January 7. 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°.
At once the snow, which was dry and crumbling, is softened all over the country, not only in the streets, but in the remotest and slightest sled-track, where the farmer is hauling his wood; not only in yards, but in every woodland hollow and on every hill. There is a softening in the air and a softening underfoot. The softness of the air is something tangible, almost gross.
Some are making haste to get their wood home before the snow goes, sledding, i. e. sliding, it home rapidly.
Now if you take up a handful, it holds together and is readily fashioned and compressed into a ball, so that an endless supply of one kind of missiles is at hand. I find myself drawn toward this softened snow, even that which is stained with dung in the road, as to a friend.
I see where some crow has pecked at the now thawing dung here. How provident is Nature, who permits a few kernels of grain to pass undigested through the entrails of the ox, for the food of the crow and dove, etc.!
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, me- thinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen.
The frozen apples are thawed again.
You hear (in the house) the unusual sound of the eaves running.
Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. Then flitted to birch trees, whose seeds probably they eat. Heard their twitter and mew.
Nature so fills the soil with seeds that I notice, where travellers have turned off the road and made a new track for several rods, the intermediate narrow space is soon clothed with a little grove which just fills it.
See, at White Pond, where squirrels have been feeding on the fruit of a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. The snow for a great space is covered with the outer shells, etc.; and, especially, close to the base of this and the neighboring trees of other species, where there is a little bare ground, there is a very large collection of the shells, most of which have been gnawed quite in two.
The white pine cones show still as much as ever, hanging sickle-wise about the tops of the trees.
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. Did he smell the dead or living mouse beneath and paw to it, or rather, catching it on the surface, make that hollow in his efforts to eat it? It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him! You would say that he need not make such a hole in order to eat the mouse.
At once the snow, which was dry and crumbling, is softened all over the country, not only in the streets, but in the remotest and slightest sled-track, where the farmer is hauling his wood; not only in yards, but in every woodland hollow and on every hill. There is a softening in the air and a softening underfoot. The softness of the air is something tangible, almost gross.
Some are making haste to get their wood home before the snow goes, sledding, i. e. sliding, it home rapidly.
Now if you take up a handful, it holds together and is readily fashioned and compressed into a ball, so that an endless supply of one kind of missiles is at hand. I find myself drawn toward this softened snow, even that which is stained with dung in the road, as to a friend.
I see where some crow has pecked at the now thawing dung here. How provident is Nature, who permits a few kernels of grain to pass undigested through the entrails of the ox, for the food of the crow and dove, etc.!
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, me- thinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen.
The frozen apples are thawed again.
You hear (in the house) the unusual sound of the eaves running.
Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. Then flitted to birch trees, whose seeds probably they eat. Heard their twitter and mew.
Nature so fills the soil with seeds that I notice, where travellers have turned off the road and made a new track for several rods, the intermediate narrow space is soon clothed with a little grove which just fills it.
See, at White Pond, where squirrels have been feeding on the fruit of a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. The snow for a great space is covered with the outer shells, etc.; and, especially, close to the base of this and the neighboring trees of other species, where there is a little bare ground, there is a very large collection of the shells, most of which have been gnawed quite in two.
The white pine cones show still as much as ever, hanging sickle-wise about the tops of the trees.
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. Did he smell the dead or living mouse beneath and paw to it, or rather, catching it on the surface, make that hollow in his efforts to eat it? It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him! You would say that he need not make such a hole in order to eat the mouse.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1860
A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. "); January 7, 1855 (“On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind . . . 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, 1860 ("A thaw begins, with a southerly wind.")
I begin to see the snow-fleas. Last night there was not one to be seen. See January 7, 1851 ("I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow damp "); See also January 5, 1854 (“This afternoon. . .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 15, 1852 (“For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood. ”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea
The white pine cones show still as much as ever, hanging sickle-wise about the tops of the trees. See February 25, 1860 ("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”); March 5, 1860 (“White pine cones half fallen. ”)
1 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. See 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.”)
January 7. See 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
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