It is a beautiful clear and mild winter day.

January 31.

The wind is more southerly, and now the warmth of the sun prevails, and is felt on the back. The snow softens and melts. It is a beautiful clear and mild winter day. Our washwoman says she is proud of it. Any clear day, methinks, the sun is ready to do his part, and let the wind be right, and it will be warm and pleasant-like, at least now that the sun runs so high a course. 

But I do not melt; there is no thaw in me; I am bound out still.

Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and be tween the stems of trees. I think they eat the buds of the azalea.

In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale.

We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. There is a freshet which carries away dams of accumulated ice.

Our thoughts hide unexpressed, like the buds under their downy or resinous scales; they would hardly keep a partridge from starving. If you would know what are my winter thoughts look for them in the partridge's crop. They are like the laurel buds, — some leaf, some blossom buds, — which, though food for such indigenous creatures, will not expand into leaves and flowers until summer comes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1854

It is a beautiful clear and mild winter day. See January 31, 1855 ("A clear, cold, beautiful day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

The wind is more southerly, and now the warmth of the sun prevails, and is felt on the back. See January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs.")

We too have our thaws. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. See March 21, 1853 ("Winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.")

In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare,. I go a-budding like a partridge. See January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.."); January 10, 1856 ("We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice."); January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds.")

Let us sing Winter.

January 30.

The seasons were not made in vain.  It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was not given to us for no purpose. 

The winter, cold and bound out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it. While the milkmen in the outskirts are milking so many scores of cows before sunrise these winter mornings, it is our task to milk the winter itself.  We are tasked to find out and appropriate all the nutriment it yields.

The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of  man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.

I knew a crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday and, taking up a hymn-book, remarked:

"We have had a good fall for getting in corn and potatoes. Let us sing Winter."

So I say, "Let us sing winter."

What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season?

Another cold morning. Mercury down to 13° below zero.  This morning, though not so cold by a degree or two as yesterday morning, the cold has got more into the house, and the frost visits nooks never known to be visited before. The sheets are frozen about the sleeper's face; the teamster's beard is white with ice. The windows are all closed up with frost, as if they were ground glass.  

The snow is dry and squeaks under the feet, and the teams creak as if they needed greasing, — sounds associated with extremely cold weather.

Up river on ice and snow to Fair Haven Pond. There is a few inches of snow, perfectly level, which now for nearly a week has covered the ice. We look at every track in the snow. 

Every little while there is the track of a fox — maybe the same one — across the river, turning aside some times to a muskrat's cabin or a point of ice, where he has left some traces, and frequently the larger track of a hound, which has followed his trail. 

As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day, and follows us along a considerable distance, flitting by our side on the button-bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the only, sociable bird we have.

It is much easier and pleasanter to walk thus on the river, the snow being shallow and level, and there is no such loud squeaking or cronching of the snow as in the road, and this road is so wide that you do not feel confined in it, and you never meet travellers with whom you have no sympathy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1854

The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain.... See August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? ...A man may hear strains in his thought far surpassing any oratorio. “)

The windows are all closed up with frost, as if they were ground glass. See December 28, 1859 ("In the morning the windows are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out."); January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light ")'; February 1, 1860 ("Frost forms on windows."); February 5, 1855 ("It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed."); February 17, 1860 ("Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows.")

The track of a fox turning aside some times to a muskrat's cabin or a point of ice, where he has left some traces. See February 5, 1854 (“.It turned aside to every muskrat-house or the like prominence near its route and left its mark there.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A little flock of chickadees flies to us, utters their lively day day day and follows us along a considerable distance  See January 30, 1856 ("By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach.");  January 18, 1860 ("Several chickadees, uttering their faint notes, come flitting near to me as usual");\ See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter and:

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

Bitter cold.

January 29.

A very cold morning. Thermometer, or mercury, 18° below zero.

Tonight I feel it stinging cold as I come up the street at 9 o'clock; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1854

Thermometer, or mercury, 18° below zero. See February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.”); January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); January 23, 1857 (The coldest day that I remember recording. . .")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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

The color of Walden ice.

January 27.

Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side. These lumps are not large enough to show the color. 

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. The river ice inclines to a more opaque white. 

Comparing the lumps, Walden ice was, you might say, more crystalline than the river, but both showed the effect of heat more than the Barrett ice of last year, the bubbles being very much elongated and advanced toward the honeycomb stage, while in the Barrett ice they were spherical and there were wide clear spaces.

I have some good friends who neither care what I think nor mind what I say. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1854

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. See January 9, 1852 ("Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water?)"; January 24, 1852 ("Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown"); February 29, 1852 ("The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color)"; January 30, 1854 ("Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers"); December 19, 1856 ("[T]he ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep.")

And Walden , The Pond in Winter ("Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers.")

A good friend. See October 23, 1852 ("My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am.")

Clear and cold and windy.

January 25.

A very cold day. Saw a man in Worcester this morning who took a pride in never wearing gloves or mittens . Drives in the morning. Said he succeeded by keeping his arm and wrist well covered. He had a large hand, one of his fingers as big as three of mine. 

But  this morning he had to give up. The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter. Clear and cold and windy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1854

A very cold day . . . the coldest spell of weather this winter. See January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); January 25, 1857 ("Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°"); Compare January 25, 1853("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees."); January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also January 25, 1860 (""The finest winter day is a cold but clear and glittering one . . . Also warm and melting days in winter are inspiring, though less characteristic.)

The length of the days

January 23

Love tends to purify and sublime itself. It mortifies and triumphs over the flesh, and the bond of its union is holiness. 

January 23, 2015

The increased length of the days is very observable of late. What is a winter unless you have risen and gone abroad frequently before sunrise and by starlight?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1854

The increased length of the days. See January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 7, 1853 ("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 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.") January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”); January 25, 1855 ("For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.)

Rise and go abroad before sunrise and by starlight.  See November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset."); January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”)

January 23. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 23 

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/hdt18540123

Kindred rocks

January 17.

Janiuary 17, 2020

Surveying for William O. Benjamin in east part of Lincoln. Saw a red squirrel on the wall, it being thawing weather. 

Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inanimate matter, — rocks or earth. Looking on the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 17, 1854

Saw a red squirrel on the wall. See January 17, 1860 ("They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling,"); See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, The Red Squirrel.

I feel as if rocks or earth were my kindred. See January 14, 1852 ("We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate"); August 30 1856 (“I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter.); February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.")

Janauary 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 17

January 17, 2023

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/hdt18540117

The river swollen by rain

January 14. 

Am surprised this morning to see how much the river is swollen by the rain of day before yesterday.

The channel, or river itself, is still covered with ice, but the meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left. 

The ice on the river rises with the water while it remains attached to the bottom on each side, and is heaved up and cracked in consequence along the line of the willows:

All the water on the meadows lies over ice and snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1854

All is moist and dissolving.

January 13.

Still warm and thawing, springlike; no freezing in the night, though high winds.  The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. Lately all was clean, dry, and tight. Now, though clear and bright, all is moist and dissolving. Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees and hills on the grayish or light-colored snow-ice.

In the deep hollow this side of Britton's Camp, I hear a singular buzzing sound from the ground, exactly like that of a large fly or bee in a spider's web. I kneel down, and with pains trace it to a small bare spot as big as my hand, amid the snow, and searched there amid the grass stubble for several minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers, till, when nearest to the spot, not knowing but I might be stung, I use a stick. The sound is incessant, like that of a large fly in agony, but I find neither prey nor oppressor. 

At length I change the tone with my stick, and so trace it to a few spires of dead grass standing in the melted snow water. It is a sound issuing from the earth. 

There is no bubble in the water. Perhaps it is air confined under the frozen ground, now expanded by the thaw, and escaping upward through the water by a hollow grass stem.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1854

Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees and hills on the grayish or light-colored snow-ice. See  January 8, 1860 ("The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. "); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist or smoke, apparently owing to the color of the ice.”); February 15, 1859 ("We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. ")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  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

Black ice, Hard walking

January 12.

It still rains very finely. The ground is covered with a black glaze, wet and shiny like water, like an invisible armor, a quarter of an inch or more thick. 

Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots. Walking, or wading, very bad.

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. They pressed the snow down four or five inches, consolidated it, and now endure two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1854

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct . . . two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. See January 8, 1860 (" Those [tracks] of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. . . .There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there . . . like white stepping-stones"); January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,").

January 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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

Ice organ pipes

January 11.

Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes. 

I walk the whole length of the Cliffs, just at the base of the rocks, for this purpose. 

These great organ-pipes are formed where the water flows over triangular projections of the rocks. These solid, pipe-like icicles commonly unite by their sides and form rows of pillars or irregular colonnades, run together, between which here and there you can insert your hand.   

And behind these perpendicular pipes, or congregated pillars, or colonnades run together, are formed the prettiest little aisles or triangular alcoves with lichen-clad sides. 

Then the ice spreads out in a thin crust over the rock, with an uneven surface as of bubbling water, and you can see the rock indistinctly through ice three or four inches thick, and so on, by successive steps or shelves down the rock.

It is now quite cold, and in many places only a sharp spear of purest crystal, which does not reach the rock below, is left to tell of the water that has flowed here. 

The perpendicularity of the icicles contrasts strangely with the various angles of the rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1854

Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes. See February 14, 1852 ("At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; icicles at once hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock.  . . . The shadow of the water flowing and pulsating behind . . .these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole.”); March 3, 1857 ("[W]hen the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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

Time perspective

January 10.

What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day, from the aspect it wore when you were at its base, or generally, as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.

I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1854

What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day. See  January 26, 1860 ("Though you walk every day, you do not foresee the kind of walking you will have the next day");May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has.") See also Farewell, my friend

I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas. See February 11, 1854 ("Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip.")

Jan. 10. I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state. How much food they must afford to small birds, – chickadees, etc. 

The snow went off remarkably fast in the thaw before the 7th , but it is still deep , lying light in swamps and sprout - lands , somewhat hollow beneath . The thaw produced those yellowish pools in hollows in the fields , where water never stands else , and now perhaps there is a bottom of snow ; and now for the last three days they have afforded good sliding . You got a start by running over the snow - crust . In one place , where the depression was inconsiderable but more extensive than usual , I found that it was mere glazed snow on which I slid , it having rapidly frozen dry . 

The sportsmen chose the late thaw to go after quails . They come out at such times to pick the horse - dung in the roads , and can be traced thence to their haunts . 

When we were walking last evening , Tappan admired the soft rippling of the Assabet under Tarbell's bank . One could have lain all night under the oaks there listening to it . Westward forty rods , the surface of the stream reflected a silvery whiteness , but gradually darkened thence eastward , till beneath us it was almost quite black . 

What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day , as the mountain chain differs in appearance , looking back the next day , from the aspect it wore when you were at its base , or generally , as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance . · 

With Tappan , his speech is frequently so frugal and reserved , in monosyllables not fairly uttered clear of his thought , that I doubt if he did not cough merely , or let it pass for such , instead of asking what he said or meant , for fear it might turn out that he coughed merely . 

Channing showed me last night on a map where , as he said , he “ used to walk ” in Rome . He was there sixteen days . 

I mistook the creaking of a tree in the woods the other day for the scream of a hawk . How numerous the resemblances of the animate to the inanimate !

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

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

Rainbow-tinted clouds forming and dispersing this clear cold afternoon.

January 9

January 9, 2024

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. 

Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 9, 1854

Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon. See December 30, 1855 ("I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer."); January 13, 1852 ("Here I am on the Cliffs at half past three or four o'clock. . . .I see. . .in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write."); January 22, 1852 ("One mother-o'-pearl tint is common to the winter sky half an hour before sundown."); January 24, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown . . . . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely.); February 24, 1860 ("Some [clouds ]most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow.").

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? See September 18, 1858 ("The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown. "); November 2, 1853 ("The evening star is now very bright; and is that Jupiter near it?"); December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”) December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red."); December 27, 1853("The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun."); January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”); January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day"); May 8, 1852 ("Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visible")

Snow-fleas.  See where, methinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen."); January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.")  See also 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.");J anuary 6, 1854( " I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before. Do they go into the snow at night?"); January 7, 1851("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 dampI."); January 7, 1860 ("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., And also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

January 9. See 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

tinyurl.com/hdt18540109

The pensive shores of evening skirt the great western continent of the night.

January 8.

Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch therefore with Indian ink, as far as you propose, tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue. It may be the rosy tint of morning; or the more ruddy one of evening; or it may incline more to a yellowish, or a greyish cast. . . . By washing this tint over your whole drawing, you lay a foundation for harmony." 

I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. 

We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. 

Are we more than crepuscular in our intellectual and spiritual life? Have we awakened to broad noon? The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. 

P. M. — To the Spruce Swamp in front of J. Farmer's. 

Can go across both rivers now. New routes are more practicable. 

Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. 

It is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It looks behind as if it had on a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment between the shoulders and down the back. 

It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but rarely twice in a place, as if to sound the tree and so see if it has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. 

How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tapping and inspecting it! He it is that scatters those fragments of bark and lichens about on the snow at the base of trees. What a lichenist he must be! Or rather, perhaps it is fungi makes his favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. 

How briskly he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his wings to another tree! 

The lower two-thirds of the white spruce has its branches retraced or turned downward, and then curving upward at the extremities, as much as the white pine commonly slants upwards. Above it is so thick that you cannot see through it. All the black spruce that I know hereabouts stand on higher land than this. 

Saw two squirrel-nests in the thick top of a spruce.

It was a foot in diameter, of coarse grass and bark fibres, with very thick bottom and sides and a scarcely distinguishable entrance, lined with fine fibres of bark, probably inner bark of maple, very warm. Probably a red squirrel's, for I heard one winding up his clock. Many white pine cones had been eaten in the neighborhood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1854

Gilpin. William Gilpin, English writer, printmaker, clergyman and schoolmaster, best known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque.

I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. See January 6, 1854 ("There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin's pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard's skin."); September 18, 1858 ("Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. . . .And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment.")

The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. See July 3, 1840 ("We will have a dawn, and noon, and serene sunset in ourselves"), and Zphx, Against the night.; See also The hour before sunset, and Seasons of the day 

The voice of the woods

January 7.

Cold last night; rough walking; snow crusted. 

Now that the snow has lain more than a week, it begins to be spotted and darkened in the woods, with various dry leaves and scales from the trees. The wind and thaw have brought down a fresh crop of dry pine and spruce needles. The little roundish and stemmed scales of the alder catkins spot it thickly. 

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

I see also the wings of pine seeds, — the seed being gone, — which look exactly like the wings of ants. 

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. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, — a voice which we call the owl, — and yet so rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound; is louder than the voice of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily and the owl but few times in our lives.  It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1854

The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees. See January 7, 1856 ("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, 1853 (“Still 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, — a hawk or dove. 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. 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.”)

Strange that we should hear this sound so often . . . and [see] the owl but few times in our lives. It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes. See December 9, 1856 (“ I do not see the bird more than once in ten years.”) December 19, 1856 (“[it] is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well.”)

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