Thursday, February 13, 2014

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
"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

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts Last 30 Days.

The week ahead in Henry’s journal

The week ahead in Henry’s journal
A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy.
"A stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought." ~ H. D. Thoreau, March 28, 1859


I sit on this rock
wrestling with the melody
that possesses me.