The tracks of a mink in the shallow snow along the edge of the river.

February 4. 

a clear cold morning

February 4, 2021

I go over to the Hemlocks on the Assabet this morning. See the tracks of a mink, in the shallow snow along the edge of the river, looking for a hole in the ice. 

A clear, cold morning. The smokes from the village chimneys are quickly purified and dissipated, like vapor, in the air. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 4, 1854

I go over to the Hemlocks on the Assabet. See March 29, 1853 ("A pleasant short voyage is that to the Leaning Hemlocks on the Assabet, just round the Island under Nawshawtuct Hill. The river here has in the course of ages gullied into the hill, at a curve, making a high and steep bank, on which a few hemlocks grow and overhang the deep, eddying basin.");  March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

The tracks of a mink. See February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.");  February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. “); December 6. 1856 ("I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy,"); February 28, 1857 (“Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail?”). See also January 29, 1853 ("[Melvin] has got only three or four minks this year."); December 15, 1859 ("I hear from J. [?] Moore that one man in Bedford has got eighteen minks the last fall."); December 19, 1859 ("Farmer . . . saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year."); March 13, 1859 ("Garfield . . . asked if I had seen any mink]. I said that I commonly saw two or three in a year. He said that he had not seen one alive for eight or ten years. [but] "I catch thirty or forty dollars' worth every winter.")

The smokes from the village chimneys are quickly purified and dissipated, like vapor, in the air. See January 9, 1854 ("Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon"); December 30, 1855 ("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."); January10, 1856 ("I mark the white smoke from its chimney, whose contracted wreaths are soon dissipated in this stinging air, and think of the size of their wood-pile.")

February 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 4

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A clear cold morning

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/hdt540204