The first thawing weather

January 5

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.

There is also some blueness now in the snow, the heavens being now (toward night) overcast. The blueness is more distinct after sunset.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1854

It being warm and thawing. . . the snow is covered with snow-fleas. See January 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 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 22, 1854 ("Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea"); January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter . . . It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element."); February 2, 1854 ("As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

Blueness now in the snow more distinct after sunset.  See January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”); January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast”);  January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”); See also January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.");  January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue.");  January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold."); January 18, 1852  ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”); January 19, 1855 ("I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M.”);  February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)

Blueness in the snow

more distinct after sunset –

the heavens overcast. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The first thawing weather 

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 © 2009-2025

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