The value of the pitch pine in winter.

January 31. 

The value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snow so finely. I see it now afar on the hillsides decking itself with it, its whited towers forming coverts where the rabbit and the gray squirrel lurk. It makes the most cheerful winter scenery beheld from the window, you know so well the nature of the coverts and the sombre light it makes.

The young oaks, with their red leaves, covering so many acres, are also an indispensable feature of the winter landscape, and the limbs of oak woods where some of the trees have been cut off 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1852 

The value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snowso finely. See December 17, 1851 ("The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches."); January 30, 1841("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple."); January 19, 1855 ("On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts . . . Under one pitch pine, which shut down to the ground on every side, you could not see the sky at all, but sat in a gloomy light as in a tent"); February 16, 1860 ("How handsome . . . the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams' heads! The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Pitch Pine in Winter

The young oaks, with their red leaves. . . are also an indispensable feature of the winter landscape. See January 2, 1859 ("All our large oaks may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower limbs and about the trunks . . .while the same trees when young are all alike thickly clothed in the winter."); January 24, 1852 ("The oaks are made thus to retain their leaves, that they may play over the snow-crust and add variety to the winter landscape") See also December 11, 1858 ("While the oak leaves look redder and warmer, the pines look much darker since the snow has fallen (the hemlocks darker still"); December 21, 1854 ("A perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still"); January 19, 1859 ("What warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun. At this season we do not want any more color."); Compare January 2, 1859 ("The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown.")

A time to see the character of the tree.

December 17

December 17, 2017

A piercing cold afternoon, wading in the snow.

R. Rice was going to Sudbury to put his bees into the cellar for fear they would freeze. He had a small hive; not enough to keep each other warm.

The pitch pine woods on the right of the Corner road.

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches, their low branches rising at a small angle and meeting each other.

A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a sombre twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade.

The winter morning is the time to see the woods and shrubs in their perfection, wearing their snowy and frosty dress. Even he who visits them half an hour after sunrise will have lost some of their most delicate and fleeting beauties. The trees wear their snowy burden but coarsely after midday, and it no longer expresses the character of the tree.

I observed that early in the morning every pine-needle was covered with a frosty sheath, but soon after sunrise it was all gone.

You walk in the pitch pine wood as under a penthouse. The stems and branches of the trees look black by contrast. You wander zigzag through the aisles of the wood, where stillness and twilight reign.

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last.

I do not know but a pine wood is as substantial and as memorable a fact as a friend. I am more sure to come away from it cheered, than from those who come nearest to being my friends.

It is unfortunate for the chopper and the walker when the cold wind comes from the same side with the sun, for then he cannot find a warm recess in which to sit.

It is pleasant to walk now through open and stately white pine woods. Their plumes do not hold so much snow commonly, unless where their limbs rest or are weighed down on to a neighboring tree.

It is cold but still in their midst, where the snow is untracked by man, and ever and anon you see the snow-dust, shone on by the sun, falling from their tops and, as it strikes the lower limbs, producing innumerable new showers. For, as after a rain there is a second rain in the woods, so after a light snow there is a second snow in the woods, when the wind rises.

The branches of the white pine are more horizontal than those of the pitch, and the white streaks of snow on them look accordingly.

I perceive that the young black oaks and the red oaks, too, methinks, still keep their leaves as well as the white.

This piercing wind is so nearly from the west this afternoon that, to stand at once in a sheltered and a sunny place, you must seek the south-southeast side of the woods.

What slight but important distinctions between one creature and another! What little, but essential, advantages one enjoys over another! I noticed this afternoon a squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends, but many creatures strive in vain to get at him.

The lower branches of the hemlock point down, and even trail on the ground, the whole tree making a perfect canopy.

When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder.

One of the best men I know often offends me by uttering made words — the very best words, of course, or dinner speeches, most smooth and gracious and fluent repartees, a sort of talking to Buncombe, a dash of polite conversation, a graceful bending, as if I were Master Slingsby of promising parts, from the University. O would you but be simple and downright! Would you but cease your palaver! It is the misfortune of being a gentleman and famous. The conversation of gentlemen after dinner! One of the best of men and wisest, to whom this diabolical formality will adhere. Repeating himself, shampooing himself! Passing the time of day, as if he were just introduced! No words are so tedious. Never a natural or simple word or yawn. It produces an appearance of phlegm and stupidity in me the auditor. I am suddenly the closest and most phlegmatic of mortals, and the conversation comes to naught. Such speeches as an ex-Member of Congress might make to an ex-Member of Parliament.

To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not  intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what purpose will you explain?

My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that company, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1851

A squirrel's nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends. See December 17, 1855 ("A remarkably fine, springlike morning . . . Methinks every squirrel will be out now. "); December 17, 1859 ("I see many tracks of squirrels . . . I see no nests in the trees, but numerous holes through the snow into the earth, whence they have emerged . . . they will dig down through the snow and come right upon a pine cone or a hickory-nut or an acorn, which you and I cannot do")

The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches. See  January 30, 1841("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple."); January 31, 1852 ("The value of the pitch pine in winter is that it holds the snow so finely. . . .It makes the most cheerful winter scenery beheld from the window, you know so well the nature of the coverts and the sombre light it makes"); January 19, 1855 ("The snow lay in great continuous masses  . . . On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts.. . . Under one pitch pine, which shut down to the ground on every side, you could not see the sky at all, but sat in a gloomy light as in a tent"); February 16, 1860 ("Snow, lodging on trees, — leaf, bough, and trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry, the side of a high pine wood, well grayed with the snow that has lodged on it, and the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams' heads! The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow..") See also December 19, 1851 (" Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it?")

Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last. See July 7, 1851 ("The writer expressing his thought must be . . .well poised upon the facts, the experience, that secures his whole attention! All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that. . . . I express adequately only the thought which I love to express."); August 19, 1851 ("How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); September 4-7, 1851 (“I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); November 9, 1851 ("Facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought. . . Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); November 12, 1851 ("Write often, write upon a thousand themes . . .");  February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts"); February 10, 1852 ("Write while the heat is in you.")

After a light snow 

a second snow in the woods

when the wind rises.

Ever and anon 

 snow-dust, shone on by the sun, 

falling from pine tops 

A Book of the Seasons: November 29 (first snow, Withered oak leaves, yellow light, november sunsets)

 

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.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 29 

Yellow sunlight falls

 on all the eastern landscape –

light all from one side.

November 29, 1853

November 29, 2021  

suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on leafless trees

It has been a remarkably pleasant November, warmer and pleasanter than last year. November 29, 1856

These have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in. November 29, 1853

It is a clear and pleasant winter day. November 29, 1858

It would be worth the while to watch some water while freezing. November 29, 1853

The snow which fell the 23d whitened the ground but a day or two. November 29, 1852

Begins to snow this morning and snows slowly and interruptedly with a little fine hail all day till it is several inches deep. November 29, 1856

This the first snow I have seen, but they say the ground was whitened for a short time some weeks ago. November 29, 1856

About three inches of snow fell last evening November 29, 1858

How bright and light the day now! Methinks it is as good as half an hour added to the day. November 29, 1858

White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape. November 29, 1858

The pine woods snowed up look more like the bare oak woods with their gray boughs. November 29, 1858

The river meadows show now far off a dull straw-color or pale brown amid the general white, where the coarse sedge rises above the snow; and distant oak woods are now more distinctly reddish. November 29, 1858

The snow has taken all the November out of the sky. November 29, 1858

Now blue shadows, green rivers, — both which I see, — and still winter life. November 29, 1858

I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks, and crows sit silent on a bare oak-top. November 29, 1858

I see a living shrike caught to-day in the barn of the Middlesex House. November 29, 1858

Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. November 29, 1857

So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!” 

It exhibits the fashionable colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. November 29, 1857

It sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. November 29, 1857

This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and misty white, and yet it is gay. November 29, 1857

Again I am struck

by the wholesome colors of

the withered oak leaves.

Contrasting red-brown

misty-white on the two sides

of the shrub oak leaves.

So strong and cheerful

as if it rejoiced at the

advent of winter.

November 29, 1857

The colors of the brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. November 29, 1857

Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. November 29, 1857

Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter. November 29, 1857

The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist, perhaps because, though near, yet being in the visible horizon and there being nothing beyond to compare them with, we naturally magnify them, supposing them further off. November 29, 1850

The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. November 29, 1850

The near are more distinct, the distant more faint, till at last they are a mere shadowy cone in the distance. November 29, 1850

As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. November 29, 1850

You are reminded of your dreams. Life looks like a dream. You are prepared to see visions. November 29, 1850

Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. November 29, 1859

They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. November 29, 1859

The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time. November 29, 1859 

Snow buntings rise from

the midst of a stubble-field

unexpectedly.

November 29, 1859 

And now, just before sundown, the night wind blows up more mist through the valley, thickening the veil which already hangs over the trees, and the gloom of night gathers early and rapidly around. November 29, 1850

Birds lose their way. November 29, 1850

About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have elsewhere described. November 29, 1852

It has been cloudy and milder this afternoon, but now I begin to see, under the clouds in the west horizon, a clear crescent of yellowish sky, and suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape - - russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. November 29, 1853

The softness of the sunlight on the russet landscape, the smooth russet grassy fields and meadows, was very soothing, the sun now getting low in a November day. November 29, 1852

In addition to the clearness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and, none being absorbed or dissipated in the heavens, but it being reflected both from the russet earth and the clouds, it is intensely bright. November 29, 1853

And all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. November 29, 1853

The stems and twigs of the maples, etc., looking down the river, were beautifully distinct November 29, 1852

I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. November 29, 1853

I should call it the russet afterglow of the year. November 29, 1853

*****

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

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

 A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days 

*****

April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of.")

June 12, 1852 ("Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house.") 

June 24, 1852 ("I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one's eyes ache.")

August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."

September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.")

October 25, 1858  ("How should we do without this variety of oak leaves, — the forms and colors?")
November 7, 1858 ("Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment.")

November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess”)

November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year.")

November 10, 1858 ("Dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow.")

November 11, 1858 (“Here, in the sun in the shelter of the wood, the smooth shallow water, with the stubble standing in it, is waiting for ice. . . . The sight of such water now reminds me of ice as much as water.”)

November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”)
November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . .So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”)
November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. ")

November 13, 1858 (“Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

November 14, 1853 ("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and whatever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.”);

November 15, 1854 ("The first snow, a mere sugaring which went off the next morning.")
November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”)
November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.")

November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine. . . .After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire."); 

November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to-night as the last.")

November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”)
November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

November 25, 1853 ("The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near.")

November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.")

November 26, 1850 ("An inch of snow on ground this morning, our first.")

November 28, 1858 ("In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?")

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)

November 30, 1852 ("I think that this peculiar sparkle without redness, a cold glitter, is peculiar to this season.")

November 30, 1853 ("Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat. . . The river was perfectly smooth . . . and as we paddled home westward, the dusky yellowing sky was all reflected in it, together with the dun-colored clouds and the trees, and there was more light in the water than in the sky")

November 30, 1856 ("Sophia, describing the first slight whitening of snow a few weeks ago, said that when she awoke she noticed a certain bluish-white reflection on the wall and, looking out, saw the ground whitened with snow.")

December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it.")

December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night.”)
December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.")
December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening."); This evening and night,

December 8, 1850 (“The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible! This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.”)

December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable")

December 22, 1860 ("the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now ")

December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. ”)
December 26,1853 (“This forenoon it snows pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”)
December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.”)

January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.")

January 6, 1856 ("While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings.”);
January 6, 1859 (“They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring.”)

January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon")

January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")
January 21, 1857 (“Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter”). 

January 26, 1855 ("What changes in the aspect of the earth!")
February 6, 1852 ("Mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing." )

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.")

March 3, 1859 ("I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak.”)

November 29, 2021

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 

 November 28 <<<<<<<<  November 29 >>>>>>>> November 30

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 29

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 most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season.

January 30.  

Buda  January 30 2021

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. 

Sorrel is also very common, and johnswort, and the purplish gnaphaliums. There is also the early crowfoot in some places, strawberry, mullein, and thistle leaves, and hawkweeds, etc., etc.

On Cliffs.

The westering sun is yet high above the horizon, but, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays like the frame of a tent, to which clouds perchance are the canvas, under which a whole country rests. 

BTV February 1, 2023

The northern and southern rays appear very much slanted and long; those between us and the west, steeper and shorter.

What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle, frequently with discolored, mould-like spots.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1853

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface"); January 25, 1853 ("The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.);  February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and . . . I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")

The westering sun, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays. See August 9, 1851 ("It was a splendid sunset that day, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people went to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky. . . We were in the westernmost edge of the shower at the moment the sun was setting, and its rays shone through the cloud and the falling rain. We were, in fact, in a rainbow.")

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle. See October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples.");  October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red, with grayish, withered, apparently white oak leaves intermixed."); November 3, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is all withered."); May 14, 1855 ("All the oak leaves off the shrub oak plain, except apparently a few white oaks.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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 ©  2009-2023

The forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

February 8. 

2 p. m. — Up river to Fair Haven Hill. 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 may be called earine (springlike). 

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. 

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.

Walking over Hubbard's broad meadow on the softened ice, I admire the markings in it. The more interesting and prevailing ones now appearing ingrained and giving it a more or less marbled look, — one, what you may call checkered marbling (?), consisting of small polygonal figures three quarters [of an inch in] diameter, bounded by whitish lines more or less curved within the ice, and apparently covered with an entire thin surface ice, and so on for rods (these when five or six inches wide make a mackerel-sky ice); the other apparently passing from this into a sort of fibrous structure of waving lines, hair-like or rather flame-like, — call it phlogistic : — only far more regular and beautiful than I can draw. 

Sometimes like perhaps a cassowary's feathers, the branches being very long and fine. This fibrous or phlogistic structure is evidently connected with the flow of the surface water, for I see some old holes, now smoothly frozen over, where these rays have flowed from all sides into the hole in the midst of the checked ice, making a circular figure which reminded me of a jellyfish:  only far more beautiful than  this. 

The whitish lines which bound these figures and form  the parallel fibres are apparently lines of fine bubbles more dense than elsewhere. I am not sure that these markings always imply a double or triple ice, i. e. a thinner surface ice, which contains them. 

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. The mackerel spotted or marked ice is very common, and also reminds me of the reticulations of the pickerel. 

I see some quite thin ice which had formed on puddles on the ice, now soaked through, and in these are very interesting figures bounded by straight and crinkled particularly white lines. I find, on turning the ice over, that these lines correspond to the raised edges of and between bubbles which have occupied a place in the ice, i. e. upward [?] in it. 

Then there is occasionally, where puddles on the ice have frozen, that triangular rib-work of crystals, — a beautiful casting in alto-relievo of low crystaling as to form triangular and other figures. Shining splinters in the sun. Giving a rough hold to the feet.

One would think that the forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Its stem and lobes and all their bristly points are just as sharply cut there as is the leaf itself, fitting the mould closely and tightly, and, there being a small hole or two in the leaf, the ice stands up through them half an inch high, like so many sharp tacks. 

Indeed, the leaf is sculptured thus in bas-relief, as it were, as sharply and exactly as it could be done by the most perfect tools in any material. But as time has elapsed since it first began to sink into the ice, the upper part of this mould is enlarged by melting more or less, and often shows the outline of the leaf exaggerated and less sharp and perfect. 

You see these leaves at various depths in the ice, — many quite concealed by new ice formed over them, for water flows into the mould and thus a cast of it is made in ice. 

So fragments of rushes and sedge and cranberry leaves have on all sides sunk into the ice in like manner. 

The smallest and lightest-colored object that falls on the ice begins thus at once to sink through it, the sun as it were driving it; and a great many, no doubt, go quite through.This is especially common after a long warm spell like this. 

I see, even, that those colored ridges of froth which have bounded the water that overflowed the ice, since they contain most of the impurities or coloring matter, sink into the ice accordingly, making rough furrows an inch or more deep often. The proper color of water is perhaps best seen when it overflows white ice. Pliny could express a natural wonder. 

About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1860



40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. See January 25, 1860 ("Above 40° is warm for winter.") ; March 20, 1855 ("It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on.”); April 26, 1860 (" To-day it is 53° at 2, yet cold, such a difference is there in our feelings.What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”)

February may be called earine (springlike). There is a peculiarity in the air at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading.. . .It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard. See February 8, 1857("Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter") See also  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. . . .The voices of the school-children sound like spring. . . . February belongs to the spring; it is a snowy March"); 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.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Change in the Air

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck  See   February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”)

Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Compare February 2, 1860 (" Oak leaves, absorbing the heat of the sun, have sunk into the ice an inch in depth and afterward been blown out, leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole and lobes sharply cut, with perfectly upright sides, so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it.")

I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. See February 10, 1860 ("Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold,. . .That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun."); February 28. 1860 ("Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water-bug even on the river, so forward is the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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 ©  2009-2023

Kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox.

February 2. 

6° below at about 8 a. m. Clock has stopped. Teams squeak. 

2 p. m. — To Fair Haven Pond. 

The river, which was breaking up, is frozen over again. The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized. This new ice for forty rods together is thickly covered with these rosettes, often as thick as snow, an inch deep, and sometimes in ridges like frozen froth three inches high. Sometimes they are in a straight line along a crack. The frozen breath of the river at a myriad breathing-holes. 

A thaw began the 7th of January, and it was mild and thawing most of the time for the rest of that month; but with February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. 

It blowed considerably yesterday, though it is very still to-day, and the light, dry snow, especially on the meadow ice and the river, was remarkably plowed and drifted by it, and now presents a very wild and arctic scene. Indeed, no part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now, though the snow was only some three inches deep on a level. It is cold and perfectly still, and you walk over a level snowy tract. 

It is a sea of white waves of nearly uniform shape and size. Each drift is a low, sharp promontory directed toward the northwest, and showing which way the wind blowed with occasional small patches of bare ice amid them. It is exactly as if you walked over a solid sea where the waves rose about two feet high. These promontories have a general resemblance to one another. Many of them are perfect tongues of snow more or less curving and sharp.  

Commonly the wind has made a little hollow in the snow directly behind this tongue, it may be to the ice, spoon-shaped or like a tray, — if small, a cradle in the snow. Again it is a complete canoe, the tongue being its bows.

The many distinct firm ridges on a slope of the drift — as if the edges of so many distinct layers cropped out — form undulating parallel lines of great interest. Sometimes yet smaller hollows or cradles, not reaching to the ice and at right angles with the low ridges of the drift, remind you of panelling. Again these oval hollows produce a regular reticulation. 

One hour you have bare ice; the next, a level counter pane of snow; and the next, the wind has tossed and sculptured it into these endless and varied forms. It is such a scene as Boothia Felix may present, — if that is any wilder than Concord. 

I go sliding over the few bare spots, getting a foothold for my run on the very thin sloping and ridged snow. The snow is not thus drifted in fields and meadows generally, but chiefly where there was an icy foundation on which it slid readily. The whole of the snow has evidently shifted, perhaps several times, and you cannot tell whether some slight ridges an inch high are the foundation of a drift just laid or the relics of one removed. 

Behind a tuft of bushes it is collected deep. I forgot to say that all the ice between the rosettes was thinly sprinkled with very slender grain like spiculae, sometimes two together. 

The sky was all overcast, but the sun's place quite distinct. The cloud about the sun had a cold, dry, windy look, as if the cloud, elsewhere homogeneous cold slaty, were there electrified and arranged like iron-filings about the sun, its fibres, so to speak, more or less raying from the sun as a centre. 

About 3 p. m. I noticed a distinct fragment of rainbow, about as long as wide, on each side of the sun, one north and the other south and at the same height above the horizon with the sun, all in a line parallel with the horizon; and, as I thought, there was a slight appearance of a bow. 

The sun-dogs, if that is their name, were not so distinctly bright as an ordinary rainbow, but were plainly orange-yellow and a peculiar light violet-blue, the last color looking like a hole in the cloud, or a thinness through which you saw the sky. This lasted perhaps half an hour, and then a bow about the sun became quite distinct, but only those parts where the sun-dogs were were distinctly rainbow-tinted, the rest being merely reddish-brown and the clouds within finely raying from the sun more or less. But higher up, so that its centre would have been in the zenith or apparently about in the zenith, was an arc of a distinct rainbow. A rainbow right overhead. Is this what is called a parhelion? 

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows, which in the fall is one of the least noticeable colors, should, now that the landscape is mostly covered with snow, be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color, and an agreeable contrast to the snow. 

I frequently see where oak leaves, absorbing the heat of the sun, have sunk into the ice an inch in depth and afterward been blown out, leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole and lobes sharply cut, with perfectly upright sides, so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it. Sometimes these moulds have been evenly filled with snow while the ice is dark, and you have the figure of the leaf in white. 

I see where some meadow mouse — if not mole — just came to the surface of the snow enough to break it with his back for three or four inches, then put his head out and at once withdrew it. 

We walked, as usual, on the fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river. He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button-bushes and willows, smelling in the snow. 

Not appearing to regard us much, he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus, half-way round it; at Pleasant Meadow, evidently looking for mice (or moles?) in the grass of the bank, smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble, often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots. He was eagerly searching for food, intent on finding some mouse to help fill his empty stomach. 

He had a blackish tail and blackish feet. Looked lean and stood high. The tail peculiarly large for any creature to carry round. He stepped daintily about, softly, and is more to the manor born than a dog. It was a very arctic scene this cold day, and I suppose he would hardly have ventured out in a warm one.

The fox seems to get his living by industry and perseverance. He runs smelling for miles along the most favorable routes, especially the edge of rivers and ponds, until he smells the track of a mouse beneath the snow or the fresh track of a partridge, and then follows it till he comes upon his game. After exploring thus a great many quarters, after hours of fruitless search, he succeeds. 

There may be a dozen partridges resting in the snow within a square mile, and his work is simply to find them with the aid of his nose. Compared with the dog, he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to a noble family which has seen its best days, — a younger son.

Now and then he starts, and turns and doubles on his track, as if he heard or scented danger. (I watch him through my glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of only sixty rods. I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably he has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. 

I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years. 

I have seen a good many of those snails left on the ice during the late thaw, as the  caterpillars, etc., were.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1860

6° below at about 8 a. m. Clock has stopped. See February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")

The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized. See December 28, 1852 ("The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me."); December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow . . . I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice."); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter"); February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"); December 29, 1859 ("On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes.")

With February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. See February 1, 1855 ("The river falling all day, no water has burst out through the ice next the shore, and it is now one uninterrupted level white blanket of snow quite to the shore on every side.");  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. February 5, 1856 ("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.") See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

No part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now. See February 3, 1852 (The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic.")

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows. . . should . . . be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color, and an agreeable contrast to the snow.  See  February 13, 1860 ("The principal charm of a winter walk over ice is perhaps the peculiar and pure colors exhibited . . .The yellow of the sun and the morning and evening sky, and of the sedge (or straw-color, bright when lit on edge of ice at evening), and all three in hoar frost crystals."); February 12, 1860 ("I thus find myself returning over a green sea, winding amid purple islets, and the low sedge of the meadow on one side is really a burning yellow."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

The sun-dogs, if that is their name. See February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us . . .There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs.")

We saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button-bushes and willows, smelling in the snow. See January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. ”); December 24, 1856 ("Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes, one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path"); February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. . . . “); November 25, 1857 ("Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst"); May 20, 1858 (“[J]ust before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. . .It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. . . . I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. . . . I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. . . .It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. See February 5, 1854 ("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")

 

February 2, 2014

Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. See January 7, 1860 ("It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him!")

I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years.  See January 4, 1860 ("The woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen."); February 20, 1855 ("Once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

February 2.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 2

Walk as usual 

on the fresh track of a fox

in very thin snow . . .

kindling a fire on

the pond by the island –

see the fox himself.

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/hdt18600202