January 12.It began to snow in the night, and this morning considerable has fallen and is still falling. I go forth to walk on the Hill at 3 P. M. It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now, having just ceased falling.
This is a dry star snow. It lies tap light as down. When I look closely I see each snowflake lies as it first fell, delicate crystals with the six rays or leafets more or less perfect, not yet in the least melted by the sun.
January 12, 2024
Such is the glitter or sparkle on the surface of a snow freshly fallen when the sun comes out and you walk from it, the points of light constantly changing.
I suspect that these are good evidence of the freshness of the snow. The sun and wind have not yet destroyed these delicate reflectors.
The aspect of the pines now, with their plumes and boughs bent under their burden of snow, is what I call glyphic, like lumpish forms of sculpture, — a certain dumb sculpture. There is a wonderful stillness in the air, so that you hear the least fall of snow from a bough near you, suggesting that perhaps it was of late equally still in what you called the snow-storm, except for the motion of the falling flakes and their rustling on the dry leaves, etc.
Looking from the hilltop, the pine woods half a mile or a mile distant north and northwest, their sides and brows especially, snowed up like the fronts of houses, look like great gray or grayish-white lichens, cetrarias maybe, attached to the sides of the hills. Those oak woods whose leaves have fallen have caught the snow chiefly on their lower and more horizontal branches, and these look somewhat like ramalina lichens.
As I stand by the hemlocks, I am greeted by the lively and unusually prolonged tche de de de de de of a little flock of chickadees. The snow has ceased fall ing, the sun comes out, and it is warm and still, and this flock of chickadees, little birds that perchance were born in their midst, feeling the influences of this genial season, have begun to flit amid the snow-covered fans of the hemlocks, jarring down the snow, — for there are hardly bare twigs enough for them to rest on, — or they plume themselves in some snug recess on the sunny side of the tree, only pausing to utter their tche de de de.
The locust pods, which were abundant, are still, part of them, unopened on the trees.
I notice, as I am returning half an hour before sunset, the thermometer about 24°, much vapor rising from the thin ice which has formed over the snow and water to-day by the riverside. Here, then, I actually see the vapor rising through the ice
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1860
This is a dry star snow. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. ...Also I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm. ..."); January 14, 1853 (" Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); December 14, 1855 ("Looking more closely at the light snow... I found that it was sprinkled all over ... with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry.") January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes . . .countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.”)
Going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over the snow. See February 3, 1852 (“From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface.”); February 8, 1856 ("At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors, one to every six inches, at least. ")
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
.
No comments:
Post a Comment