Stirred with a stick, it shows a mass of crystals.

February 28.

A pleasant morning. What is the cause of that half ice, half water, along the edge of the river now, of the consistency of molasses or soft solder ? I can think of no peculiarity in its formation unless that this water, the river rising, has flowed out over the ice in the night faster than it froze. Stirred with a stick, it shows a mass of crystals.

This is now another rise of the river. I see that the ice in hollows in the fields breaks up (partially) in the same manner with that on the river, viz. around the shore it is covered with water and rests on the bottom, while the middle is raised with the water, and hence a ridge is heaved up where the two ices meet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1854

Around the shore ice is covered with water and rests on the bottom, while the middle is raised with the water, and hence a ridge is heaved up where the two ices meet. Compare February 28, 1855 ("Many great cakes have lodged on a ridge of the meadow west of the river here, and suggest how such a ridge may be growing from year to year."); January 10, 1859 ("The middle of the river where narrow . . .is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly.")

Winter flooding

February 27.

Morning. — Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded.

The rain-water and melted snow have run swiftly over the frozen ground into the river, and raised it with the ice on it and flooded the meadows, covering the ice there; so that you have floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again.

The rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground seeks its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river.

It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, — beside melting all the snow, — and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground.

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

floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. See  February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice. . .”); January 22, 1855 ("Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.”)

Morning snow turns to fine freezing rain with a glaze changing to pure rain. Deep pools of water form in the fields

February 26.

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, — the weeds, trees, etc., are covered with the most of a glaze thus far, — but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. The wind rises and the rain increases. The rain is fast washing off all the glaze. 

February 26, 2017

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other. The quantity of water which is fallen is by no means remarkable but, the ground being frozen, it is not soaked up. There is more water on the surface than before this winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1854

This morning it began with snowing, turned to a fine freezing rain producing a glaze, but in the afternoon changes to pure rain. See February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees.")

Deep pools of water form in the fields, which have an agreeable green or blue tint, — sometimes the one, sometimes the other. See Febrruary 14, 1854 ("I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue.")

February 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 26

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/hdt-540226

The other day I thought that I smelled a fox .

February 24.

In Wheeler's Wood by railroad. 

Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah. This bird more than any I know loves to stand with its head downward. Meanwhile chickadees, with their silver tinkling, are flitting high above through the tops of the pines.

Measure the ice of Walden in three places, — Call it then 17 inches on an average. On Fair Haven, in the only place tried, it was 21 inches thick. I think that in an average year the ice in such a pond as Fair Haven attains a greater thickness than the snow on a level.

The other day I thought that I smelled a fox very strongly, and went a little further and found that it was a skunk. May not their odors differ in intensity chiefly?

Observe in one of the little pond-holes between Walden and Fair Haven where a partridge had travelled around in the snow amid the bordering bushes twenty-five rods, and had paused at each high blueberry bush, fed on its red buds and shaken down fragments of its bark on the snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1854

Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak.  See February 25, 1859 (" I heard this morning a nuthatch on the elms in the street. I think that they are heard oftener and again at the approach of spring, just as the phoebe note of the chickadee is; and so their gnah gnah is a herald of the spring.").See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

Measure the ice of Walden . . . 17 inches on an average. See February 16, 1856 ("Near the shore in one place it was twenty-two inches.”)

It was a skunk. See February 25, 1860 ("They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.").See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; Skunks Active

Paused at each high blueberry bush, fed on its red buds and shaken down fragments of its bark on the snow. See December 18, 1854 ("Where a partridge took to wing I find the round red buds of the high blueberry plucked about the swamps.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

The other day I thought that I smelled a fox

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

High wind and drifting snow.

February 23. 

This forenoon a driving storm, very severe. The snow drives horizontally from the north or northwesterly, in long waving lines like the outline of a swell or billow. The flakes do not fall perceptibly for the width of a house.

This afternoon fair, but high wind and drifting snow. The fine snow drives along over the field like steam curling from a roof, forming architectural drifts.

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

The snow drives horizontally from the north or northwesterly. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face."); February 3, 1854 ("A driving snow-storm again") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified

The fine snow drives along over the field like steam curling from a roof. See December 24, 1850 (". . . like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain."); January 19, 1852 ("The snow blowing far off in the sun . . .looks like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning.") ; February 16, 1852 ("I see the steam-like snow-dust curling up and careering along over the fields. . . .like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind.");  February 3, 1855 (" Alive with flowing streams of snow, in form like the steam which curls along a river’s surface at sunrise.”); January 19,1860 (“This snow looks just like vapor curling along over the surface, long waving lines producing the effect of a watered surface in motion.”)

We form a work crew and snowshoe up past the "junction" to a spot where we plan to make a clearing for the wildlife. The snow is just right. temperature 45 degrees. we need no gloves. working steadily i cut the larger saplings, and she takes the smaller ones with a clipper or handsaw. i fell them all to the west and then cut again and throw over the bank. It is late afternoon. clear air. sunlight in and out of clouds over the adirondacks as we work in this one small spot.

the sun begins to slant through the trees. it is a pretty walk up to the view in this light. the sun setting  to the south over Giant, just before we arrive.


in one spot working

steadily late afternoon

sun slants through the trees.

February 23, 2014 zphx

A walk in new-fallen snow.

February 21.

A. M. — A fine, driving snow-storm. At noon clears up. It has now got to be such weather that after a cold morning it is colder in the house, — or we feel colder, — than outdoors, by noon, and are surprised that it is no colder when we come out.

P. M. — To Goose Pond by Tuttle Path. The snow has just ceased falling — about two inches deep, in the woods, upon the old and on bare ground. There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness. 

The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees, so that I am able to tell the points of compass as well as by the sun. I guide myself accordingly.

The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, February 21, 1854

It has now got to be such weather that after a cold morning it is colder in the house, — or we feel colder, — than outdoors . . . See February 12, 1854 ("I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant.”)

You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness. See December 21, 1852 ("You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.")

The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees. See December 23, 1851 ("There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree. “); January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow . . . and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”); December 26, 1855 (“The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs”); January 14, 1856 ("I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.“)

The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.  See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green..."). See also note to January 27, 1854 ("Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance.")

Fire on ice.

February 20.

Skate to Fair Haven Pond. Make a fire on the south side of the pond, using canoe birch bark and oak leaves for kindlings. It is best to lay down first some large damp wood on the ice for a foundation, since the success of a fire depends very much on the bed of coals it makes, and, if these are nearly quenched in the basin of melted ice, there is danger that it will go out.

How much dry wood ready for the hunter, inviting flames, is to be found in every forest, — dry bark fibres and small dead twigs of the white pine and other trees, held up high and dry as if for this very purpose!

The occasional loud snapping of the fire is exhilarating. I put on some hemlock boughs, and the rich salt crackling of its leaves is like mustard to the ears, — the firing of uncountable regiments. Dead trees love the fire. We skate home in the dusk, with an odor of smoke in our clothes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1854

Make a fire on the south side of the pond, using canoe birch bark and oak leaves for kindling. See February 7, 1854 ("Made a fire on the snow-covered ice half a mile below Ball's Hill -- a large warm fire, whose flame went up straight, there being no wind, and without smoke. . . .We had often sailed over this very spot..”); January 26, 1860 ("To Eleazer Davis's Hill, and made a fire on the ice, merely to see the flame and smell the smoke. ")

Nature disguised as mind.

February 19.

I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. 

The large moths apparently love the neighborhood of water, and are wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of the meadow and river, places more or less inaccessible, to men at least.

I see a button-bush with what at first sight looks like the open pods of the locust attached. They are the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on.

Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, — the maple, for instance, — there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind that, as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to.

Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago, in a full senate of all intellects, determined how cocoons had best be suspended, — kindred mind with mine that admires and approves decided it so.

Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 19, 1854

The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully and admirably secured by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig. See January 19, 1854 ("The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it"); June 2, 1855 (“that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia”); ;May 17, 1857 ("Two cocoons of apparently the Attacus Promethea on a small black birch, the silk wound round the leaf stalk.

Not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. See December 17, 1853 ("a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons,. .with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them”); December 24, 1853 ("I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it.”); January 14, 1857 ("What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it?”)

Who placed us? See  February 19, 1857 ("Why do water and snow take just this form?"); April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of black-birds, why smell the skunk each year? .. why just this circle of creatures completes the world?”); Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?”Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors.?"); December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.")

I begin to think that my wood will last.

February 18. 

P. M.  - To Yellow Birch Swamp. 

As I remember January, we had one (?) great thaw, succeeded by severe cold. It was harder getting about, though there may have been no more snow because it was light, and there was more continuous cold and clear sparkling weather.

But the last part of January and all February thus far have been alternate thaw and freeze and snow. It has more thaws, even as the running "r" occurs twice in it and but once in January. I do not know but the more light and warmth plainly accounts for the difference.

It does not take so much fuel to keep us warm of late. I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring.

I see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with gray-ish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ. Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps.

At the old mill-site, saw two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. Saw the yellow under sides of their wings. It is barely possible I am mistaken, but, since Wilson makes them common in Pennsylvania in winter,  I feel pretty sure. 

Such sights make me think there must be bare ground not far off south.

It is a little affecting to walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer lichens here and there amid the snow, and remember that ere long we shall find violets also in their midst. What an odds the season makes!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1854

I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring. See February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. "); see aksi A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; I begin to think that my wood will last

Slender insects a third of an inch long, with gray-ish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Insects appear

two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. 

 The Whether a rose - tinted water lily is sail- ing amid the pads , or Neighbor Hobson is getting out his ice with a cross - cut saw , while his oxen are eat- ing their stalks . I noticed that the ice which Garrison cut the other day contained the lily pads and stems within it . How different their environment now from when the queenly flower , floating on the trembling surface , exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects ! Hubbard's wooded hill is now almost bare of trees . Barberries still hang on the bushes , but all shrivelled . I found a bird's nest of grass and mud in a barberry bush filled full with them . It must have been done by . . . . .up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest [sic] bursts and blows open. Rabbit-tracks numerous there, sonictimes quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow-covered brook. How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a, hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white; air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other. The Mitchella repens berries look very bright amid the still fresh green leaves . In the birch swamp west of this are many red (?) squirrel nests high in the birches . They are composed within of fibres of bark. I see where the squirrels have eaten walnuts along the wall and left the shells on the snow. Channing has some microscopic reading these clays . But he says in effect that these works are purely material . The idealist views things in the large. I read some of the speeches in Congress about the Nebraska Bill, -a thing the like of which I have not done for a year. What trifling upon a serious subject! while honest men are sawing wood for them outside . Your Congress halls have an ale-house odor, -a place for stale jokes and vulgar wit . It compels me to think of my fellow-creatures as apes and baboons. What a contrast between the upper and under side of many leaves, - the indurated and colored upper side and the tender, more or less colorless under side, - male and female, - even where they are almost sequally exposed! The under side is commonly white, however, as turned away from the light toward the earth. Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful tlndroineda Polif{)lia, the lecfum, ]ialmia glauca. De Quince says that "the ancients had no experimental knowledge of severe cliniates ." Neither have the English at home as compared \with us of New England, nor we, compared with the Esquirnaux. n.iy This is a common form of the birch scale, - black, I think, -- not white, at any rate. The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia, dark. but pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate bluish white beneath, deserve to be copied on to works of art .

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

To Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 18.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. 

Rabbit-tracks numerous here, some times quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow-covered brook.

What a contrast between the upper and under side of many leaves. Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia: dark pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and delicate bluish white beneath. The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia deserve to be copied on to works of art.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1854

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia. See January 10, 1855 ("Andromeda Polifolia, with its rich leaves turned to a mulberry-color above by the winter, with a bluish bloom and a delicate bluish white, as in summer, beneath, project above the ice, the tallest twigs recurved at top, with the leaves standing up on the upper side like teeth of a rake."); April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”). Also note to May 5, 1855.

I see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with grayish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ.

Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps.

At the old mill - site, saw two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. Saw the yellow under sides of their wings. It is barely possible I am mistaken, but, since Wilson makes them common in Pennsylvania in winter, I feel pretty sure.

Such sights make me think there must be bare ground not far off south.

It is a little affecting to walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer lichens here and there amid the snow, and remember that ere long we shall find violets also in their midst.

What an odds the season makes! The birds know it.

Whether a rose - tinted water lily is sailing amid the pads, or Neighbor Hobson is getting out his ice with a cross - cut saw, while his oxen are eating their stalks.

I noticed that the ice which Garrison cut the other day contained the lily pads and stems within it.

How different their environment now from when the queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface, exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects!

Hubbard's wooded hill is now almost bare of trees.

Barberries still hang on the bushes, but all shrivelled.

I found a bird's nest of grass and mud in a barberry bush filled full with them.

It must have been done by some quadruped or bird.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open.

Rabbit - tracks numerous there, sometimes quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow - covered brook.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The Mitchella repens berries look very bright amid the still fresh green leaves.

In the birch swamp west of this are many red (?) squirrel nests high in the birches. They are composed within of fibres of bark. I see where the squirrels have eaten walnuts along the wall and left the shells on the snow.

Channing has some microscopic reading these days. But he says in effect that these works are purely material. The idealist views things in the large.

I read some of the speeches in Congress about the Nebraska Bill, - a thing the like of which I have not done for a year. What trifling upon a serious subject! while honest men are sawing wood for them outside. Your Congress halls have an ale-house odor, - a place for stale jokes and vulgar wit. It compels me to think of my fellow-creatures as apes and baboons.

What a contrast between the upper and underside of many leaves, — the indurated and colored upper side and the tender, more or less colorless under side, - male and female, even where they are almost equally exposed!

The underside is commonly white, however, as turned away from the light toward the earth.

Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia, the ledum, Kalmia glauca.

De Quincey says that “The ancients had no experimental knowledge of severe climates.”

Neither have the English at home as compared with us of New England, nor we, compared with the Esquimaux.

This is a common form of the birch scale, black, I think, — not white, at any rate.

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia, dark but pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate bluish white beneath, deserve to be copied on to works of art.

At Gowing's Swamp

February 17.

At Gowing's Swamp I see where someone hunted white rabbits yesterday, and perhaps the day before, with a dog. The hunter has run round and round it on firm ground, while the hare and dog have cut across and circled about amid the blueberry bushes. 

The track of the white rabbit is gigantic compared with that of the gray one. Indeed few of our wild animals make a larger track with their feet alone. Where I now stand, the track of all the feet has an expanse of seven to fifteen inches, — this at intervals of from two to three feet, — and the width at the two fore feet is five inches. There is a considerable but slighter impression of the paw behind each foot.

The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal in their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored with them. I see, too, where they have run over the ice in the swamp, there is a mere sugaring of snow on it, ever trying to make an entrance to get beneath it. 

You see deep and distinct channels in the snow in some places, as if a whole colony had long travelled to and fro in them, a highway, a well-known trail, — but suddenly they will come to an end; and yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for you see where the single traveller who did it all has nimbly hopped along as if suddenly scared, making but a slight impression, squirrel like, on the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will make a channel for a short distance.

 

These mice tracks are of various sizes, and sometimes, when they are large and they have taken long and regular hops nine or ten inches apart in a straight line, they look at a little distance like a fox-track. 

I suspect that the mice sometimes build their nests in bushes from the foundation, for, in the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were, at the same height and also on prinos bushes, - plainly the work of mice wholly. 

In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc., etc., and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. 

These are pleasing gardens.

In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January, perhaps, when the snow-banks had settled and their surfaces, many times thawed and frozen, become indurated, in fact, you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well.

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

The open part of Gowing's Swamp. See August 23, 1854 (I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter . . .”); May 31, 1857 ("That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb.. . .”); January 30 1858 ("The pool, where there is nothing but water and sphagnum to be seen and where you cannot go in the summer, is about two rods long and one and a half wide")

The track of the white rabbit. See February 3, 1856 ("You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps.")

The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal. See January 31, 1856 ("Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. . . .The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

In the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were. See October 8, 1853 ("Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest in the prinos swamp, while surveying on the new Bedford road to-day, topped over with moss, and a hole on one side, like a squirrel-nest."); February 3, 1856 ("Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. See November 23, 1857 ("This swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia.")

In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well. See January 27, 1860 ("After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears"); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on. It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 13, 1856 (" A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences.")

February 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 17

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  At Gowing's Swamp

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/hdt-540217

Snow is a great revealer.

February 16. 

By this time in the winter I do not look for those clear, sparkling mornings and delicate leaf frosts, which, methinks, occur earlier in the winter, as if the air of winter was somewhat tarnished and debauched, — had lost its virgin purity. 

Every judgment and action of a man qualifies every other, i. e. corrects our estimate of every other, as, for instance, a man's idea of immortality who is a member of a church, or his praise of you coupled with his praise of those whom you do not esteem. For in this sense a man is awfully consistent, above his own consciousness. 

All a man's strength and all his weakness go to make up the authority of any particular opinion which he may utter. He is strong or weak with all his strength and weakness combined. 

If he is your friend, you may have to consider that he loves you, but perchance he also loves gingerbread.

It must be the leaves of the Chimaphila umbellate, spotted wintergreen, which Channing left here day before yesterday.

Snows again this morning.

For the last month the weather has been remarkably changeable; hardly three days together alike. That is an era not yet arrived, when the earth, being partially thawed, melts the slight snows which fall on it. 

P. M. — To Walden and Flint's; return by Turnpike. 

That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.

See two large hawks circling over the woods by Walden, hunting, — the first I have seen since December 15th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1854

Snows again this morning. See February 16, 1852 ("The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes."); February 16, 1856 ("It has been trying to snow for two days. About one inch fell last night, but it clears up at noon, and sun comes out very warm and bright."); February 16, 1860 ("A snow-storm, which began in the night, - and is now three or four inches deep.  . . . this crystalline snow lies up so light and downy that it evidently admits more light than usual, and the surface is more white and glowing for it. It is semitransparent")

By this time in the winter I do not look for those clear, sparkling mornings and delicate leaf frosts, which, methinks, occur earlier in the winter. See  February 16, 1852 ("This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. The sky is a much fairer and undimmed blue than usual."); See also December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun."); February 10, 1852 (“We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. . . .. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.”); February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”); February 12, 1854 ("To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed."); February 14, 1855 ("There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails. . . .These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like."); February 17, 1852 ("Perhaps the peculiarity of those western vistas was partly owing to 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")

As if the air of winter was somewhat tarnished and debauched, — had lost its virgin purity. Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”)

That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden. See December 23, 1850 ("I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare")  Also Walden, The Ponds ("I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hill side, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo.")

See two large hawks circling over the woods by Walden, hunting, See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the Hawks of March; see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

February 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 16

February 14, 1854   <<<<<<<                                                                   >>>>>>> February 17, 1854

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Snow is a great revealer

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/hdt-540216

The ice does not ring when I strike it with an axe.

February 13.

7 a.m. — To Walden. A warm morning, overcast. The ice does not ring when I strike it with an axe. 

P.M. — It snows again, spoiling the skating, which has lasted only one day. I do not remember the winter when the ice remained uncovered a week.

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

I do not remember the winter when the ice remained uncovered a week. See December 22. 1852 ("A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter, just enough to spoil the skating, now ten days old"); ; December 26, 1853 ("The ice is covered up, and skating gone"); April 6, 1856 ("There has been no skating the last winter, the snow having covered the ice immediately after it formed and not melting, and the river not rising till April, when it was too warm to freeze thick enough.”) Compare February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.”); See also January 18, 1860 ("They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond. The former may be called a crystalline winter. ")


February 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 13 (midwinter colors)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ice does not ring when I strike it with an axe.

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/hdt-540213

The unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay

The unrelenting 

steel-cold scream of a jay,

unmelted,

never flows into a song,

a sort of wintry trumpet

screaming cold.

Hard, tense, frozen music,

like the winter sky itself;

the blue livery of winter's band.

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

The scream of the jay
wholly without sentiment
a true winter sound.

February 2, 1854

The sounds of a glorious winter afternoon (the scream of a jay–cold, hard, tense, frozen music –like the winter sky)

February 12. 

February 12, 2023

I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. 

It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. There is very little wind, here under Fair Haven especially. I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.

This is a glorious winter afternoon. The clearness of a winter day is not impaired, while the air is still and you feel a direct heat from the sun. It is not like the relenting of a thaw with a southerly wind. There is a bright sheen from the snow, and the ice booms a little from time to time. 

To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. 

It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare.

You hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay's scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. 

There is no cushion for sounds now. They tear our ears. 

The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering, for it feels scarcely perceptible changes in the weather. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the buds expand in the spring. 

For the earth is all alive and covered with feelers of sensation, papillae. The hardest and largest rock, the broadest ocean, is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. 

Though you may perceive no difference in the weather, the pond does.

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

I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens. See January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . .You dispense with gloves. "); March 18, 1853 ("This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer”) Compare February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer."); February 3, 1852 ("See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Walking without Gloves

This is a glorious winter afternoon. See December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day."); December 20, 1854 (“It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice.”)

The unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay. See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The pond does not thunder every night. See January 1, 1853 ("I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature"); January 6, 1853 ("There are thirty or forty of these [ bubbles], at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop.");. January 8, 1853 ("I inferred, therefore, that all those infinite minute bubbles I had seen first on the under side of the ice were now frozen in with it, and . . . probably it is the expanding and shrinking of the air in them, as well as in the water, which cracks the ice and makes the whooping sound."); January 29, 1853 ("Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel."); December 25, 1853 ('About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. "); December 27, 1853 ("I went to hear the pond whoop, but did not hear much. "); March 1,1856 ("At Flint’s I find half a dozen fishing. The pond cracks a very little while I am there, say at half past ten. I think I never saw the ice so thick. It measures just two feet thick"); December 7, 1856 ("I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before . . . I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. "); January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side, which is first in the shade, for I hear it cracking there, though it is still in the sun around me. It is not so sonorous and like the dumping of frogs as I have heard it, but more like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. Most shivering, splintery, screeching cracks these are, as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. Methinks my weight sinks it and helps to crack sometimes."); January 23, 1858 ("I go near enough to Flint's Pond, about 4 P. M., to hear it thundering. In summer I should not have suspected its presence an eighth of a mile off through the woods, but in such a winter day as this it speaks and betrays itself. "); January 28, 1858 ("The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated"); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”); December 23, 1859 ("You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset . . . Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy ligh, . . . These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. ")  See also Walden (“The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should”)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sounds of a glorious winter afternoon

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/hdt540212