Four days of fog in midwinter; beauty become visible

January 18. 

January 18, 2019

That wonderful frostwork of the 13th and 14th was too rare to be neglected, —succeeded as it was, also, by two days of glaze, —but, having company, I lost half the advantage of it. 

It was remarkable to have a fog for four days in midwinter without wind. We had just had sudden severe cold weather, and I suspect that the fog was occasioned by a warmer air, probably from the sea, coming into contact with our cold ice-and-snow-clad earth. 

The hoar frost formed of the fog was such a one as I do not remember on such a scale. Apparently as the fog was coarser and far more abundant, it was whiter, less delicate to examine, and of far greater depth than a frostwork formed of dew. 

We did not have an opportunity to see how it would look in the sun, but seen against the mist or fog it was too fair to be remembered. The trees were the ghosts of trees appearing in their winding sheets, an intenser white against the comparatively dusky ground of the fog. 

I rode to Acton in the after noon of the 13th, and I remember the wonderful avenue of these faery trees which everywhere over arched my road. The elms, from their form and size, were particularly beautiful. As far as I observed, the frostwork was deepest in the low grounds, especially on the Salix alba there. 

I learn from the papers that this phenomenon prevailed all over this part of the country and attracted the admiration of all. The trees on Boston Common were clad in the same snow-white livery with our Musketaquid trees. 

Perhaps the most unusual thing about this phenomenon was its duration. 

The air seemed almost perfectly still the first day, and I did not perceive that the frosting lost anything; nay, it evidently grew during the first half of the day at least, for it was cold at the same time that it was foggy.

Every one, no doubt, has looked with delight, holding his face low, at that beautiful frostwork which so frequently in winter mornings is seen bristling about the throat of every breathing-hole in the earth’s surface. In this case the fog, the earth’s breath made visible, was in such abundance that it invested all our vales and hills, and the frostwork, accordingly, instead of being confined to the chinks and crannies of the earth, covered the mightiest trees, so that we, walking beneath them, had the same wonderful prospect and environment that an insect would have in the former case. 

We, going along our roads, had such a prospect as an insect would have making its way through a chink in the earth which was bristling with hoar frost. 

That glaze! I know what it was by my own experience; it was the frozen breath of the earth upon its beard. 

But to remember still that frostwork, I do not know why it should build out northward alone, while the twig is perfectly bare on the south side. Is not the phenomenon electrical? You might Twig have guided your self night or day by observing on which side the twigs it was. Closely examined, it is a coarse aggregation of thin flakes or leafets. 

Standing a little east or west of an evergreen, you saw considerable of its-greenness, especially the second day, when much had fallen; but in each case successively you were agreeably disappointed when you arrived exactly north of the tree and saw it to best advantage. Take the most rigid tree, the whole effect is peculiarly soft and spirit-like, for there is no marked edge or outline. 

How could you draw the outline of these snowy fingers seen against the fog, without exaggeration? There is no more a boundary-line or circumference that can be drawn, than a diameter. 

Hardly could the New England farmer drive to market under these trees with out feeling that his sense of beauty was addressed. He would be aware that the phenomenon called beauty was become visible, if one were at leisure or had had the right culture to appreciate it. 

A miller with whom I rode actually remarked on the beauty of the trees; and a farmer told me in all sincerity that, having occasion to go into Walden Woods in his sleigh, he thought he never saw anything so beautiful in all his life, and if there had been men there who knew how to write about it, it would have been a great occasion for them. 

Many times I thought that if the particular tree, commonly an elm, under which I was walking or riding were the only one like it in the country, it would  worth a journey across the continent to see it. Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys would be under taken on hearing a true account of it. But, instead of being confined to a single tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as the air itself. 

Every man’s wood lot was a miracle and surprise to him, and for those who could not go so far there were the trees in the street and the weeds in the yard. It was much like (in effect) that snow that lodges on the fine dead twigs on the_ lower part of a pine wood, resting there in the twilight commonly only till it has done snowing and the wind arises. But in this case it did not rest on the twig, but grew out from it horizontally, and it was not confined to the lowest twigs, but covered the whole forest and every surface. 

Looking down the street, you might say that the scene differed from the ordinary one as frosted cake differs from plain bread. In some moods you might suspect that it was the work of enchantment. Some magician had put your village into a crucible and it had crystallized thus. 

The weeping willow, with its thickened twigs, seemed more precise and regularly curved than ever, and as still as if it were carved of alabaster. 

The maples, with their few long shoots, were rather set and still. 

It was remarkable that 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. If any tree is set and stiff, it was now more stiff, if airy and graceful, it was now more graceful. 

The birches especially were a great ornament.

 As usual in the winter, where a rock rises above the ice it was a mere hillock covered with a white counterpane, and often where one end, perhaps the higher, of the rock was' bare on one side it looked like a seal or walrus slowly lifting itself above the surface, or resting there. 

One suggested a bonfire under the elms in the street at night. 


P. M. — Up Assabet to bridge. Two or more inches of snow fell last night. In the expanse this side Mantatuket Rock I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows. They have trampled and peeked much in some spots under the button-bushes where these seeds are still left and dibbled into the snow by them. It would seem, then, that they eat them. 

The only other seeds there can be there are those of the mikania, for I look for them. You will see a crow’s track beginning in the middle of the river, where one alighted. I notice such a track as this, where one alighted, and apparently struck its spread tail into the snow at the same time with its feet. 

I see afterward where a wing’s quills have marked the snow much like a partridge’s. The snow is very light, so that the tracks are rarely distinct, and as they often advance by hops some might mistake it  for a squirrel’s or mink’s track. 

I suspect that they came here yesterday after minnows when the fishermen were gone, and that has brought them here to-day in spite of the snow. They evidently look out sharp for a morsel of fish.

I see where, by the red maple above Pinxter Swamp, they have picked over the fine dark-greenish moss from button-bush, and the leaves which had formed a squirrel’s nest, knocking it down on to the river and there treading about and pecking a small piece, apparently for some worms or insects that were in it, as if they were hard pushed. 

I am pretty sure to find tracks under the last-named bank, in the edge of the low swamp white oak wood, either of rabbits or mice, crows or fox. The two former generally keep close under the bank, as the safest beat for them, but sometimes I see where they hopped across the river several times last night, and I can imagine how shyly they looked back from the opposite side. The mice occasionally hop out a rod and back, making a semicircle; more rarely quite across. 

In my walk of the 16th, I noticed that almost all the way after leaving the railroad till I reached the high way near Hubbard’s Bridge I was on the track of a fox. My beat was nearly identical with its (or there may have been several), —lengthwise through the Cassandra Ponds and Hollows by the lowest and most open path, along the narrow grown-up hillside path to Pleasant Meadow, and just along the edge of the button bushes, visiting every musquash-house, and crossing the river from time to time. 

I notice in midstream, opposite the cooper’s shore, where an opening has been made for ice, some eighteen feet square, and has not frozen over again, but the water is seen passing with a swift current and disappearing quickly under the thin edge of the newly formed ice. I notice one of those fine unaccountable cobweb like lines, nearly straight though undulating, stretched from side to side of this opening, about eight inches from the edge of the ice on the lower side. 

It looked at first as if the water, compared with the ice, was higher, in fact heaped up at that point on account of the obstruction which the lower side offered, and that it then suddenly descended and passed under the thin edge of the newly formed ice! 

The ridge of the watery dam was a narrow light line, and there were on the upper side, parallel with it, eight or ten other light lines or ripples alternating with dark within the breadth of three or four inches, growing less and less distinct; and on the lower side there was a sudden slope (apparently to the level of the water below) about one inch wide. 

It was remarkable that the current  and all that it carried with it passed incessantly through and over these lines without in the least disturbing them, or rather breaking them, only producing that slight undulation. I describe it as it appears. 

Of the large black oaks on the north bank near Prescott Barrett’s, some are quite bare, others have about as many leaves on their lower parts as a white oak. The swamp white oaks opposite are all bare. I notice in two places where a musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail.

To-day, an average winter day, I notice no vapor over the open part of the river below the Island, as I did the very cold afternoon of the 10th. The air and water are probably now too nearly of the same temperature. That, then, in the winter, is a phenomenon of very cold weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1859

That wonderful frostwork of the 13th and 14th. See January 13, 1859 ("There is built out horizontally on the north side of every twig and other surface a very remarkable sort of hoar frost, the crystallized fog, which is still increasing.. . . already full an inch deep on many trees, and gets to be much more, perhaps an inch and a half even, on some in the course of the day. It is quite rare here, at least on this scale."); January 14, 1859 ("The fog-frosts and the fog continue . . . The fog turns to a fine rain at noon, and in the evening and night it produces a glaze,")

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. Compare January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.") See also note to January 13, 1859 ("The woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color")

I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows. I notice where one alighted, and apparently struck its spread tail into the snow at the same time with its feet. See January 19, 1859 ("Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday.")

In my walk of the 16th, I noticed that almost all the way after leaving the railroad till I reached the high way near Hubbard’s Bridge I was on the track of a fox. My beat was nearly identical with its (or there may have been several), —lengthwise through the Cassandra Ponds and Hollows by the lowest and most open path. See December 25, 1858 ("I notice that a fox has taken pretty much my own course along the Andromeda Ponds.")

A musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail. See January 3, 1860 ("[Melvin] speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow."); February 28, 1857 ("I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 18; also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau Between me and the sky. 

Beautiful frostwork,

the earth's breath made visible,

covers the forest.

The distinct dark blue

of pine woods seen through thin fog

a mile or more off.

 Crow tracks – One begins

in the middle of the river

where it alighted.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Four days of fog in midwinter 

 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

The fog-frosts and the fog continue.

January 14. 

The fog-frosts and the fog continue, though considerable of the frostwork has fallen. This forenoon I walk up the Assabet to see it. 

The hemlocks are perhaps a richer sight than any tree, — such Christmas trees, thus sugared, as were never seen. On  side you see more or less greenness, but when you stand due north they are unexpectedly white and rich, so beautifully still, and when you look under them you see some great rock, or rocks, all hoary with the same, and a finer frost on the very fine dead hemlock twigs there and on hanging roots and twigs, quite like the cobwebs in a grist-mill covered with meal,-- and it implies a stillness like that; or it is like the lightest down glued on. 

The birch, from its outline and its numerous twigs, is also one of the prettiest trees in this dress. 

The fog turns to a fine rain at noon, and in the evening and night it produces a glaze, which this morning, —

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1859

Hoar frost, crystallized fog, on the north side of every twig.

January 13. 

January 13, 2019

The cold spell is over, and here this morning is a fog or mist; the wind, if there is any, I think, northerly; and there is built out horizontally on the north side of every twig and other surface a very remarkable sort of hoar frost, the crystallized fog, which is still increasing. 

Mr. Edwin Morton was telling me night before last of a similar phenomenon witnessed in central New York, the fog of highlands or mountains crystallizing in this way and forming a white fringe or frost on the trees even to an inch and a half. 

This is already full an inch deep on many trees, and gets to be much more, perhaps an inch and a half even, on some in the course of the day. It is quite rare here, at least on  this scale. 

The mist lasts all this day, though it is far from warm (+ 11° at 8 A. M.), and till noon of the 14th, when it becomes rain, and all this time there is exceedingly little if any wind. 

I go to the river this morning and walk up it to see the trees and bushes along it. 

As the frostwork (which is not thin and transparent like ice, but white and snow-like, or between the distinctly leaf with veins and a mere aggregation of snow, though you easily distinguish the distinct leaves) is built out northward from each surface, spreading at an angle of about forty-five degrees, i. e. some twenty-odd each side of the north, you must stand on the north side and look south at the trees, etc., when they appear, except the large limbs and trunk, wholly of snow or frostwork, mere ghosts of trees, seen softly against the mist for a background. 

It is mist on mist. 

The outline and character of each tree is more distinctly exhibited, being exaggerated, and you notice any peculiarity in the disposition of the twigs. 

• Some elm twigs, thus enlarged into snowy fingers, are strikingly regular and handsome.

• In the case of most evergreens, it amounts to a very rich sugaring, being so firmly attached. 

• The weeping willow seems to weep with more remarkable and regular curve than ever, and stands still and white with thickened twigs, as if carved in white marble or alabaster. 

• Those trees, like alders, which have not grown much the past year — which have short and angular twigs—are the richest in effect. The end of each alder twig is recurved where the drooping catkin is concealed. On one side you see the dark-brown fruit, but on the north that too is concealed. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1859

A very remarkable sort of hoar frost, the crystallized fog, which is still increasing, an inch deep on many trees, and gets to be much more, perhaps an inch and a half even, on some in the course of the day. It is quite rare here, at least on this scale. See November 23, 1852 (“You must go forth very early to see a hoar frost, which is rare here”); December 16 1853 (“These days, when the earth is still bare and the weather is so warm as to create much vapor by day, are the best for these frost works.”); February 9, 1860 ("A hoar frost on the ground this morning — for the open fields are mostly bare — was quite a novel sight. I had noticed some vapor in the air late last evening"); February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”)

Through the mist the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color. See January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black," ); 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 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter."); see also note to February 6, 1852 ("mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing."

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 13

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 © 2009-2022

The morning light

December 16. 

Friday. 

December 16, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would you be well

see that you are attuned to

each mood of nature.

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt531216

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections

November 27. 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved. 

Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises. 

Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.

I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork. 

P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's. 

The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast. 

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]

It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. 

The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south. 

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. 

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory See November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

.

Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection.' See  November 30, 1853 ("Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”) ; October 14, 1857 (“[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”)

See also, on reading Ruskin, October 6, 1857 (“How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is”); October 29, 1857 (“The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.”)

Note.  On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:

"Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the vol-umes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them."

* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."

November 27. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 27

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

Thin and fragile leaf crystals melt under my breath.

January 1

P. M. —To Walden. 

January 1, 2016

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. This is now, therefore, bare, while the river, which was frozen before, is covered with snow.

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.

The track-repairers have shovelled four little paths by the sides of the rails, all the way from the depot to Walden. As I went by the engine-house, I saw great icicles four feet long hanging from the eastern eaves, like slender pointed spears, the last half blown aside by the wind: and still more.

By the side of the Deep Cut are the tracks of probably tree sparrows about the weeds, and of partridges.

On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion. 

The ice is frequently thickly covered with them for many rods. They seem to be connected with the rosettes,—a running together of them. They look like a loose web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of down, for their shafts are lost in a tuft of fine snow like the down about the shaft of a feather, as if a feather bed had been shaken over the ice.

They are, on a close examination, surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns, only very broad for their length and commonly more on one side the midrib than the other. They are from an inch to an inch and a half long and three quarters wide, and slanted, where I look, from the southwest.

They have, first, a very distinct midrib, though so thin that they cannot be taken up; then, distinct ribs branching from this, commonly opposite, and minute ribs springing again from these last, as in many ferns, the last running to each crenation in the border. How much further they are subdivided, the naked eye cannot discern.

They are so thin and fragile that they melt under your breath while looking closely at them.

A fisherman says they were much finer in the morning. In other places the ice is strewn with a different kind of frostwork in little patches, as if oats had been spilled, like fibres of asbestos rolled, a half or three quarters of an inch long and an eighth or more wide. Here and there patches of them a foot or two over. Like some boreal grain spilled.

Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day. 

January 1, 2017

On the north shore, near the railroad, I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits, and where they had squatted under or rather by the side of an alder stem or the like, and left many balls in the pure snow. Many have run in one course.

In the midst of them I see the track of a large rabbit, probably a white one, which was evidently on the full spring. Its tracks are four feet apart, and, unlike the others, which are on the surface even of this light snow, these break through deep, making a hole six inches over. Why was this one in such haste?

I conclude to trace him back and find out. His bounds grow greater and greater as I go back, now six feet quite, and a few rods further are the tracks of a fox (possibly a dog, but I think not) exactly on the trail! A little further, where the rabbit was ascending a considerable slope, through this snow nearly a foot deep, the bounds measure full seven feet, leaving the snow untouched for that space between.

It appears that the fox had started the rabbit from a bank on which it was resting, near a young hemlock, and pursued it only a dozen rods up the hill, and then gave up the chase,—and well he might, methought.

In a rabbit’s track the two forefeet are the furthest apart. This chase occurred probably in the night, either the last or night before, when there was not a man within a mile; but, treading on these very deep and distinct tracks, it was as if I had witnessed it, and in imagination I could see the sharp eyes of the crafty fox and the palpitating breast of the timorous rabbit, listening behind.

We unwittingly traverse the scenery of what tragedies! Every square rod, perchance, was the scene of a life or death struggle last night. As you track the rabbit further off, its bounds becoming shorter and shorter, you follow also surely its changing moods from desperate terror till it walks calmly and reassured over the snow without breaking its very slight crust, — perchance till it gnaws some twig composedly, —and in the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.

Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1856 

A very small patch of Walden looks at a little distance exactly like open water, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water. See April 13, 1856 (“[D]ark-green clear ice . . . At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still . . .it is blue as in summer.“); December 18, 1852 ("I slid over it with a little misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. “)

Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day. See December 28, 1856 ("There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords");  June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind.”); December 22, 1859 ("The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won't bite. You won't catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had "fisherman's luck," and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow. . . .[T]he pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day"); May 6, 1858 ("One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it")

Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately. See January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for, tracing back the rabbit, I found that it had first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.”)

January 1. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, January 1

While looking closely,

thin and fragile leaf crystals

melt under my breath.

Here two fishermen

know not why they have no bites

this clear winter day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A clear winter day.

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

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