A gray screech owl.

 

February 5.

Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings's barn on the meeting-house avenue. It had killed a dove there.

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.

Rice brings me an oak stick with a woodpecker's hole in it by which it reached a pupa.

The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was February 2d .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1861

This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26 and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl. See December 26, 1860 ("Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. . . . This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" . . .. It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long.") See also July 10, 1856 ("I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down,. . .Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound . . . I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant.")

 We hike to the fort via the rope trail making new tracks in compressed snow over a foot deep. At the lower view hear the spring note of the chickadee one seems to be calling another and then one carries on for quite some time hear the white breasted nuthatch as well I stay out of janes trail and for once keep up with her as it turns out because she is in excruciating pain with her right foot flopping to one side. But this is alleviated by a small adjustment to the padding after we get to the fort for the most part the dogs trail behind us 1, 2, 3 but as we near the Fort  acorn runs head crosses the stream and goes up there and waits. Loki meanwhile begins to trot and hunt through the deep snow. It was a good plan to leave the chair upside-down as I have a dry seat the temperature is a little over 30° perhaps over freezing and there is some sun in the woods and then in the tops of the trees and cliffs as dusk approaches we stop on porcupine ridge and look up at the pine tops glowing in the sun.

As dusk approaches

we look up at the pine tops

glowing in the sun. 

February 5, 2021

Tracking Melvin

February 5

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

2 p. m., 40°. 

I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms. Also have eaten the frozen-thawed apples under the trees, tracking all the ground over there. 

February 1st, though so cold and the snow so dry, as it blowed pretty hard, was a day of drift behind northerly walls, and when those shell-like drifts were formed, as well as the wild drifts of Hubbard's meadow described on the 3d. 

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. The river is open eight or ten rods there, and I noticed their tracks all about the river and close to the edge of the ice, thin as it was, for a dozen rods above and below the bridge. At first, being at a distance, I thought them dog-tracks, but I might have known that no dogs would ever have run about so there, on that thin ice and so near the edge of it. 

They were generally each four being from fifteen to twenty-four inches apart. Occasionally the track was somewhat like a rabbit's. I saw where one had apparently dragged himself along the ice. They had entered the water in many places, also travelled along under the slanting ice next the bank long  distances. They were evidently attracted by that open water. There was no distinct sliding place. 

Coming home last night in the twilight, I recognized a neighbor a dozen rods off by his walk or carriage, though it was so dark that I could not see a single feature of his person. Indeed, his person was all covered up excepting his face and hands, and I could not possibly have distinguished these at this distance from another man's. Nor was it owing to any peculiarity in his dress, for I should have known him though he had had on a perfectly new suit. It was because the man within the clothes moved them in a peculiar manner that I knew him thus at once at a distance and in the twilight. He made a certain figure in any clothes he might wear, and moved in it in a peculiar manner. Indeed, we have a very intimate knowledge of one another; we see through thick and thin; spirit meets spirit. 

A man hangs out innumerable signs by which we may know him. So, last summer, I knew another neighbor half a mile off up the river, though I did not see him, by the manner in which the breath from his lungs and mouth, i. e. his voice, made the air strike my ear. In that manner he communicated himself to all his acquaintance within a diameter of one mile (if it were all up and down the river). 

So I remember to have been sure once in a very dark night who was preceding me on the sidewalk, — though I could not see him, — by the sound of his tread. I was surprised to find that I knew it.

And to-day, seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. There was a thin snow on the ice, and I observed that he not only furrowed the snow for a foot before he completed his step, but that the (toe) of his track was always indefinite, as if his boot had been worn out and prolonged at the toe. I noticed that I and my companion made a clear and distinct track at the toe, but when I experimented, and tried to make a track like this by not lifting my feet but gliding and partly scuffing along, I found myself walking just like Melvin, and that perfectly convinced me that it was he. 

We have no occasion to wonder at the instinct of a dog. In these last two instances I surpassed the instinct of the dog. 

It may always be a question how much or how little of a man goes to any particular act. It is not merely by taking time and by a conscious effort that he betrays himself. A man is revealed, and a man is concealed, in a myriad unexpected ways; e.g., I can hardly think of a more effectual way of disguising neighbors to one another than by stripping them naked.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February, 5, 1860

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. See February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep.”)February 8, 1857 ("The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. "); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare.”); February 20, 1856 ("Up Assabet. See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday."); February 22, 1856 ("Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

Seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin, because it was accompanied by a hound's track. See December 2, 1856 ("Saw Melvin's lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. . . . I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent . . . Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him."); December 3, 1856 ("I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.”)

A man is revealed

and a man is concealed in 

unexpected ways.

The notes of birds cease to affect us as they did.

February 5

When we have experienced many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did. 

February 5, 2012

I see another butcher-bird on the top of a young tree by the pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1859

The loss of friends. See February 3, 1859 ("I perceive that we partially die ourselves through sympathy at the death of each of our friends or near relatives. Each such experience is an assault on our vital force. It becomes a source of wonder that they who have lost many friends still live.") Compare  January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had,"); June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me."); March 28, 1856 ("Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that."); February 8, 1857 ("And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded . . . I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind."); February 23, 1857 ('That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage . . . If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?"); November 3, 1858 ("How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there.")

The notes of birds cease to effect us. See July 5, 1852 ("Some birds are poets and sing all summer . . . Any man can write verses during the love season. ")

Another butcher-bird. See February 3, 1856 ("See near the Island a shrike glide by . . . with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion"); March 1, 1855 ("Saw a butcher-bird, as usual on top of a tree, and distinguished from a jay by black wings and tail and streak side of head.") and note to December 24, 1858 ("See another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Northern Shrike

The notes of birds cease 

to affect us as they did 

when we lose a friend.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The loss of a friend

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590205

Goose grass

February 5

P. M. — To Boaz’s Meadow. 

There is a plenty of that handsome-seeded grass which I think Tarbell called goose grass in the meadow south of the roadway, at Boaz’s Meadow, also in the meadows far north in the woods, and some in Minot Pratt’s meadow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1858

Boaz's Meadow. See November 11, 1857 ("That cellar-hole off northwest of Brooks Clark’s is where Boaz Brown used to live, and the andromeda swamp behind is “Boaz's (pronounced Boze's) meadow,” says Jacob Farmer, who has seen corn growing in the meadow. "); November 18, 1857 ("There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s . . .. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other.")

Mizzling

February 5

Mizzling rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1857

February 5, 2012

See February 5, 1853 ("You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them."); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); February 6, 1860 ("A rainy day.")

A Book of the Seasons: February 5 (tracking weather, fox, otter & Melvin; the trunks and branches of the trees)

The year is but 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.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

February 5.

Though on the back track

I draw nearer to the fox –

my thoughts grow foxy.

February 5, 1854

February 5, 2012

(black, white, yellow and grey birch)

The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley. February 5, 1855

The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was February 2d . February 5, 1861

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day. February 5, 1852

(In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. ) February 5, 1855

It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed. It sparkled as if we lived inside of a cave, but this morning it has moderated considerably and is snowing. Already one inch of snow has fallen. February 5, 1855

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting . . . I should say the average cold was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M. February 5, 1856

Mizzling rain. February 5, 1857

2 p. m., 40°. February, 5, 1860

A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. February 5, 1853

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, -- in sun, rain, and in the night. February 5, 1852

The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree. February 5, 1852

The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens. February 5, 1852

All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth. February 5, 1853

I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms. Also have eaten the frozen-thawed apples under the trees, tracking all the ground over there. February, 5, 1860

In the afternoons I have walked off freely up or down the river, without impediment or fear, looking for birds and birds’ nests and the tracks of animals; and, as often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. February 5, 1856

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. The river is open eight or ten rods there . . . They had entered the water in many places, also travelled along under the slanting ice next the bank long distances. They were evidently attracted by that open water. February 5, 1860

At Hubbard's blueberry swamp woods, near the bathing-place, came across a fox's track, which I think was made last night or since. February 5, 1854

I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step. February 5, 1854

Here was one track that crossed the road, — did not turn in it like a dog, — track of a wilder life. How distinct from the others! Such as was made before roads were, as if the road were a more recent track. February 5, 1854

And to-day, seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin. . .when I experimented, and tried to make a track like this by not lifting my feet but gliding and partly scuffing along, I found myself walking just like Melvin, and that perfectly convinced me that it was he.  February, 5, 1860

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down. 

February 5, 1852

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.   February 5, 1852

February 5, 2022

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo.

 

*****

February 5, 2017

December 2, 1856 ("Saw Melvin's lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. . . . I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent . . . Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him.")
December 3, 1856 ("I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.”)

January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light")

January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.");

January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.")

January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.")

January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

January 22, 1860 ('"Oh," said he, "I took the back track. It would be of no use to go the other way, you know."')
January 26, 1852 ("Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.")

January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);  

January 26, 1858 ("This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.") 

January 27, 1855 ("Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock. . . I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.")

January 27, 1858 ("Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward.");

February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")

February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.”)

February 3, 1856 ("See near the Island a shrike glide by . . . with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion")

February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually. . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.")

February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep.”)

February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.")

Silvery-lighted boughs

and shadowy intervals

belong to one tree.

February 5, 1852

 

February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.);

February 6, 1860 ("A rainy day.")

February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.");

February 7, 1856 (" During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

February 8, 1857 ("The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. ") 

February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.”)

February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains.")

 May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.")

September 24, 1859 (" Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry.")

February 5, 2017

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.

  April 7, 1853 

February 3 <<<<<<<<   February 5 >>>>>>>>  February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 5

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/hdt05feb

Walking on the River.

February 5

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. 

I have walked much on the river this winter, but, ever since it froze over, it has been on a snow-clad river, or pond. They have been river walks because the snow was shallowest there. 

Even the meadows, on account of the firmer crust, have been more passable than the uplands. 

In the afternoons I have walked off freely up or down the river, without impediment or fear, looking for birds and birds’ nests and the tracks of animals; and, as often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. 

Fisher tracks

February 5, 2017

If it were still after it, the tracks were beautifully distinct. If strong winds blew, the dry leaves, losing their holds, traversed and scored it in all directions. 

The sleighing would have been excellent all the month past if it had not been for the drifting of the surface snow into the track whenever the wind blew, but that crust on the old snow has prevented very deep drifts.

I should say the average cold was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1856

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. See February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather.")

As often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. See January 31, 1856  ("The old tracks are blotted out, and new and fresher ones are to be discerned. It is a tabula rasa. These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album."); and note to February 2, 1856 ("Snows again last night, perhaps an inch, erasing the old tracks and giving us a blank page again, restoring the purity of nature.")

 I have walked much on the river this winter . . .because the snow was shallowest there. See January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter."); 

I should say the average cold [the month past]was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M. See January 26, 1856 ("Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw."); February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")

February 5. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 5

In the afternoons

I have walked off freely up

or down the river.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Walking on the River

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560205

In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather.

February 5.

It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed. It sparkled as if we lived inside of a cave, but this morning it has moderated considerably and is snowing. Already one inch of snow has fallen.

(In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember.)

Day before yesterday the fine snow, blowing over the meadow in parallel streams between which the darker ice was seen, looked just like the steam curling along the surface of a river. In the midst of this, midleg deep at least, you surged along. It was surprising how, in the midst of all this stationary and drifting snow, the skate found a smooth and level surface over which it glided so securely, with a muffled rumble. 

The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley. 

Found Therien cutting down the two largest chestnuts in the wood-lot behind where my house was. On the butt of one about two feet in diameter I count seventy-five rings. T. soon after breaks his axe in cutting through a knot in this tree, which he is cutting up for posts. 

He broke out a piece half an inch deep. This he says often happens. Perhaps there is some frost in his axe. Several choppers have broken their axes to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1855

It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed. It sparkled as if we lived inside of a cave. See January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light")

In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. See January 26, 1852 ("Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.")

It was surprising how, in the midst of all this stationary and drifting snow, the skate found a smooth and level surface . See February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.”)

The fine snow, blowing over the meadow looked just like the steam curling along the surface of a river. See February 3, 1855 (" . . . alive with flowing streams of snow, in form like the steam which curls along a river’s surface at sunrise.”); January 19, 1852 ("The snow blowing far off in the sun . . .looks like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning.")

Though on the back track, I draw nearer to the fox – my thoughts grow foxy.

February 5. 

The fox that invaded the farmer's poultry-yard last night came from a great distance. 

At Hubbard's blueberry swamp woods, near the bathing-place, came across a fox's track, which I think was made last night or since. The tracks were about two inches long, or a little less, by one and a half wide, shaped thus where the snow was only half an inch deep on ice:

generally from nine to fifteen inches apart longitudinally and three to four inches apart transversely. It came from the west. 

I followed it back. At first it was difficult to trace, to investigate, it, amid some rabbit tracks, of which I did not know whether they had been made before or since. It soon led out of the woods on to the ice of the meadow to a slight prominence, then turned and followed along the side of the wood, then crossed the meadow directly to the riverside just below the mouth of Nut Meadow Brook, visited a muskrat- house there and left its mark, — watered, — for, dog-like, it turned aside to every muskrat-house or the like prominence near its route and left its mark there. You could easily scent it there. 

It turned into the meadow eastward once or twice as it went up the riverside, and, after visiting another muskrat's house, where it left its manure, large and light-colored, as if composed of fir, crossed the river and John Hosmer's meadow and potato-field and the road south of Nut Meadow Bridge. (If it had been a dog it would have turned when it reached the road.) 

It was not lost then, but led straight across, through J. Hosmer's field and meadow again, and over ditch and up side-hill in the woods; and there, on the side of the hill, I could see where its tail had grazed the snow. It was then mixed with rabbit-tracks, but was easily unravelled. Passed out of the wood into J. P. Brown's land, over some mice or mole tracks, then over the middle of Brown's meadows westward, to Tarbell's meadows, till at last, by the brook, I found that it had had a companion up to that point, which turned off. 

Then I saw the large tracks of hounds on the trail. Still it held on, from straight across the road again, some way on an old dog's trail; had trodden and nosed very much about some hardhacks in the field beyond, where were a few mice-tracks, as if for food, the hound's tracks numerous with it; and so I traced it into the Ministerial Swamp, where, the snow-storm increasing, I left it, having traced it back more than a mile westward in a pretty direct course.  

Here was one track that crossed the road, — did not turn in it like a dog, — track of a wilder life. How distinct from the others! Such as was made before roads were, as if the road were a more recent track. This traveller does not turn when he strikes the trail of man.

I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1854

Though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step. See January 27, 1855 ("Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock . . . I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Though on the back track

I draw nearer to the fox – 

my thoughts grow foxy.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, on the back track

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/hdt540205

A thick fog.

February 5

February 5, 2012

A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. 

It is a lichen day. Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves, but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens, etc., etc. All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth. 

I remember now that the mist was much thicker over the pond than elsewhere. I could not distinguish a man there more than ten rods off, and the woods, seen dimly across a bay, were mistaken for the opposite side of the pond. I could almost fancy a bay of an acre in extent the whole pond. Elsewhere, methinks, I could see twice as far. I felt the greater coolness of the air over the pond, which it was, I suppose, that condensed the vapor more there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1853


It is a lichen day. See February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”);  February 5, 1860 (" I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms.") See also January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);  January 26, 1858 ("This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst studying lichens.

I am detained to contemplate Hubbard's hillside.

February 5

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day.

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night. The oaks bare of leaves on Hubbard's hillside are now a light gray in the sun, and their boughs, seen against the pines behind, are a very agreeable maze.

The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens. The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1852

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day. See February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day."); January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me."); May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.")

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night. See September 10, 1851 ("As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I see how differently they look at different hours of the day."); February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.”) See also January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue."); January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter."); February 7, 1856 (" During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

Feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually. . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.") and note to December 8, 1855 ("the silvery sheen . . . from masses of white pine needles.")

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. See  January 27, 1858 ("Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward."); March 8, 1859 ("Such a day as this, I. . . explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing"); see also Walden  ("Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet, I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.")

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains. See December 16, 1859 ("[Gerard] describes according to his natural delight in the plants. It is a man's knowledge added to a child's keen joy who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends.")

Silvery-lighted boughs

and shadowy intervals

belong to one tree.