A Book of the Seasons: January 9 (Perfect winter days, cold clear and bright, dreaming of summery hours, walking ins swamps, western horizon and sunset 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 9

The perfect Winter

days are cold but clear and bright –

Sabbath of the year.

January 9, 1859

As I climb the Cliff

I pause in the sun and sit

on a rock dreaming.

I sit dreaming of

summery hours – times tinged

with eternity.

The colors in the

reflection differ from those

in the sunset sky.

January 9, 1853

January 9, 2021

I call that ice marbled when shallow puddles of melted snow and rain, with perhaps some slosh in them, resting on old ice, are frozen, showing a slightly internal marbling, or alternation of light and dark spots or streaks. January 9, 1860

The sky shut out by snow-clouds. It spits a little snow and then holds up.  January 9, 1852

A cloudy day, threatening snow; wet under foot. January 9, 1855

Clear, cold morning. Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M.  3 P. M. —To Beck Stow’s.  The thermometer at + 2°. When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°. Probably it has been below zero far the greater part of the day.  January 9, 1856

It has not been so cold throughout the day, before, this winter. I hear the boots of passing travellers squeak. January 9, 1856

Snows again . . .  The wind is southwest, and the snow is very moist, with large flakes. January 9, 1858

Looking toward Trillium Wood, the nearer flakes appear to move quite swiftly, often making the impression of a continuous white line. They are also seen to move directly and nearly horizontally, but the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the air, as if uncertain how they will approach the earth, or even to cross the course of the former, and are always seen as simple and distinct flakes. January 9, 1858

Another fine warm day, — 48° at 2 p. m. January 9, 1860

After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring.  January 9, 1860

Where a path has been shovelled through drifts in the road, and the cakes of snow piled up, I see little azures, little heavens, in the crannies and crevices. January 9, 1852

The deeper they are, and the larger masses they are surrounded by, the darker-blue they are. Some are a very light blue with a tinge of green. Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue. It has strained the air, and only the blue rays have passed through the sieve. January 9, 1852

Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water? January 9, 1852

I see the heaven hiding in nooks and crevices in the snow. Into every track which the teamster makes, this elysian, empyrean atmosphere rushes. January 9, 1852

I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond. There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off. January 9, 1860 

Going close to them,  find that at first, or till ten feet high, they are a dark bronze brown, a wholly different-looking shrub from what they afterward become. . . .  It may be, then, half a dozen years old before it assumes the white toga which is its distinctive dress.  January 9, 1860

It is as if the tree unbuttoned a thin waistcoat and suffered it to blow aside, revealing its bosom or inner garment. January 9, 1860

This moist snow has affected the yellow sulphur parmelias and others. They have all got a green hue, and the fruit of the smallest lichen looks fresh and fair. And the wet willow bark is a brighter yellow. January 9, 1858

Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow. January 9, 1854

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, 1858

As I climb the Cliff, I pause in the sun and sit on a dry rock, dreaming. I think of those summery hours when time is tinged with eternity. January 9, 1853 

This winter I hear the axe in almost every wood of any consequence left standing in the township.   January 9, 1855

To Beck Stow’s . . . I wade through the swamp, where the snow lies light eighteen inches deep on a level, a few leaves of andromedas, etc., peeping out. (I am a-birds’-nesting.) The mice have been out and run over it.  January 9, 1856 

The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp. Go now anywhere in the swamp and fear no water. January 9, 1856 

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. January 9, 1855 

The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots. January 9, 1855 

I see one large bush of winter-berries still quite showy, though somewhat discolored by the cold. January 9, 1856 

How pretty the evergreen radical shoots of the St. John’s-wort now exposed, partly red or lake, various species of it.. . .A little wreath of green and red lying along on the muddy ground amid the melting snows. January 9, 1855 

 

I am attracted at this season by the fine bright-red buds of the privet andromeda, sleeping couchant along the slender light-brown twigs. They look brightest against a dark ground. January 9, 1855 

Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp,  I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. January 9, 1855 

On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen. January 9, 1853

How innocent are Nature's purposes! January 9, 1853

Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the form and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. January 9, 1859

Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon, we see to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot. Is the winter then such a twilight? This is about an hour and a half before sunset. January 9, 1854

I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.  January 9, 1853 

The sun has been set some minutes, and as I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing. January 9, 1859

It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky. January 9, 1859

I am inclined to measure the angle at which pine bough meets the stem. January 9, 1859

That soft, still, cream-colored sky seems the scene, the stage or field, for some rare drama to be acted on. January 9, 1859

C. says the winter is the sabbath of the year. The perfect Winter days are cold, but clear and bright. January 9, 1859

After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring. January 9, 1860

(Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow.) January 9, 1855

January 9, 2022

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   the spring note of the chickadee

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter

January 21, 2021

September 7, 1854 ("The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.")

December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky. ")

December 20, 1851 ("The pines impress me as human. A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.")

December 20, 1855 ("How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! ")

 

The icy water

reflecting the warm colors

of the sunset sky. 

December 20, 1855

December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it . . . I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

December 28, 1852 ("A clump of birches raying out from one centre make a more agreeable object than a single tree.")

January 4, 1853 ("Sometimes I was in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned smooth and dark, till I came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was off.");

January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”)

Rainbow-tinted clouds 

forming and dispersing  

this clear cold afternoon.

Clear cold afternoon –

to our surprise a star seen

about half past three.

January 9, 1854

January 10, 1855 ("To Beck Stow’s . . . Then there is the Andromeda calyculata, its leaves appressed to the twigs, pale-brown beneath, reddish above, with minute whitish dots. As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.  ")

The translucent leaves –

andromeda lit up like

cathedral windows.

January 10, 1855

.

January 10, 1856  ("I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now.") 

January 10, 1859 ("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 10, 1859 ("These gleaming birch and alder and other twigs are a phenomenon still perfect, — that gossamer or cobweb-like reflection."). 

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

January 11, 1855 ("This air, thick with snowflakes, making a background, enables me to detect a very picturesque clump of trees on an islet at Pole Brook,—a red oak in midst, with birches on each side")

January 14, 1852 ("When I see the dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow by the roadside, sometimes in dense masses, which carry me back in imagination to their green summer life, I put faintly a question which I do not yet hear answered, Why stand they there?")

January 19, 1859 ("It occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon."); 

January 24, 1858 ("The sprouts of the canoe birch are not reddish like the white, but a yellowish brown. The small white begin to cast off their red cuticle the third or fourth year and reveal a whitish one. "); 

January 31, 1859 ("Now we have quite another kind of ice. It has rained hard, converting into a very thin liquid the snow which had fallen on the old ice, and this, having frozen, has made a perfectly smooth but white snow ice. It is white like polished marble (I call it marble ice).")

February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc.")

February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open.")

March 4, 1854 ("In the dry pasture under the Cliff Hill, the radical leaves of the johnswort are now revealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on the ground, with leaves recurved, reddish above, green beneath, and covered with dewy drops. ")

Night comes on early.  

Pine tree tops outlined against

the cold western sky,

December 12, 1859

Western sky full of

soft pure light after sunset –

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

Looking at this hour

into the soft western sky

the pines so distiinct.

January 9, 1859

January 9, 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 

January 8 <<<<<<<<  January 9 >>>>>>>  January 10

January 9, 2018

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 9

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

A Book of the Seasons: January 7 (a winter morning, after the storm, poetic days, bracing cold, birch seed, fresh snow and tracks, winter birds, winter sunset, solitude)

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 7

January 7, 2024

I feel spirits rise.

The life, the joy that is in

blue sky after storm!

January 7, 1851

The invisible moon

gives light through the thickest of

a driving snow-storm.

January 7, 1852

All Nature braced by

the cold that gives tension to

both body and mind.

January 7, 1853 

The bird-shaped scales of

the white birch are blown more than

twenty rods from trees.

January 7, 1854

It would not be worth

the while to die and leave all

this life behind one.

January 7, 1855

Tracing birch scales north

twenty rods to the nearest

and the only birch.

January 7, 1856

It is bitter cold

with a cutting northwest wind –

I come to myself.

January 7, 1857

The storm is over–

beautiful winter morning,

one of creation.

January 7, 1858

These true mornings of

creation – original

and poetic days.

January 7, 1858

January 7, 2022

This is one of those pleasant winter mornings when you find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still the air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise.  January 7, 1853

January 7.  

The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings when a vapor is seen hanging in the air between the village and the woods. January 7, 1858. 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past. There is no lingering of yesterday's fogs, only such a mist as might have adorned the first morning. January 7, 1858. 

The air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise, — though so fair, a healthy whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air, concealing the mountains. January 7, 1853

The water has oozed out from the thinnest part of the black ice, and I see a vapor curling up from it.  There is also much vapor in the air, looking toward the woods. January 7, 1856

It is a lichen day . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark! January 7, 1855

By 10 o'clock I notice a very long level stratum of cloud not very high in the southeastern sky, — all the rest being clear, — which I suspect to be the vapor from the sea. January 7, 1858

At breakfast time the thermometer stood at -12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning. January 7, 1856

All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind. January 7, 1853 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind . . .  All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. January 7, 1857 

I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open fields , and the sky had a new appearance . I stepped along more buoyantly. January 7, 1857

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature 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. January 7, 1857

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw.  Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. January 7, 1851

The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard. January 7, 1851

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 7, 1855

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind, contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw. January 7, 1855

A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. From having been about 20° at midday, it is now (the thermometer) some 35° quite early, and at 2 p. m. 45°.  January 7, 1860

The wind and thaw have brought down a fresh crop of dry pine and spruce needles.  January 7, 1854

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.  January 7, 1853

The least touch or jar shakes them off, and it is difficult to bring the female catkins home in your pocket. They cover the snow like coarse bran.  January 7, 1853

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

 

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 7, 1856 

Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it. 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, 1857 

It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown.   January 7, 1858 

The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences.  January 7, 1858

I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him. A little further was a similar hole with some fur in it. January 7, 1860 

The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. January 7, 1858 

Though the snow is only some six inches deep, the yards appear full of those beautiful crystals (star or wheel shaped flakes), lying light, as a measure is full of grain.  January 7, 1858 

By 10.30 A.M. it begins to blow hard, the snow comes down from the trees in fine showers, finer far than ever falls direct from the sky, completely obscuring the view through the aisles of the wood, and in open fields it is rapidly drifting. It is too light to make good sleighing. January 7, 1858 

 The surface of the snow in the woods is thickly marked by the snow which has fallen from the trees on to it.  January 7, 1858 

The whole surface of the snow on fields and river is composed now of flat, rough little drifts, like the surface of some rough slaty rocks. January 7, 1856

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. January 7, 1857

On breaking the male catkins, I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct, promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so sure a promise or prophecy of spring. These are frozen in December or earlier, — the anthers of spring, filled with their fertilizing dust January 7, 1853

The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and I hear the pleasant sound of running water. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. January 7, 1855

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, this surrounded by a broad border of yellowish spew. The water has oozed out from the thinnest part of the black ice, and I see a vapor curling up from it. January 7, 1856

 The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses.  January 7, 1856  

Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. January 7, 1860 

I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside. January 7, 1858

One occasionally hops or flies toward another, and the latter suddenly jerks away from him. They are reaching or hopping up to the fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the snow. At length the whole ten have collected within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, being alarmed, they utter a different and less musical chirp and flit away into an apple tree. 

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw . . . I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow damp. January 7, 1851

A thaw begins, with a southerly wind . . . As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., where, methinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen. January 7, 1860 

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature 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. January 7, 1857 

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. January 7, 1857 

Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it. January 7, 1856 

I perceive the increased length of the day on returning from my afternoon walk. Can it be? The sun sets only about five minutes later, and the day is about ten minutes longer. January 7, 1852

I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly,  hoorer hoo . . .  It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.  January 7, 1854

In the western horizon . . . a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud. January 7, 1852 

There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stood over it. January 7, 1857

And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! There is no account of the blue sky in history. January 7, 1857

We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views.  January 7, 1852 

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls.  January 7, 1852 

And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window. January 7, 1852

And now the first star is lit, and I go home. January 7, 1852

January 7, 2019

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

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

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky.

December 6, 1859 ("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")
December 19, 1856 (“[it] is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well.”)

December 31, 1850  ("The blue jays evidently notify each other of the presence of an intruder, and will sometimes make a great chattering about it, and so communicate the alarm to other birds and to beasts.")

January 5, 1854 ("Still thaws. This afternoon (as probably yesterday), it being warm and thawing, though fair, the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came.")

 January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.")

A little flock of titmice

with their black caps and throats

restlessly hopping along

with sharp clear lisping notes.

January 7, 1855

Light of the setting

sun falling on the snow-banks

glow almost yellow.

January 8, 1851

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 8. 1860  ("We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. ")
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, 1854 ("Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow.")
January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.")

January 10, 1859 (" See, returning, amid the Roman wormwood in front of the Monroe place by the river, half a dozen goldfinches feeding just like the sparrows. How warm their yellow breasts look! They utter the goldfinches’ watery twitter still")

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 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. ”)

January 30, 1859 ("How peculiar the hooting of an owl! It is not shrill and sharp like the scream of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, waking the echoes of the wood.")

February 2, 1860 (“I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably [the fox] has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow.”)
February 2, 1860 (“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”)
March 7, 1852 ("The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow.")

January 7, 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 6   <<<<<<<< January 7>>>>>>>>  January 8

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

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

Yesterday's ice storm today.

(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.)

9 A.M.

Out to see the glaze 

now half fallen    melting off –

the dripping trees and

falling ice wets you

like rain in the woods. It is

a lively sound busy

tinkling incessant

brattling and from time to time

a rushing crashing

falling ice and trees

suddenly erecting when

relieved of their loads. 

Look at this dripping

tree between you and the sun

you may see here there

one or another

rainbow color – a small

brilliant point of light. 

Henry Thoreau

December 6, 1858

tinyurl.com/HDT581206

December 6. See 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

Yesterday's ice storm today.

The Steam of the Engine (a poet's account of a steam-engine*)

The engine's steam

stretches low over the earth

enveloping the cars.

Henry Thoreau, December 3, 1856

December 4, 2017

February 16. The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. February 16, 1855

April 4. Rains all day. The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly in such an atmosphere, and makes a small angle with the earth. It is low, perhaps, for the same reason that the clouds are. April 4, 1853

June 9.  The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent, probably by the strokes of the piston. June 9, 1853

August 17.  Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods. August 17, 1852

November 23.  The mist so low is clouds close to the ground, and the steam of the engine hugs the earth in the Cut, concealing all objects for a great distance. November 23, 1852

December 3. The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars. December 3, 1856

December  18. The steam of the engine hugs the earth very close. Is it because it [is] a very clear, cold day?  December 18, 1856

December 29 . In the clear atmosphere I see, far in the eastern horizon, the steam from the steam-engine, like downy clouds above the woods. December 29, 1851

January 3.  When a locomotive came in, just before the sun set, I saw a small cloud blown away from it which was a very rare but distinct violet purple.   January 3, 1860

January 13.  A few clouds are floating overhead, downy and dark. Clear sky and bright sun. I see a long, light-textured cloud stretching from north to south, stretching over half the heavens; and underneath it, in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write. Before I can complete this sentence, I look up and they are gone, like  the steam from the engine in the winter air.  January 13, 1852

January 24.  I see a faint bluish tinge in the ruts. but it is warmer and there is a snow-bearing cloud over all. When the cars passed, I being on the pond ( Walden)  the sun was setting and suffusing the clouds far and near with rosy light  Even the steam from the engine  as its flocks or wreaths rose above the shadow of the woods, became a rosy cloud even fairer than the rest  but it was soon dissipated. January 24, 1852

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

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

*A poet's account of a steam-engine. See December 25, 1851 ("I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon.You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence.  If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient –– that is not the way it speaks to the imagination, and that is not the account which the imagination gives of it. Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine.")