The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
The pond does not thunder every evening,
and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering;
but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does.
Who would have suspected so large and cold
and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive?
The scream of a jay –
cold, hard, tense, frozen music
like the winter sky.
February 12 , 1854
February 12, 2023
Colder than yesterday morning; perhaps the coldest of the winter. February 12, 1858
The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. February 12, 1857
Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes. February 12, 1857
It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. February 12, 1854
The snow or crust and cold weather began December 26th, and not till February 7th was there any considerable relenting, when it rained a little; i. e. forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, and no serious thaw till the 11th, or yesterday. February 12, 1856
For twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!! February 12, 1856
Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42° February 12, 1856
I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. February 12, 1854
To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun.
February 12, 1854
It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare.
February 12, 1854
And you hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself.
February 12, 1854
The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering, for it feels scarcely perceptible changes in the weather. February 12, 1854
Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the buds expand in the spring. February 12, 1854
For the earth is all alive and covered with feelers of sensation, papillae. The hardest and largest rock, the broadest ocean, is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. Though you may perceive no difference in the weather, the pond does. February 12, 1854
All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees. Is not this what was so blue in the atmosphere yesterday afternoon? February 12, 1855
There is very little wind, here under Fair Haven especially. I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens. February 12, 1854
A very pleasant and warm afternoon. There is a softening of the air and snow. February 12, 1855
The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance. February 12, 1855
On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. February 12, 1860
I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. February 12, 1855
It is very pleasant to stand now in a high pine wood where the sun shines in amid the pines and hemlocks and maples as in a warm apartment. February 12, 1855
A beautiful day, with but little snow or ice on the ground. February 12, 1851
On those parts of the hill which are bare, I see the radical leaves of the butter cup, mouse-ear, and the thistle. February 12, 1854
About the ledum pond-hole there is an abundance of that abnormal growth of the spruce. Instead of a regular, free, and open growth, you have a multitude of slender branches crowded together, putting out from the summit or side of the stem and shooting up nearly perpendicularly, with dense, fine, wiry branchlets and fine needles, which have an impoverished look, altogether forming a broom-like mass, very much like a heath. February 12, 1858
There is, apparently, more of the Andromeda Polifolia in that swamp than anywhere else in Concord. February 12, 1858
I observe no mouse tracks in the fields and meadows. The snow is so light and deep that they have run wholly underneath, and I see in the fields here and there a little hole in the crust where they have come to the surface. February 12, 1855
In cold weather you see not only men's beards and the hair about the muzzles of oxen whitened with their frozen breath, but countless holes in the banks, which are the nostrils of the earth, white with the frozen earth’s breath. February 12, 1858
I saw to-day something new to me as I walked along the edge of the meadow. February 12, 1851
Along the channel of the river I saw at a distance . . . thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river . . . like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats. February 12, 1851
At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water.
February 12, 1860
That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring?
February 12, 1860
How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible.
February 12, 1860
It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town.
February 12, 1860
I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.
February 12, 1860
How different the sunlight over thawing snow from the same over dry, frozen snow! The former excites me strangely, and I experience a spring-like melting in my thoughts. February 12, 1856
Sunlight thawing snow
strangely excites a springlike
melting in my thoughts.
February 12, 1856
In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! February 12, 1860
Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. February 12, 1860
Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. February 12, 1860
How few are aware that in winter,
when the earth is covered with snow and ice,
the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double!
February 12, 2023
December 25, 1853 ('About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun.")
January 1, 1853 ("I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature") 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.")
January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”) January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs.")January 22, 1860 ("Crows . . . are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow.")
January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . . There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")
January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones ") January 30, 1860 ("There are certain sounds invariably heard in warm and thawing days in winter, such as the crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and sometimes the gobbling of turkeys.")
February 1, 1856 ("Blue jays and chickadees also common in the village, more than usual") February 1, 1857 ("Thermometer at 42°.")
February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter. ") February 5, 1860 ("2 p. m., 40°.")
February 7, 1857 ("Another warm day, the snow fast going off . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m.") February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm.")
February 7, 1860 ("Thermometer 43°.")
February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks") February 8, 1857 ("The softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.")
February 8, 1857 ("It is exciting to walk over the moist, bare pastures, though slumping four or five inches, and see the green mosses again")February 8, 1860 ("The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both.") February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air.") February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc.")
February 8. 1860 ("Thermometer 43.40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.") February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy.")
February 9, 1854 ("There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. "); February 9, 1856 ("Thermometer 30°. This and yesterday comparatively warm weather.");\ February 11, 1854 ("The dry black female catkins of the alder are an interesting sight")
February 11, 1855 ("The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard.")
February 11, 1856 ("I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning.")
February 13, 1855 ("The tracks of partridges are more remarkable in this snow than usual, it is so light, being at the same time a foot deep.. . . I see where many have dived into the snow . . . I scared one from its hole only half a rod in front of me now at 11 A.M.")
February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us")
February 13, 1860 ("There is the purple of the snow in drifts or on hills, of the mountains, and clouds at evening. . . . I suspect that the green and rose (or purple) are not noticed on ice and snow unless it is pretty cold")February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°.") February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.")
February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance.")February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds.") February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . .I listen ever for something spring-like in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”)
February 18, 1857 ("I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. The very grain of the air seems to have undergone a change ")
February 21, 1855 ("I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow.") February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring. I even listen for the first bluebird.”); February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.") February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°.")February 24, 1857 ("A fine spring morning. . . It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced") February 24, 1857 ("I walk without a greatcoat. A chickadee with its winter lisp flits over, and I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth.")
February 24, 1860 ("Thermometer 42. A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air.")
March 4, 1859 ("We stood still a few moments and listened to hear a spring bird. We heard only the jay screaming in the distance and the cawing of a crow") March 13, 1853 ("I hear only crows and blue jays and chickadees lisping. Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. The woods are still.")
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
"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/HDT12Feb
