This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather – alone in distant woods.

Almost every track

made yesterday in the snow. 

A dead leaf in it.

January 8, 1852

January 7. 

P. M. — To Walden down railroad and return over Cliffs. 

I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms. 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. The pond is now a plain snow-field, but there are no tracks of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. The surface of the snow there is finely waved and grained, giving it a sort of slaty fracture, the appearance which hard, dry blown snow assumes. All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. 

This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour or two. Some have to make their paths two or three times over in a day. The fisherman is not here, for his lines would freeze in. 

I go through the woods toward the Cliffs along the side of the Well Meadow Field. There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields even now, when I meet none abroad for pleasure. Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought. The objects are elevating. 

In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it, — dining with the Governor or a member of Congress! ! 

But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. 

I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. 

I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day. If there are missionaries for the heathen, why not send them to me? I wish to know something; I wish to be made better. I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and this requires usually to forego and forget all personal relations so long), and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. 

I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. 

Our skylights are thus far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must have a true skylight. My true sky light is on the outside of the village. 

I am not thus expanded, recreated, enlightened, when I meet a company of men. It chances that the sociable, the town and county, or the farmers' club does not prove a sky light to me. I do not invariably find myself translated under those circumstances. They bore me. The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. 

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him. There at last my nerves are steadied, my senses and my mind do their office. 

I am aware that most of my neighbors would think it a hardship to be compelled to linger here one hour, especially this bleak day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable compensation for it. It is the most agreeable thing I do. Truly, my coins are uncurrent with them. 

I love and celebrate nature, even in detail, merely because I love the scenery of these interviews and translations. I love to remember every creature that was at this club. I thus get off a certain social scurf and scali-ness. 

I do not consider the other animals brutes in the common sense. I am attracted toward them undoubtedly because I never heard any nonsense from them. I have not convicted them of folly, or vanity, or pomposity, or stupidity, in dealing with me. Their vices, at any rate, do not interfere with me. 

My fairies in variably take to flight when a man appears upon the scene. In a caucus, a meeting-house, a lyceum, a club-room, there is nothing like it in my experience. 

But away out of the town, on Brown's scrub oak lot, which was sold the other day for six dollars an acre, I have company such as England cannot buy, nor afford. This society is what I live, what I survey, for. I subscribe generously to this — all that I have and am. 

There, in that Well Meadow Field, perhaps, I feel in my element again, as when a fish is put back into the water. I wash off all my chagrins. All things go smoothly as the axle of the universe. 

I can remember that when I was very young I used to have a dream night after night, over and over again, which might have been named Rough and Smooth. All existence, all satisfaction and dissatisfaction, all event was symbolized in this way. Now I seemed to be lying and tossing, perchance, on a horrible, a fatal rough surface, which must soon, indeed, put an end to my existence, though even in the dream I knew it to be the symbol merely of my misery; and then again, suddenly, I was lying on a delicious smooth surface, as of a summer sea, as of gossamer or down or softest plush, and life was such a luxury to live. 

My waking experience always has been and is such an alternate Rough and Smooth. In other words it is Insanity and Sanity. 

Might I aspire to praise the moderate nymph Nature! I must be like her, moderate. 

This snow which fell last Saturday so moist and heavy is now surprisingly dry and light and powdery. In the wood-path between the Well Meadow Field and the Cliff, it is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious. 

Here and there is but a leaf or two to be seen in the snow-covered path. The myriads which scampered here are now at rest perhaps far on one side. I have listened to the whispering of the dry leaves so long that whatever meaning it has for my ears, I think that I must have heard it. 

On the top of the Cliff I am again exposed to the cutting wind. It has blown the hilltops almost bare, and the snow is packed in hard drifts, in long ridges or coarse folds, behind the walls there. Fine, dry snow, thus blown, will become hard enough to bear. Especially the flat rocks are bared, the snow having nothing to hold by. 

Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it, and though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, January 7, 1857 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. See January 7, 1853 ("All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind.")

Though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each. See January 8, 1852 ("Almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow - perhaps ten inches deep - has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around.")

In the wood-path [the snow] is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious. See January 8, 1856("The surface of the snow on the pond is finely scored in many places by the oak leaves which have been blown across it. They have furrowed deeper than a mouses track and might puzzle a citizen.”); January 15,  1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me.”)

I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature . . . and it is as if I had come to an open window. See December 8, 1850("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!") December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,");  December 25, 1856 ("Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); January 10, 1856 ("I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed up, untracked by man, into which the fine dry snow is still drifting ”); January 11, 1857 (""I never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well Meadow Field.); February 28, 1852 ("To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin,"); March 8, 1859 (" If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage . . .There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out"); April 19, 1854 ("When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth.').  See also December 20, 1851(" Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset.") January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”); November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.")

in addition

to my solitude

frost on the window

Issa

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

It is bitter cold

with a cutting northwest wind –

I come to myself.

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/hdt570107

December snowfalls

December 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

December 1859  snowfalls:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The deepest snow yet.

Those who depend on skylights

find theirs a dim light