February 6, 2014
The weather has been very changeable for some weeks. First it is warm and thawing, sloshy weather; then the thermometer goes down to 19 ° below zero, and our shoes squeak on the snow; then, perhaps , it moderates and snows; then is mild and pleasant again and good sleighing; then we wake to find a drifted snow upon the last and a bleak, wintry prospect.
From the Cliff Hill the landscape looks very bleak. A cold, drifting wind sweeps from the north; the surface of the snow is imbricated on a great scale, being very regularly blown into waves, alike over the high road and the railroad, concealing the tracks and the meadow and the river and the pond. It is all one great wintry-looking snow-field, whose surface consists of great wave-like drifts, maybe twenty feet wide with an abrupt edge on the south.
I see great shadows on the northeast sides of the mountains, forty miles off, the sun being in the southwest.
February 6, 2014
I see great shadows on the northeast sides of the mountains, forty miles off, the sun being in the southwest.
February 6, 2014
I see the track of a rabbit about the Cliff; there are hollows in the snow on the tops of the rocks, shaped like a milk-pan and as large, where he has squatted or whirled round. I also see the tracks of a few mice or moles. The squirrel, too, has been out.
Hear the old owl at 4:30 P. M.
Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black.
Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1854
Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black. See December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue."); February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be some thing divine, something celestial, in me."); 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 15, 1856 ("A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue."); January 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow. . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue."); January 30, 1856 ("crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects.")
Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black. See December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue."); February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be some thing divine, something celestial, in me."); 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 15, 1856 ("A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue."); January 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow. . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue."); January 30, 1856 ("crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects.")
February 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6
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
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