Snow turning to rain though a fine hail.

January 21.

The sky has gradually become overcast, and now it is just beginning to snow. Looking against a dark roof, I detect a single flake from time to time, but when I look at the dark side of the woods two miles off in the horizon, there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air. 

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.

Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black, and the latter form commonly a reddish-brown ground out of which the former rise. These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other. 

Few twigs are conspicuous at a distance like those of the golden willow. The tree is easily distinguished at a distance by its color. 

Saw in an old white pine stump, about fifteen inches from the ground, a hole peeked about an inch and a half in diameter. It was about six inches deep downward in the rotten stump and was bottomed with hypnum, rabbit’s fur, and hair, and a little dry grass. Was it a mouse-nest? or a nuthatch’s, creeper’s, or chickadee’s nest? It has a slight musky smell.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1855

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.   See  March 13, 1855 ("At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail.”); December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . .Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

Pines are seen to be of a blue or misty black. See January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.") January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); See also note to January 13, 1859 (" The woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color")

Against a dark roof

I detect a single flake –

it begins to snow. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow turning to rain though a fine hail.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

After the storm a new world

January 20.

January 20, 2015

A fine, clear day, not very cold. There was a high wind last night, which relieved the trees of their burden almost entirely, but I may still see the drifts. There is nothing hackneyed where a new snow can come and cover all the landscape.

The surface of the snow everywhere in the fields, where it is hard blown, has a fine grain with low shelves, like a slate stone that does not split well. We cross the fields behind Hubbard‘s and suddenly slump into dry ditches concealed by the snow, up to the middle, and flounder out again.

How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields now converted into a soft, white, fleecy snow ice,  It is like the beginning of the world. 

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only, perchance, a faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. 

The snow still adheres conspicuously to the north west sides of the stems of the trees quite up to their summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that direction, — It would be about as good as a compass to steer  by in a cloudy day or by night.

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky and also at the neighboring wood so suddenly relieved of its snowy burden. 

The pines — mostly white — have at this season a warm brown or yellowish tinge, and the oaks— chiefly young white ones — are comparatively red. The black oak I see is more yellowish. You have these colors of the evergreens and oaks in winter for warmth and contrast with the snow. 

Seeds are still left on the birches, which, after each new snow, are sprinkled over its surface, apparently to keep the birds supplied with food. 

You see where yesterday’s snowy billows have broken at last in the sun or by their own weight, their curling edges fallen and crumbled on the snow beneath. 

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed,—johnswort and coarse grasses, -—whose oat-like seed-scales or hulls they have scattered about. It is surprising they did not sink deeper in the light snow. Often the impression is so faint that they seem to have been supported by their wings. 

The pines and oaks in the deepest hollows in the woods still support some snow, but especially the low swamps are half filled with snow to the height of ten feet, resting on the bent underwood, as if affording covert to wolves.

Very musical and even sweet now, like a horn, is the hounding of a foxhound heard now in some distant wood, while I stand listening in some far solitary and silent field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1855

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard. See January 20, 1856 (" I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower.") See also  December 31, 1855 (“It is one of the mornings of creation .”); January 7, 1858 ("The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings . . . true mornings of creation, original and poetic days. "); January 26, 1853 (“There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew.”)

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky . See January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed. See January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden"); 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.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A driving snow-storm

January 19.

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M., as I was coming down the railroad. I did not have to make a hole in it, but I saw it some rods off in the deep, narrow ravines of the drifts and under their edges or eaves, like the serenest blue of heaven, though the sky was, of course, wholly concealed by the driving snow-storm; suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. 

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous.

 P. M. — The damp snow still drives from the northwest nearly horizontally over the fields. We go through the Spring Woods, over the Cliff, by the wood-path at its base to Walden, and thence by the path to Brister’s Hill, and by road home. There is not a single fresh track on the back road, and the aspect of the road and trees and houses is very wintry.

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung, and you have only to shake them with your hand or foot, when they rise up and make way for you. We go winding between and stooping or creeping under them, fearing to touch them, lest they should relieve themselves of their burden and let fall an avalanche or shower of snow on to us.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1855

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning . . . suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. Compare January 5, 1854  ("There is also some blueness now in the snow, the heavens being now (toward night) overcast. The blueness is more distinct after sunset"); See January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 18, 1852  ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”);  January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast"); January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”)

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pigweed in the garden. See February 10, 1855 ("It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. "); December 11, 1855 ("The snow will be three feet deep, the ice will be two feet thick, and last night, perchance, the mercury sank to thirty degrees below zero. . . .. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow!. . . I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung.  See December 26, 1853 ("The pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side.")

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

I never saw blue

in snow so bright as this damp

dark stormy morning.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A driving snow-storm

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

A Day's Devotion

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon –

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me –

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and 

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn –

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

see HDT:

September 7, 1851
January 11, 1852

January 20, 1852

August 23, 1853

March 28, 1859

April 24, 1859

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/HDevoTION

Skating to Bedford.

January 15

January 15, 2014

P. M. - Skated to Bedford

It has just been snowing, and this lies in shallow drifts or waves on the Great Meadows, alternate snow and ice. 

Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet. 

The river-channel dark and rough with fragments of old ice, — polygons of various forms, — cemented together, not strong.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1855

Shallow drifts or waves on the Great Meadows, alternate snow and ice. See January 26, 1860

("Pretty good skating on the Great Meadows, slightly raised and smoothed by the thaw . . . Skating, crusted snow, slosh, etc., are wont to take you by surprise.")

Skated to Bedford. See January 14, 1855 ("Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind . . . in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion."); January 31, 1855 ("At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been."); February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating and January 21, 1853 ("In this stillness and at this distance, I hear the nine-o'clock bell in Bedford five miles off, which I might never hear in the village"); April 3, 1858 ("We paddle along all day, down to the Bedford line.")

January 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 15

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Skating to Bedford

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550115

Speed perspective

January 14

January 14, 2025

Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — the water having settled in the suddenly cold night,—which I had not time to see. 

(See the intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, — betrayed by a morsel of fur left on the ice — probably the prey of a fox.) 

A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. He takes new possession of nature in the name of his own majesty. There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1855

Skate . . . with a rapidity which astonished myself. See January 15, 1855 (“Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet.”); December 29, 1858 ("We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

The intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, — betrayed by a morsel of fur left on the ice — probably the prey of a fox.  See  February 27, 1856 ("Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox. "); Compare January 2, 1856  (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit.”); January 4, 1860 ("The snow . . . is somewhat bloody and is covered with flocks of slate-colored and brown fur, but only the rabbit's tail,. . . and the contents of its paunch or of its entrails are left, — nothing more . . . There were many tracks of the fox about that place, and I had no doubt then that he had killed that rabbit . . . But as it turned out, though the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

January 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 14

Skate before the wind –

there was I, and there, and there

astonishing myself.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Speed perspective

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550114

Muddy, wet, and slippery.

January 13.

Warm and wet, with rain-threatening clouds drifting from southwest. Muddy, wet, and slippery. 

Surprised to see oak balls on a red oak. 

Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel. The successive grooves made by his teeth while probably he bent it down were quite distinct. The woody stem was a quarter of an inch thick, and I counted eight strokes of his chisel.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1855

A pitch pine cone cut off by a squirrel. See January 8, 1856 (“All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open.”); 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. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead.”); March 3, 1855 (“A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. . . . Most fallen pitch pine cones show the marks of squirrels’ teeth, showing they were cut off.”)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022