The season of pine cones.

February 27.

A week or two ago I brought home a handsome pitch pine cone which had freshly fallen and was closed perfectly tight. It was put into a table drawer. To-day I am agreeably surprised to find that it has there dried and opened with perfect regularity, filling the drawer, and from a solid, narrow, and sharp cone, has become a broad, rounded, open one, -- has, in fact, expanded with the regularity of a flower's petals into a conical flower of rigid scales, and has shed a remarkable quantity of delicate-winged seeds. 

Each scale, which is very elaborately and perfectly constructed, is armed with a short spine, pointing downward, as if to protect its seed from squirrels and birds. That hard closed cone, which defied all violent attempts to open it has thus yielded to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1853

The expanding of the pine cones ... is a season. See February 22, 1855 ("Pitch pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season, else they will not open or “blossom” in a chamber.")
 

Men of the woods.

February 23. 

I think myself in a wilder country, 
and a little nearer to primitive times,
when I read in old books 

which spell the word savages with an "l" 

   (salvages), 

like John Smith's 
"General Historie of Virginia," 
reminding me of 
the derivation of the word from

   sylva. 

There is some of the wild wood

and its bristling branches

still left in their language.
The savages they described

are really salvages,

Men of the woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1853 

In the falling and driving snow

February 13.

February 13, 2017

In the midst of the snow-storm on Sunday (to-day), I am called to window to see a dense flock of snowbirds,  on and under the pigweed in the garden. It was so in the other storm. I have not observed them in the garden at any other time this winter. They come with the storm, the falling and driving snow. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1853

I am called to window to see a dense flock of snowbirds on and under the pigweed in the garden . See January 2, 1856 ("I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed.”); 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 pigweed in the garden.”);  February 9, 1855 ("I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were. “); February 10, 1855 ("t is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

A thick fog.

February 5.

February 5, 2012

A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. 

It is a lichen day. Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves, but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens, etc., etc. All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth. 

I remember now that the mist was much thicker over the pond than elsewhere. I could not distinguish a man there more than ten rods off, and the woods, seen dimly across a bay, were mistaken for the opposite side of the pond. I could almost fancy a bay of an acre in extent the whole pond. Elsewhere, methinks, I could see twice as far. I felt the greater coolness of the air over the pond, which it was, I suppose, that condensed the vapor more there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1853


It is a lichen day. See February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”);  February 5, 1860 (" I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms.") See also 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.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst studying lichens.