Last rays of the sun. The finest days of the year

December 21

Winter Solstice 2019

It snowed slightly this morning, so as to cover the ground half an inch deep. 

Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th, – probably the night of the 18th. It is very thickly covered with what C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, – as thickly as if it had snowed in that form. I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday. 

We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year. Take Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. 

The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. 

I see the feathers of a partridge strewn along on the snow a long distance, the work of some hawk perhaps, for there is no track.

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

Walden is frozen over . . . probably the night of the 18th. See December 21, 1855 ("Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove."); December 21, 1856 ("The pond [Walden] is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); See also December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before."); A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

What C. calls ice-rosettes. . . a sort of hoar frost on the ice. See December 28, 1852 ("The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me."); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter"); February 2, 1860 ('With February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes"); February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"); December 29, 1859 ("On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes.")

We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year. See December 10, 1853 (”These are among the finest days in the year.”); May 21, 1854 ("the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds."); October 10, 1856 ("These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer.")

The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. See January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun."); December 20, 1854 ("In some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us."); January 23, 1859 ("I notice on the ice where it slopes up eastward a little, a distinct rosy light (or pink) reflected from it generally, half an hour before sunset."); January 31, 1859 ("The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days.")

December 21. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 21

Last rays of the sun

falling on the Baker Farm

reflect a clear pink.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The finest days of the year

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

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