A Book of the Seasons: January 8 (winter birds, January thaw, tracks in snow, winter sky)

 

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

January 8

January 8, 2022

The light of the sun

on the snow-banks make them

glow almost yellow.

January 8, 1851

Almost every track

made yesterday in the snow –

A dead leaf in it.

January 8, 1852

The sky reflected

in the open river-reach,

now perfectly smooth.

 January 8, 1855

Tracks of white rabbits 

that run and frisk in the night 

along the pond-side.

January 8, 1856

Along the pond-side

a man’s tracks perhaps my own

like white stepping stones.

January 8, 1860

January 8, 2017

To-day it is very warm and pleasant. January 8, 1860

It is now a clear warm and sunny day. January 8, 1855

The streets are washed bare down to the ice. January 8, 1855

I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. January 8, 1860

Walden, which was covered with snow, is now covered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. January 8, 1860

The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected.  January 8, 1860 

The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. January 8, 1854

Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. January 8, 1855

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. January 8, 1860

How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! January 8, 1860

After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. January 8, 1860

There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. January 8, 1855

You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind. January 8, 1860

All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. January 8, 1856

Many white pine cones had been eaten in the neighborhood. January 8, 1854

Walk up on the river a piece above the Holden Swamp, though there are very few places where I can get on to it, it has so melted along the shore and on the meadows. The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots. January 8, 1855

The fine dry snow is driving over the fields like steam, if you look toward the sun. January 8, 1856

Can go across both rivers now. New routes are more practicable. January 8, 1854

Going through the swamp, the snow balled so as to raise me three inches higher than usual. January 8, 1858

I notice that 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. January 8, 1852

We see no fresh tracks. January 8, 1860

I see the great tracks of white rabbits that have run and frisked in the night along the pond-side. January 8, 1856

The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. January 8, 1860

The old tracks . . . of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. January 8, 1860

There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated . . . they look like white stepping-stones January 8, 1860

I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball. January 8, 1857

Black at the two ends 

and red-brown in the middle -- 

rolled into a ball.

January 8, 1857

I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow and in one place a reddish ant about a third of an inch long walking off. In the swamps you see the mouths of squirrels’ holes in the snow, with dirt and leaves and perhaps pine scales about them. January 8, 1855

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 8, 1856

The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds. January 8, 1855

I see what are probably the anther cells distinctly in the large buds of the poplar, which for a long time have shown their wool one sixth of an inch long. January 8, 1853

Also similar cells in the alder catkins, but greener and less springlike. January 8, 1853

The birch ones are the yellowest. January 8, 1853

I see prying into the black fruit of the alder, along the pond-side, a single probably lesser redpoll yellowish breast and distinct white bar on wing. January 8, 1856

Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias?] January 8, 1860

Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It looks behind as if it had on a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment between the shoulders and down the back. It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but rarely twice in a place, as if to sound the tree and so see if it has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tapping and inspecting it! He it is that scatters those fragments of bark and lichens about on the snow at the base of trees. What a lichenist he must be! Or rather, perhaps it is fungi makes his favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. How briskly he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his wings to another tree! January 8, 1854

I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off. January 8, 1855

And,  as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him. Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness. January 8, 1855

It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth. January 8, 1855

We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8, 1854

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks today make them glow almost yellow. January 8, 1851

Even as early as 3 o'clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor. January 8, 1852

When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly conforming to the outline of Wachusett. January 8, 1860

We love . . .morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8 1854

Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . . I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. January 8, 1854

We have a fine moonlight evening after, and . . . I am struck by the brighter sheen from the snow in the moonlight. January 8, 1860

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment

*****

January 8, 2024

September 18, 1858 ("Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. . . .And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment.")

August 30, 1854("I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and a river-reach shining in the sun, and to the mountains in the horizon.")

August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive.")
September 13, 1851 ("The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone.")
December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.")
December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us.")
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.")

December 24, 1850 (" I notice  that the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up,')

December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.")
January 4, 1860 (" In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox.")
January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.")

 January 6, 1854 ("There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin's pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard's skin.")

January 6, 1857 ("When I get home after that slumping walk on the river, I find that the slush has balled and frozen on my boots two or three inches thick, and can only be thawed off by the fire, it is so solid.")
January 7, 1857 ("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.")
January 7, 1857 ("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").
January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

January 7, 1855 ("Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note")

January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.")
January 9, 1860 ("After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring.")
January 10, 1859 ("I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset. . . .This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun. ")
January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side.")

January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")
January 13, 1855 ("Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel.")
January 14, 1854 ("The meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left")
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.”)
January 16, 1855 ("Carried to Harris the worms -- brown, light-striped-and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw")
January 17, 1860 ("I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore")

January 19, 1852 ("The snow blowing far off in the sun . . .looks like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning.") 

January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago.")
January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?")
January 22, 1856 (“At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively.”)
January 22, 1859 ("Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas")
January 22, 1856 ("I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats“)
January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weathercontinues. The ground has been bare since the 11th . . . The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")
January 23, 1860 ("When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe ")
January 24, 1858 (" I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars")

January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad.")
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")

January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,")

January 25, 1856 (“A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber.”)

January 26, 1853 ('There is now a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice."0

January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”)
January 31, 1859 ("The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.")
January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky?")
February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree.")

March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from?")
March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”)
March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.")

1850 ('You have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape.')

January 8, 2023

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 

January 7  <<<<<<<< January 8 >>>>>>>> January 9

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

December 22. Wednesday.

Surveying the Hunt Farm this and the 20th.

C. says that Flint's Pond was frozen over yesterday.

A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture, this of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship-builder wanted them.

The snow balled so badly to-day while I was working in the swamp, that I was set up full four inches.

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, – the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and, on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry.

The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow; and the squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now, or the glimpse of a meadow (?) mouse, give occasion for a remark.

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.

Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red Bridge, which looked like a bright reflection of a setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid, in this winter evening air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1852

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")

The squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now. See November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”); January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”) and note to June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. See December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.");  December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen"); January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! "); see also February 16, 1854 ("Snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell") Compare  January 14, 1853 ("Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country."); February 21, 1854 ("There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness")

A Book of the Seasons: December 6 (walking on ice, tracking, buds and pinweed)

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

 December 6

I see boys skating

but know not when the ice froze.

So busy writing.

December 6, 1854

The mist is so thick

even the reflected mist

now veils the hillsides.

December 6, 1859

Some plants are now seen

more simply and distinctly

and to advantage.

December 6, 1856

December 6, 2024

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. December 6, 1858

Though foul weather yesterday, this is the warmest and pleasantest day yet. December 6, 1852

Cows are turned out to pasture again. December 6, 1852

On the Corner causeway fine cobwebs glimmer in the air, covering the willow twigs and the road, and sometimes stretching from side to side above my head. December 6, 1852

I see many little gnat-like insects in the air there. December 6, 1852

Tansy still fresh, and I saw autumnal dandelion a few days since. December 6, 1852

A great slate-colored hawk sails away from the Cliffs. December 6, 1852

To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. December 6, 1859

It is somewhat of a lichen day . . .What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. . . .How naturally they adorn our works of art! December 6, 1859

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. December 6, 1859

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. December 6, 1859

You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. December 6, 1859

The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. December 6, 1859

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze. December 6, 1858

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. December 6, 1859

It is already half fallen, melting off. December 6, 1858

The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. December 6, 1858

It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. December 6, 1858

Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light. December 6, 1858

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. December 6, 1859

I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture. December 6, 1854

Skating is fairly begun. December 6, 1856

The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. December 6, 1856

Much of the ice in the middle is dark and thin, having been formed last night, and when you stamp you see the water trembling in spots here and there. December 6, 1856

I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca. December 6, 1856

I feel an affection for the rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. December 6, 1856

The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray. December 6, 1856

How handsome every one of these leaves that are blown about the snow-crust or lie neglected beneath, soon to turn to mould! December 6, 1856

Though so many oak leaves hang on all winter, you will be surprised on going into the woods at any time, only a short time after a fall of snow, to see how many have lately fallen on it and are driven about over it, so that you would think there could be none left till spring. December 6, 1856

Far the greater part of the shrub oak leaves are fallen. December 6, 1856

Against this swamp I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. December 6, 1856

White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday. December 6, 1856

On the meadows, where this overflow was so deep that it did not freeze solid, it cracks from time to time with a threatening squeak. December 6, 1856

Where I crossed the river on the roughish white ice, there were coarse ripple-marks two or three feet apart and convex to the south or up-stream, extending quite across, and many spots of black ice a foot wide, more or less in the midst of the white, where probably was water yesterday. December 6, 1856

The water, apparently, had been blown southerly on to the ice already formed, and hence the ripple-marks. December 6, 1856

I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy, leading from the springy shore to the then open middle, — the faintest possible vestiges, which are only seen in a favorable light. December 6, 1856

I see also what I take to be rabbit's tracks made in that slosh, shaped like a horse's track, only rather longer and larger. December 6, 1856

Flannery tells me he is cutting in Holbrook's Swamp, in the Great Meadows, a lonely place. He sees a fox repeatedly there, and also a white weasel,--once with a mouse in its mouth, in the swamp. December 6, 1857

Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter, made undoubtedly December 3d, when this snow ice was mere slosh. It had come up through a hole (now black ice) by the stem of a button-bush, and, apparently, pushed its way through the slosh, as through snow on land, leaving a track eight inches wide, more or less, with the now frozen snow shoved up two inches high on each side, i. e. two inches above the general level. December 6, 1856

Where the ice was firmer are seen only the tracks of its feet. It had crossed the open middle (now thin black ice) and continued its singular trail to the opposite shore, as if a narrow sled had been drawn bottom upward. December 6, 1856

At Bittern Cliff I saw where they had been playing, sliding, or fishing, apparently to-day, on the snow- covered rocks, on which, for a rod upward and as much in width, the snow was trodden and worn quite smooth, as if twenty had trodden and slid there for several hours. Their droppings are a mass of fishes' scales and bones, — loose, scaly black masses. December 6, 1856

At this point the black ice approached within three or four feet of the rock, and there was an open space just there, a foot or two across, which appeared to have been kept open by them. December 6, 1856

I continued along up that side and crossed on white ice just below the pond. December 6, 1856

The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. December 6, 1856

Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks. December 6, 1856

I saw one place where there was a zigzag piece of black ice two rods long and one foot wide in the midst of the white, which I was surprised to find had been made by an otter pushing his way through the slosh. December 6, 1856

In many places the otters appeared to have gone floundering along in the sloshy ice and water. December 6, 1856

These very conspicuous tracks generally commenced and terminated at some button-bush or willow, where a black ice now masked the hole of that date. December 6, 1856

When I speak of the otter to our oldest village doctor, who should be ex officio our naturalist, he is greatly surprised, not knowing that such an animal is found in these parts, December 6, 1856

It is surprising that our hunters know no more about them. December 6, 1856

On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits. December 6, 1856

Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides. December 6, 1856

What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! December 6, 1856

They are never more interesting than now on Lechea Plain, since they are perfectly relieved, brown on white. December 6, 1856

You were not aware before how extensive these grain-fields. December 6, 1856

Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage. December 6, 1856

The pinweeds, etc., have been for the most part confounded with the russet or brown earth beneath them, being seen against a background of the same color, but now, being seen against a pure white background, they are as distinct as if held up to the sky. December 6, 1856

Some plants seen, then, in their prime or perfection, when supporting an icy burden in their empty chalices. December 6, 1856

Our eyes go searching along the stems for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters. December 6, 1856

For we are hunters pursuing the summer on snow-shoes and skates, all winter long. There is really but one season in our hearts. December 6, 1856

In the evening I see the spearer's light on the river. December 6, 1852

10 P. M. — Hear geese going over. December 6, 1855

*****

A Book of the Seasons: First Ice

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

*****

April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.")

November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.")

November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.")

November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm")

November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering") 

November 20, 1858  ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields.")

November 24, 1858 ("It is lichen day.")

November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow,. . .. Now see . . .the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.")

December 1, 1852 ('' At this season I observe the form of the buds which hare prepare for spring.")
December 3, 1856 ("Fewer weeds now rise above the snow. Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed.")

December 4, 1856 ("Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night.")

December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See 

December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth.")

December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too ") 

December 5, 1856 ("The ice trap was sprung last night.")

December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.")

December 5, 1858 ("Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing . . .so that there is quite a glaze.")

December 5, 1859 ("There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves")

The dripping trees and

falling ice will wet you through

like rain in the woods.

Here or there one or

another rainbow color –

a small point of light.

December 6, 1858

December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”)

December 8, 1850 ("A week ago I saw cows being driven home from pasture. Now they are kept at home.")

December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year.")

December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day.") 

December 13, 1852 (" About the base of the larger pin-weed, the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem.")

December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.")

December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds.") 

December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produces a slight glaze, the first of the winter.")

December 26, 1855 ("After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had.")
December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”)
December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”)
December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")
January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”)

January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran.")

January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it.")

January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.")

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

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

January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.")

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

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

 February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.")

February 7. 1859("They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")

February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.”)

February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”)

February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday.. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”)

February 21, 1855 ("How plain, wholesome, and earthy are the colors of quadrupeds generally! . . . The white of the polar bear, ermine weasel, etc., answers to the snow; . . .There are few or no bluish animals.")

February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”)

February 22, 1855 ("Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago . . . All white but the tip of the tail.")

We are hunters 

pursuing the summer

on snow-shoes and skates

 all winter long.

 

There is but 

one season 

in our hearts. 

December 6, 1856

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 

December 5 <<<<<<<< December 6 >>>>>>>> December 7

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 6

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

tinyurl.com/HDT06DEC

High dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice.

February 25. 

P. M. - Round via Clamshell to Hubbard's Bridge. 

Colder, and frozen ground; strong wind, northwest. 

I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth. 

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? 

It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct. As the waves rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. 

The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet. 

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. 

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. 

Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1860

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind. See 

February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? "); February 25, 1851 ("The waves on the meadows make a fine show."); March 29, 1852 ("The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind.") See alsoo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. see February 24, 1857 ("I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. “); March 10, 1854 ("See a skunk in the Corner road, which I follow. . .. It is a slender black (and white) animal, with its back remarkably arched, standing high behind and carrying its head low; runs, even when undisturbed, with singular teeter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow; I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has a long tail, which it regularly erects when I come too near and prepares to discharge its liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, and the hind head and a line on the front of the face, — the rest black, except the flesh-colored nose (and I think feet). . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Skunks Active

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind . . .those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually"); February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove.");  February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 2, 1860 ("I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.")

This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common.  . . .The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.")