-bees, full of promise for the summer. One of the great crops of the year. These are the blossoms of the Vacciniece, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these. The berry-promising flower of the Vacciniece. This crop grows wild all over the country, — wholesome, bountiful, and free."); January 3, 1861 ("The berries which I celebrate appear to have a range -- most of them — very nearly coterminous with what has been called the Algonquin Family of Indians, whose territories are now occupied by the Eastern, Middle, and Northwestern States and the Canadas, and completely surrounded those of the Iroquois, who occupied what is now the State of New York. These were the small fruits of the Algonquin and Iroquois families. The Algonquins appear to have described this kind of fruits generally by words ending in the syllables meenar."); January 8, 1861 (" What we call huckleberry cake, made of Indian meal and huckleberries, was evidently the principal cake of the aborigines, and was generally known and used by them all over this part of North America")

When, at that season, I look from Concord toward the blue mountain-tops in the horizon, I am reminded that near at hand they are equally blue with berries. See August 5, 1860 ("The whole mountain-top for two miles is covered, on countless little shelves and in hollows between the rocks, with low blueberries, just in their prime. . . .When we behold this summit at this season of the year, far away and blue in the horizon, we may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain.")

The unpalatable species, the hairy huckleberry. ---Gaylussacia bigeloviana (Gaylussacia dumosa var. bigeloviana; Gaylussacia dumosa, var. hirtella, Vaccinium dumosum)  -- bog huckleberry. See August 30, 1856 ([Beck Stow's Swamp]"I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella. . . It grows from one to two feet high, the leaves minutely resinous- dotted — are not others ? — and mucronate, the racemes long, with leaf-like bracts now turned conspicuously red. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth ; has very prominent calyx-lobes. I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society. . . . That wild hairy huckleberry, inedible as it was, was equal to a domain secured to me and reaching to the South Sea. That was an unexpected harvest. "); June 25, 1857 ("To Gowing's Swamp. . . . Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.”): July 2, 1857 (" To Gowing's Swamp. . . .The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. This is commonly an inconspicuous bush, eight to twelve inches high, half prostrate over the sphagnum in which it grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc., but sometimes twenty inches high quite on the edge of the swamp. It has a very large and peculiar bell-shaped flower, with prominent ribs and a rosaceous tinge, and is not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. The flower deserves a more particular description than Gray gives it. But Bigelow says well of its corolla that it is "remarkable for its distinct, five angled form." Its segments are a little recurved. The calyx-segments are acute and pink at last; the racemes, elongated, about one inch long, one-sided; the corolla, narrowed at the mouth, but very wide above; the calyx, with its segments, pedicels, and the whole raceme (and indeed the leaves somewhat), glandular-hairy."); July 8, 1857 (to Gowing's Swamp. The Gaylussacia dumosa is now in prime at least"); August 30, 1860 ("Am surprised to find on Minott's hard land, where he once raised potatoes, the hairy huckleberry, which before I had seen in swamps only. The berries are in longer racemes or clusters than any of our huckleberries. They are improved, you would say, by the firmer ground. They are the prevailing berry all over this field. Are now in prime.") August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that [Gowings] swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) ; August 8, 1858 (“The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella is the prevailing low shrub, perhaps. I see one ripe berry. This is the only inedible species of Vaccinieaz that I know in this town"); July 15, 1859 ("To Ledum Swamp. Hairy huckleberry still in bloom, but chiefly done.");  July 24, 1859 ("The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them.")

Why does not the village bell sound a knell?

December 30

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it.

It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall.

Still its branches wave in the wind, as if it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sun light is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel's nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast, — the hill is the hulk.

Now, now 's the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestically it starts! as if it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks, advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear.

I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already half divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year's growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make.

And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come.

Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing lay his axe at the root of that also.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1851

The woodman is preparing lay his axe at the root of that also. See January 22, 1852 (“It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not.”); March 24, 1853 (“ tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.”); March 9, 1855 (“I clamber over those great white pine masts which lie in all directions one upon another on the hillside south of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid waste.”); January 22, 1856 (“With what feelings should not the citizens hear that the biggest tree in the town has fallen!”)

Surveying the W farm.

December 30

Surveying the W farm. 

Parker, the Shaker that was, my assistant, says that the first year he came to live with W, he worked on the farm, and that when he was digging potatoes on that jog (of about an acre) next to the site of the old Lee house, he found snakes' eggs in many hills, perhaps half a dozen together, he thinks as many as seventy in all. He did not perceive that they were united as he hoed them out, but may have separated them. When he broke the eggs, the young snakes, two or three inches long, wriggled out and about. 

Had the experience of losing a pin and then hunting for it a long time in vain. 

What an evidence it is, after all, of civilization, or of a capacity for improvement, that savages like our Indians, who in their protracted wars stealthily slay men, women, and children without mercy, with delight, who delight to burn, torture, and devour one another, proving themselves more inhuman in these respects even than beasts, — what a wonderful evidence it is, I say, of their capacity for improvement that even they can enter into the most formal compact or treaty of peace, burying the hatchet, etc., etc., and treating with each other with as much consideration as the most enlightened states. You would say that they had a genius for diplomacy as well as for war. 

Consider that Iroquois, torturing his captive, roasting him before a slow fire, biting off the fingers of him alive, and finally eating the heart of him dead, betraying not the slightest evidence of humanity; and now behold him in the council-chamber, where he meets the representatives of the hostile nation to treat of peace, conducting with such perfect dignity and decorum, betraying such a sense of justness.

These savages are equal to us civilized men in their treaties, and, I fear, not essentially worse in their wars.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1856

A Book of the Seasons: December 30.

December 30

Man in winter is
to a slight extent dormant --
partially awake.

In winter even man 

     is to a slight extent 

             dormant.

The  range of his afternoon walk 

     is somewhat 

              narrower; 

he is more or less 

     confined to the highway 

            and wood-path; 

the weather oftener 

      shuts him up 

             in his burrow; 

he is often satisfied 

       if he only gets out 

             to the post-office 

                   in the course of the day.  

December 30, 1853

Found, in the Wheeler meadow

Found, in the Wheeler meadow southwest of the Island,

a nest in the fork of an alder about eight feet from ground,

partly saddled on, 

made chiefly of fine grass and bark fibres,

quite firm and very thick bottomed,

and well bound with various kind of lint.

This is a little oval,

three by three and a half inches within

and seven eighths deep,

with a very firm, smooth rim 

of fine grass and dark shreds, lined 

with the same and some lint. 

A few alder leaves dangle from the edge,

and, what is remarkable,

the outer edge all around is defiled,

quite covered,

with black and white caterpillar-like

droppings of the young birds.

December 30, 1855

To study birds' nests
look for them in Winter as

well as midsummer.
December 30 1855 

In this clear cold air

that fine evanishing edge

of clouds in the west.

December 30, 1855

Snow began last night 

now not far from a foot deep –

light powdery snow.

December 30, 1855

Snow began last night 

now light powdery snow not 

far from a foot deep.

.

 In this clear cold air 

 small clouds in the west have that 

evanishing edge.

The deepest snow yet.
Those who depend on skylights
find theirs a dim light.
December 30, 1859

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 © 2009-2019

Winter now first fairly commenced.

December 30

December 30, 2016

The snow which began last night has continued to fall very silently but steadily, and now it is not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet; a dry, light, powdery snow. 

When I come down I see it in miniature drifts against the panes, alternately streaked dark and light as it is more or less dense. A remarkable, perfectly regular conical peak, a foot high, with concave sides, stands in the fireplace under the sink-room chimney. The pump has a regular conical Persian(?) cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. 

About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps. Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel. 

The places which are slowest to freeze in our river are, first, on account of warmth as well as motion, where a brook comes in, and also probably where are springs in banks and under bridges; then, on account of shallowness and rapidity, at bends. I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest. The open water at a bend seems to be owing to the swiftness of the current, and this to the shallowness, and this to the sands taken out of the opposing bank and deposited there. 

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. 

What a horrid shaggy and stiff low wilderness were the Andromeda Ponds yesterday! What then must they have been on the 21st! As it was, it was as if I walked through a forest of glass (with a tough woody core) up to my middle. That dense tufted grass with a greenish tinge was still stiffly coated with ice, as well as everything else, and my shoes were filled with the fragments, but here I and there the crimson sphagnum blushed through the crust beneath. Think of that dense grass, a horrid stiff crop, each stem as big as your finger, firm but brittle and about two feet high, and the countless birds’ nests filled even with ice!

P. M. - Across river and over Hill. 

The wind has been blowing and the snow drifting. The paths are filled up again. The surface of the snow is coarsely waved and rough now, as if it caught at every straw and faced its windy foe again. It appears a coarser grain now. By the river are conspicuous the now empty and spread pods of the water milkweed, gray-brown without, silky—white within, — in some a seed or two left still; also the late rose corymbs of red hips; also the eupatorium some with brown fuzz and seeds still; the sium sometimes, with its very flat cymes; and that light-brown sedge or rush. Some black ash keys still hang on amid the black abortions(?)

For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. 

See one downy woodpecker and one or two chickadees. 

The track of a squirrel on the Island Neck. Tracks are altered by the depth of the snow. 

Looking up over the top of the hill now,  southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. 

December 30, 2025 

Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away. 

The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it.

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, as if seen through a junk-bottle. Perhaps I never observed this phenomenon but when the sun was low. 

He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds. He will often be surprised to find how many have haunted where he little suspected, and will receive many hints accordingly, which he can act upon in the summer. I am surprised to find many new ones (i. e. not new species) in groves which I had examined several times with particular care in the summer. 

This was not a lodging snow, and the wind has already blown most of it off the trees, yet the long-limbed oak on the north of the hill still supports a ridge of its pure white as thick as its limbs. They lie parallel like the ulna and radius, and one is a bare white bone. 

Beside the other weeds on the last page, I might have shown the tall rough goldenrod, still conspicuous. 

Found, in the Wheeler meadow southwest of the Island, a nest in the fork of an alder about eight feet from ground, partly saddled on, made apparently chiefly of fine grass and bark fibres, quite firm and very thick bottomed, and well bound without with various kind of lint. This is a little oval, three by three and a half inches within and seven eighths deep, with a very firm, smooth rim of fine grass and dark shreds, lined with the same and some lint. A few alder leaves dangle from the edge, and, what is remarkable, the outer edge all around is defiled, quite covered, with black and white caterpillar like droppings of the young birds. It is broader and shallower than a yellowbird’s and larger than a wood pewee’s. Can it be a redstart’s? I should think it too large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1855

Not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet. See December 30, 1859 ("I awake to find it snowing fast. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, - the deepest snow yet.”); December 30, 1853 (“I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday. . . it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches.”) and note to January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now.")

The track of a squirrel . . .The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it. See December 30, 1853 ("I see the tracks of mice, and squirrels, probably gray ones, leading straight to or from the feet of the largest pines and oaks, which they had plainly ascended.")

Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel.  See December 29, 1853 ("The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.") See also March 16, 1859 ("A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come.. . . The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress . . .This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time."); March 20, 1853 ("It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. . . There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy."); March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.") ; April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail. . .Even the grass begins to wave . . . and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. This is the beginning of that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink and Viola pedata. It begins when the first toad is heard.");  May 14, 1858 ("To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and just leafing trees."); May 17, 1852  ("Does not summer begin after the May storm? "); May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come.  . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); July 18, 1854 ("A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity."); July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats, we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year."); August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 9, 1853 ("How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. There is much yellow beside now in the fields.");August 26, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct."); September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); November 10, 1858 ("The season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. ")

The countless birds’ nests filled even with ice! See December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); December 29, 1855 (“I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice.”); January 7, 1856 ("I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests"); January 24, 1856 (“The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. . . .They have only an ice egg in them now.”); February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. See December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”);  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.”);  January 1, 1856 (“Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing, though commonly there is a thin dark beneath. . . . A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water.”) Compare December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, See  .February 19, 1852 ("Returning across the river just as the sun was setting behind the Hollowell place, the ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, though all around, above and below, was one unvaried white, — a vitreous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. This phenomenon is to be put with the blue in the crevices of the snow"); January 7, 1856 (" Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, when the ice turns green

Snow began last night 

now light powdery snow not 

far from a foot deep.

 In this clear cold air 

 that fine evanishing edge

of clouds in the west. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Winter now first fairly commenced.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551230

Measuring snow at every ten paces for two hundred paces.

December 30

The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. 

I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday in Abiel Wheeler's wood by the railroad, near the pond. In going a quarter of a mile it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches. Then went to Potter's wood, by Lincoln road, near Lincoln line, and paced straight through a level wood where there was no drift perceptible, measuring at every ten paces for two hundred paces, and the average was twenty and one half inches. 

I see the tracks of mice, and squirrels, probably gray ones, leading straight to or from the feet of the largest pines and oaks, which they had plainly ascended.

In winter even man is to a slight extent dormant, just as some animals are but partially awake, though not commonly classed with those that hibernate. The summer circulations are to some extent stopped; the range of his afternoon walk is somewhat narrower; he is more or less confined to the highway and wood-path; the weather oftener shuts him up in his burrow; he begins to feel the access of dormancy and to assume the spherical form of the marmot; the nights are longest; he is often satisfied if he only gets out to the post-office in the course of the day.  Most men do not now extend their walks beyond the village street. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1853

The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open. See December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”) See also December 30, 1855 ("There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined.”),December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”); January 1, 1856 (“Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing, though commonly there is a thin dark beneath.  . . . A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water.”)See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday. . . it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches.. See December 30, 1855 ("The snow which began last night has continued to fall very silently but steadily, and now it is not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet"): December 30, 1859 ("I awake to find it snowing fast. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, - the deepest snow yet.”); and note to January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now.")

I see the tracks of mice, and squirrels See December 30, 1855 ("The track of a squirrel on the Island Neck. Tracks are altered by the depth of the snow . . .The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it.") See also December 22, 1852 ("The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature."): ); December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice"); December 27, 1857 ("Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks."); December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen"); January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! "); January 7, 1858 ("I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown. . . .The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated.")

In winter even man is to a slight extent dormant, just as some animals are but partially awake.See January 14, 1852 ("We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate, and accordingly we share to some extent the nature of the dormant creatures. We all feel somewhat confined by the winter. The nights are longer, and we sleep more.")

Crows foraging

December 30

The crows now and of late frequent the large trees by the river, especially swamp white oak, and the snow beneath is strewn with bits of bark and moss and with acorns. They are foraging.

Under the first swamp white oak in Hubbard's great meadow I see a little snap-turtle on its back on the ice -- shell, legs, and tail perfect, but head pulled off, and most of the inwards with it by the same hole (where the neck was). What is left smells quite fresh, and this head must have been torn off to-day -- or within a day or two.

I see two crows on the next swamp white oak westward, and I can scarcely doubt that they did it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1860

Crows foraging.  See December 27, 1853 ("The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food"); December 28, 1859 ("Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather");January 11, 1861(" Horace Mann brings me the contents of a crow's stomach in alcohol. It was killed in the village within a day or two.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

Dec. 30. Sunday.


I saw the crows a week ago perched on the swamp white oaks over the road just beyond Wood's Bridge, and many acorns and bits of bark and moss, evidently dropped or knocked off by them, lay on the snow beneath. 

One sat within twenty feet over my head with what looked like a piece of acorn in his bill.

To-day I see that they have carried these same white oak acoms, cups and all, to the ash tree by the river side, some thirty rods southeast, and dropped them there.

Perhaps they find some grubs in the acorns, when they do not find meat.

The crows now and of late frequent thus the large trees by the river, especially swamp white oak, and the snow beneath is strewn with bits of bark and moss and with acorns (commonly worthless).

They are foraging.

Under the first swamp white oak in Hubbard's great meadow ( Cyanean ) I see a little snap-turtle ( shell some one and a quarter inches in diameter — on his second year, then ) on its back on the ice — shell, legs, and tail perfect, but head pulled off, and most of the inwards with it by the same hole ( where the neck was ).

What is left smells quite fresh, and this head must have been torn off to-day or within a day or two.

I see two crows on the next swamp white oak westward, and I can scarcely doubt that they did it.

Probably one found the young turtle at an open and springy place in the meadow, or by the river, where they are constantly preying, and flew with it to this tree.

Yet it is possible ( ? ) that it was frozen to death when they found it.

I also saw under the oak where the crows were one of those large brown cocoons of the Attacus Cecropia, which no doubt they had torn off.

Eben Conant's sons tell me that there has been a turtle dove associating with their tame doves and feeding in the yard from time to time for a fortnight past. They saw it to-day.

The traveller Burton says that the word Doab, “ which two streams, has no English equivalent. ” ( “ Lake Regions of Central Africa, ” page 72. ) 

[The Wortleberry Family]

December snowfalls

December 30

I awake to find it snowing fast, but it slackens in a few hours. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, — the deepest snow yet, and almost quite level. 

At first the flakes (this forenoon) were of middling size. At noon, when it was leaving off, they were of a different character. I observed them on my sleeve, — little slender spiculae about one tenth of an inch long, little dry splinters, sometimes two forking, united at one end, or two or three lying across one another, quite dry and fine; and so it concluded. 

P. M. — Going by Dodd's, I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree before his house, standing square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit of the bird before. You would suppose it inconvenient for so large a bird to maintain its footing there. Scared by my passing [?] in the road, it flew off, and I thought I would see if it alighted on a similar place. It flew toward a young elm, whose higher twigs were much more slender, though not quite so upright as those of the cherry, and I thought he might be excused if he alighted on the side of one; but no, to my surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon the very top of one of the highest of all, and looked around as before. 

I spoke to the barber to-day about that whirl of hair on the occiput of most (if not all) men's heads. He said it was called the crown, and was of a spiral form, a beginning spiral, when cut short; that some had two, one on the right, the other on the left, close together. I said that they were in a sense double-headed. He said that it was an old saying that such were bred under two crowns. 

I noticed the other day that even the golden-crested wren was one of the winter birds which have a black head, — in this case divided by yellow. 

Those who depend on skylights found theirs but a dim, religious light this forenoon and hitherto, owing to the thickness of snow resting on them. Also cellar windows are covered, and cellars are accordingly darkened. 

What a different phenomenon a musquash now from what it is in summer! Now if one floats, or swims, its whole back out, or crawls out upon the ice at one of those narrow oval water spaces in the river, some twenty rods long (in calm weather, smooth mirrors), in a broad frame of white ice or yet whiter snow, it is seen at once, as conspicuous (or more so) as a fly on a window-pane or a mirror. 

But in summer, how many hundreds crawl along the weedy shore or plunge in the long river unsuspected by the boatman! 

Even if the musquash is not there I often see the open clam shell on the edge of the ice, perfectly distinct a long way off, and he is betrayed. 


However, the edges of these silver lakes, — winter lakes, late freezers, swift-waters, musquash mirrors, breathing-holes, — to-day, after the morning's snow, are, by the water flowing back over the thin edges and staining the snow, a distinct yellow (brown-yellow) tinge for a rod or two on every side. This shows what and how much coloring matter there is in the river water. I doubt if it would be so at Walden. No doubt, however, we here get the impurer parts of the river, the scum as it were, repeatedly washed over at these places.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1859


Going by Dodd's, I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree before his house, standing square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time. See note to December 24, 1858 ("See another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter!")

I noticed the other day that even the golden-crested wren was one of the winter birds which have a black head, — in this case divided by yellow. See December 25, 1859 ("I can see a brilliant crown . . .the golden-crested wren, which I have not made out before . . .This little creature is contentedly seeking its food here alone this cold winter day on the shore of our frozen river.")

Those who depend on skylights found theirs but a dim, religious light this forenoon, owing to the thickness of snow resting on them. See December 27, 1853 ("High wind with more snow in the night. The snow is damp and covers the panes, darkening the room.")

I awake to find it snowing fast. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, — the deepest snow yet. See December 30, 1853 (“I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday. . . it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches.”); December 30, 1855 ("The snow which began last night has continued to fall very silently but steadily, and now it is not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet; a dry, light, powdery snow")

December 1859  snowfalls:

Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence. December 4, 1859

At 2 p. m. begins to snow, and snows till night. Still, normal storm, large flakes, warm enough, lodging. December 11, 1859

Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face, almost as much so as sand. It is cold also. It is drifting but not accumulating fast. I can see the woods about a quarter of a mile distant through it. That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side, — the regular snow-storm such as is painted. A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused. The snow was a little moist and the weather rather mild. Also I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six(?)-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm. Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it. Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain. December 14, 1859

The first kind of snow-storm, or that of yesterday, which ceased in the night after some three inches had fallen, was that kind that makes handsome drifts behind the walls. There are no drifts equal to these behind loosely built stone walls, the wind passing between the stones. Slight as this snow was, these drifts now extend back four or five feet and as high as the wall, on the north side of the Corner Bridge road. December 15, 1859

Snows very fast, large flakes, a very lodging snow, quite moist; turns to rain in afternoon. If we leave the sleigh for a moment, it whitens the seat, which must be turned over. We are soon thickly covered, and it lodges on the twigs of the trees and bushes, — there being but little wind, — giving them a very white and soft, spiritual look. Gives them a still, soft, and light look. When the flakes fall thus large and fast and are so moist and melting, we think it will not last long, and this turned to rain in a few hours, after three or four inches had fallen. To omit the first mere whitening, — There was the snow of the 4th. December. 11th was a lodging snow, it being mild and still, like to-day (only it was not so moist). Was succeeded next day noon by a strong and cold northwest wind. 14th, a fine, dry, cold, driving and drifting storm. 20th (to-day's), a very lodging, moist, and large-flaked snow, turning to rain. To be classed with the 11th in the main. This wets the woodchopper about as much as rain. December 20, 1859

The snow of yesterday having turned to rain in the afternoon, the snow is no longer (now that it is frozen) a uniformly level white, as when it had just fallen, but on all declivities you see it, even from a great distance, strongly marked with countless furrows or channels. These are about three inches deep, more or less parallel where the rain ran down. On hillsides these reach from top to bottom and give them a peculiar combed appearance. Hillsides around a hollow are thus very regularly marked by lines converging toward the centre at the bottom. In level fields the snow is not thus furrowed, but dimpled with a myriad little hollows where the water settled, and perhaps answering slightly to the inequalities of the ground. In level woods I do not see this regular dimpling — the rain being probably conducted down the trunks — nor the furrows on hillsides; the rain has been differently distributed by the trees. This makes a different impression from the fresh and uniformly level white surface of recently fallen snow. It is now, as it were, wrinkled with age. The incipient slosh of yesterday is now frozen, and makes good sleighing and a foundation for more. December 21, 1859

After being uniformly overcast all the forenoon, still and moderate weather, it begins to snow very gradually, at first imperceptibly, this afternoon, — at first I thought I imagined it, — and at length begins to snow in earnest about 6 p. m., but lasts only a few minutes. December 26, 1859

I awake to find it snowing fast, but it slackens in a few hours. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, — the deepest snow yet, and almost quite level. At first the flakes (this forenoon) were of middling size. At noon, when it was leaving off, they were of a different character. I observed them on my sleeve, — little slender spiculae about one tenth of an inch long, little dry splinters, sometimes two forking, united at one end, or two or three lying across one another, quite dry and fine; and so it concluded. December 30, 1859  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The deepest snow yet.

Those who depend on skylights

find theirs a dim light