Skater and partridge in a whir

January 31.

A clear, cold, beautiful day. Fine skating. An unprecedented expanse of ice. At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been.

I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, between 10 A. M. and one, quite leisurely.  As I passed the mouth of Larned Brook, off Wayland meeting-house, I pulled out my glass and saw that it was 12.30 o’clock. 

I skated about twelve miles and walked three quarters of a mile further. It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice. I skated past three bridges above Sherman’s —or nine in all—and walked to the fourth. It was quite an adventure getting over the bridge ways or causeways, for on every shore there was either water or thin ice which would not bear.

As I skate near the shore under Lee’s Cliff, I see  what I take to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a dead limb lying on the bank beneath a white oak, close by me. Yet while I look directly at them I can not but admire their close resemblance to partridges. For some time after noting the resemblance to birds, standing only two rods off, I can not be sure of their character on account of their perfect motionlessness, and it is not till I bring my glass to bear on them and see their eyes distinctly, steadily glaring on me, their necks and every muscle tense with anxiety, that I am convinced. 

They sit and stand, three of them, perfectly still with their heads erect, some darker feathers like ears, methinks, increasing their resemblance to scrags, as where a small limb is broken off. I am much surprised at the remarkable stillness they preserve, instinctively relying on the resemblance to the ground for their protection.  

I had come along with a rapid whir and suddenly halted right against them, only two rods distant, and, as my eyes watered a little from skating against the wind, I was not convinced that they were birds till I had pulled out my glass and deliberately examined them. 

At length, on some signal which I did not perceive, they go with a whir, as if shot, off over the bushes.

Returning, I see a large hawk flapping and sailing low over the meadow. There is some dark color to its wings.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1855

A clear, cold, beautiful day. See January 31, 1854 ("It is a beautiful clear and mild winter day"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, between 10 A. M. and one, quite leisurely. See October 15, 1851 ("Up the river in a boat to Pelham's Pond . . .Rowed about twenty-four miles, going and coming. In a straight line it would be fifteen and one half "); September 14, 1854 ("To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. . . We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least."); July 31, 1859 ("This sixteen miles up, added to eleven down, makes about twenty-seven that I have boated on this river, to which may be added five or six miles of the Assabet.")

They go with a whir, as if shot, off over the bushes. See April 22, 1852 (" Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet.");. December 14, 1855 ("They shoot off swift and steady, showing their dark-edged tails, . . . as it whirs off like a cannon-ball shot from a gun."); September 18, 1857 ("We started a pack of grouse, which went off with a whir like cannon-balls."). See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

High water, fine skating, hunters' tales

January 30.

Clear and not cold, and now fine skating, the river rising again to the height it had attained the 24th, which (with this) I think remarkable for this season. It is unusual for the river to be so much swollen in midwinter, because it is unusual to have so much rain at this season. The hills shed it all like a roof into the valleys. It is up to the hubs on the causeways, and foot—travellers have to cross on the river and meadows. 

Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one. Told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him. 

Said the raccoon made a track very much like a young child’s foot. He had often seen it in the mud of a ditch.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1855

Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He never saw a gray nor a black one. Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him. See January 2, 1859 ("Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Tells of Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under the ice and was drowned below the Holt; was found afterward by Sted Buttrick, his collar taken off and given to Lakin"); September 10, 1860 ("My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox from Lowell over this way and lost him at Chelmsford. . . .A Carlisle man also tells me since that this fox used to turn off and run northwest from Chelmsford, but that he would soon after return.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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 ©  2009-2023

Another thaw

January 28.

Grew warmer toward night and snowed; but this soon turned to heavy rain in the night, which washed all the snow off the ice, leaving only bare ground and ice the county over by next morning.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1855

Followed a fox track to its den under a rock – sat here many times.

January 27.

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust and some water beneath in many places.  The crust bears where the snow is very shallow, but lets you through to water in many places on the meadow.

I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. It was made last night, after the sleet and probably the rain was over, before it froze; it must have been at midnight or after. The tracks are commonly ten or twelve inches apart and each one and three quarters or two inches wide. Some times there is a longer interval and two feet fell nearer together, as if in a canter. Their tracks are larger than you would expect, as large as those of a much heavier dog, I should think.

 It doubles directly on its track in one place for a rod or two, then goes up the north end of the Cliff where it is low and went along southward just on its edge, ascending gradually. In one place it made water like a dog, and I perceive the peculiar rank fox odor without stooping. 

It did not wind round the prominent rocks, but leaped upon them as if to reconnoitre. Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end.

Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock which seems to lie loose on the top of the ledge and about two feet from the nearest track. By stooping it had probably squeezed under this and passed into its den beneath. I can find no track leading from it. 

What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning! With what relish they must relate their midnight adventures to one another there in their dens by day, if they have society! I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.

I come upon the track of a woodchopper, who had gone to his work early this morning across Fair Haven Pond. It suggested his hard work and little pecuniary gain, but simple life and health and contentment. As I take the back track on his trail, comparing his foot and stride with mine, I am startled to detect a slight aberration, as it were sliding in his tread, or as if he had occasionally stopped and made a fresh impress not exactly coincident with the first. 

In short, I discover ere long that he had a companion; per chance they were two thieves trying to pass for one, thought I; but the truth was the second, to save his strength in this long walk to his work through the crusty snow, had stepped with more or less precision in the tracks of his predecessor. The snow is three or four inches deep. 

I afterwards use the track of a horse in like manner to my advantage; so that my successor might have thought that a sleigh had gone along drawn by a man.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1855

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust . See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. See February 5, 1854 ("I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Now while the snow is yet falling

January 26. 

This morning it snows again,—a fine dry snow with no wind to speak of, giving a wintry aspect to the landscape.   

I see where a partridge has waddled through the snow still falling, making a continuous track. I look in the direction to which it points, and see the bird just skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off.

What changes in the aspect of the earth! one day russet hills, and muddy ice, and yellow and greenish pools in the fields; the next all painted white, the fields and woods and roofs laid on thick. 

The wintriest scene, —which perhaps can only be seen in perfection while the snow is yet falling, before wind and thaw begin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1855

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/hdt18550126

Clear and bright, yet warm The mystery of rose-colored ice

January 25.

January 25, 2015

This morning is a perfect hunter’s morn, for it snowed about three quarters of an inch last evening, covering land and ice. (Is not good skating a sign of snow?) I  see the tracks apparently of many hunters that hastened out this morning.

It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves.

I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice. It is covered with snow. I push it away with my hands and feet. 

At first I detect no rose tint, and suspect it may have disappeared, —faded or bleached out,—or it was a dream. At length I detect a faint tinge; I cut down a young white oak and sweep bare a larger space; I then cut out a cake.

The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope, as if it had dried on. Little balloons, with some old paint almost sealed off their spheres. It has no beauty nor brightness thus seen, no more than brick-dust.

And this it is which gave the ice so delicate a tinge, seen through that inch of clear white ice. What is it? Can it be blood?

For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1855

Rose-colored ice. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...")

It is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in. See January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . .. The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.") See also January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”); January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; the days are sensibly longer.

The Andromeda Ponds

January 24.

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it, two feet or more high, as thick as a moss bed, springing out of a still denser bed of sphagnum beneath.

Above the general level rise in clumps here and there the panicled andromeda, with brown clustered fruit, and the high blueberry. But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.

Dr. Harris spoke of this andromeda as a rare plant in Cambridge. There was one pond-hole where he had found it, but he believed they had destroyed it now getting out the mud. What can be expected of a town where this is a rare plant?

Here is Nature’s parlor; here you can talk with her in the lingua vernacula, if you can speak it,—if you have anything to say, —her little back sitting-room, her withdrawing, her keeping room.

I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges like mother-o’-pearl or the inside of a couch. It was quite conspicuous fifteen rods off, and the color of spring-cranberry juice. This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1855

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. A dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it. See April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. ."); January 10,1855("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); November 24, 1857 ("Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. . . .These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years sgo, — I knew not why")

  Rose-color ice. See January 22, 1860 ("At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow. The leaves of the water andromeda are evidently more appressed to the twigs, and showing the gray under sides, than in summer.")

The internal heat and life of the globe

January 23.

January 23, 2015

It is surprising how much work will be accomplished in such a night as the last, so many a brook will have run itself out and now be found reduced within reasonable bounds. This settling away of the water leaves much crackling white ice in the roads.

The river is higher than ever, especially the North River. I am obliged after crossing Hunt’s Bridge to keep on round to the railroad bridge at Loring’s before I can recross, it being over the road with a roar like a mill dam this side the further stone bridge, and I could not get over dry. 

I do not quite like to see so much bare ground in midwinter. 

The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1855

I do not quite like to see so much bare ground in midwinter. See January 23, 1858 ("The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . .The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.") ;January 23, 1859 ("The earth being generally bare ")

What a tumult at the stone bridge,

January 22.

Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.  In some places for fifteen rods the whole road is like a lake from three to fifteen inches deep.

It is very exciting to see where was so lately only ice and snow, dark wavy lakes, dashing in furious torrents through the commonly dry channels under the causeways, to hear only the rush and roar of waters and look down on mad billows where in summer is commonly only dry pebbles. 

Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.  

What a tumult at the stone bridge, where cakes of ice a rod in diameter and a foot thick are carried round and round by the eddy in circles eight or ten rods in diameter, and rarely get a chance to go down-stream, while others are seen coming up edgewise from below in the midst of the torrent!

The muskrats driven out of their holes by the water are exceedingly numerous, yet many of their cabins are above water on the south branch. Here there are none. 

We saw fifteen or twenty, at least, between Derby's Bridge and the Tarbell Spring, either swimming with surprising swiftness up or down or across the stream to avoid us, or sitting at the water's edge, or resting on the edge of the ice (one refreshed himself there after its cold swim regardless of us, probed its fur with its nose and scratched its ear like a dog ) or on some alder bough just on the surface. 

They frequently swam toward an apple tree in the midst of the water in the vain hope of finding a resting-place and refuge there. I saw one, looking quite a reddish brown, busily feeding on some plant just at the water's edge, thrusting his head under for it. 

But I hear the sound of Goodwin's gun upstream and see his bag stuffed out with their dead bodies. 

The radical leaves of the yellow thistle are now very fresh and conspicuous in Tarbell's meadow, the rain having suddenly carried off the snow. 

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1855

The muskrats driven out of their holes by the water are exceedingly numerous . . . I hear the sound of Goodwin's gun upstream and see his bag stuffed out with their dead bodies. See January 22, 1859 (".Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Snow turning to rain though a fine hail.

January 21.

The sky has gradually become overcast, and now it is just beginning to snow. Looking against a dark roof, I detect a single flake from time to time, but when I look at the dark side of the woods two miles off in the horizon, there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air. 

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.

Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black, and the latter form commonly a reddish-brown ground out of which the former rise. These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other. 

Few twigs are conspicuous at a distance like those of the golden willow. The tree is easily distinguished at a distance by its color. 

Saw in an old white pine stump, about fifteen inches from the ground, a hole peeked about an inch and a half in diameter. It was about six inches deep downward in the rotten stump and was bottomed with hypnum, rabbit’s fur, and hair, and a little dry grass. Was it a mouse-nest? or a nuthatch’s, creeper’s, or chickadee’s nest? It has a slight musky smell.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1855

The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.   See December 14, 1859 (“Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.”); March 13, 1855 ("At evening the raw, overcast day concludes with snow and hail.”) 

Pines are seen to be of a blue or misty black. See January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.") January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); See also note to January 13, 1859 (" The woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color")

After the storm a new world

January 20.

January 20, 2015

A fine, clear day, not very cold. There was a high wind last night, which relieved the trees of their burden almost entirely, but I may still see the drifts. There is nothing hackneyed where a new snow can come and cover all the landscape.

The surface of the snow everywhere in the fields, where it is hard blown, has a fine grain with low shelves, like a slate stone that does not split well. We cross the fields behind Hubbard‘s and suddenly slump into dry ditches concealed by the snow, up to the middle, and flounder out again.

How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields now converted into a soft, white, fleecy snow ice,  It is like the beginning of the world. 

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only, perchance, a faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. 

The snow still adheres conspicuously to the north west sides of the stems of the trees quite up to their summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that direction, — It would be about as good as a compass to steer  by in a cloudy day or by night.

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky and also at the neighboring wood so suddenly relieved of its snowy burden. 

The pines — mostly white — have at this season a warm brown or yellowish tinge, and the oaks— chiefly young white ones — are comparatively red. The black oak I see is more yellowish. You have these colors of the evergreens and oaks in winter for warmth and contrast with the snow. 

Seeds are still left on the birches, which, after each new snow, are sprinkled over its surface, apparently to keep the birds supplied with food. 

You see where yesterday’s snowy billows have broken at last in the sun or by their own weight, their curling edges fallen and crumbled on the snow beneath. 

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed,—johnswort and coarse grasses, -—whose oat-like seed-scales or hulls they have scattered about. It is surprising they did not sink deeper in the light snow. Often the impression is so faint that they seem to have been supported by their wings. 

The pines and oaks in the deepest hollows in the woods still support some snow, but especially the low swamps are half filled with snow to the height of ten feet, resting on the bent underwood, as if affording covert to wolves.

Very musical and even sweet now, like a horn, is the hounding of a foxhound heard now in some distant wood, while I stand listening in some far solitary and silent field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1855

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard. See January 20, 1856 (" I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower.") See also  December 31, 1855 (“It is one of the mornings of creation .”); January 7, 1858 ("The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings . . . true mornings of creation, original and poetic days. "); January 26, 1853 (“There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew.”)

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky . See January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed. See January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden"); January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A driving snow-storm

January 19.

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M., as I was coming down the railroad. I did not have to make a hole in it, but I saw it some rods off in the deep, narrow ravines of the drifts and under their edges or eaves, like the serenest blue of heaven, though the sky was, of course, wholly concealed by the driving snow-storm; suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. 

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous.

 P. M. — The damp snow still drives from the northwest nearly horizontally over the fields. We go through the Spring Woods, over the Cliff, by the wood-path at its base to Walden, and thence by the path to Brister’s Hill, and by road home. There is not a single fresh track on the back road, and the aspect of the road and trees and houses is very wintry.

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung, and you have only to shake them with your hand or foot, when they rise up and make way for you. We go winding between and stooping or creeping under them, fearing to touch them, lest they should relieve themselves of their burden and let fall an avalanche or shower of snow on to us.  


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1855

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pigweed in the garden. See February 10, 1855 ("It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. "); December 11, 1855 ("The snow will be three feet deep, the ice will be two feet thick, and last night, perchance, the mercury sank to thirty degrees below zero. . . .. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow!. . . I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.");

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning . . . See January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue. . . ."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 5, 1854 ("Some blueness now in the snow . . . more distinct after sunset."); January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast")

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung . . . See December 26, 1853 ("the pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side . . .")

A Day's Devotion

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon –

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me –

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and 

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn –

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

see HDT:

September 7, 1851
January 11, 1852

January 20, 1852

August 23, 1853

March 28, 1859

April 24, 1859

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/HDevoTION

Skating to Bedford.

January 15.

It has just been snowing, and this lies in shallow drifts or waves on the Great Meadows, alternate snow and ice. 

Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet. 

The river-channel dark and rough with fragments of old ice, — polygons of various forms, — cemented together, not strong.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1855

Speed perspective

January 14. 

Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — the water having settled in the suddenly cold night,—which I had not time to see. 

(See the intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, --betrayed by a morsel of fur  left on the ice -- probably the prey of a fox.) 

A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. He takes new possession of nature in the name of his own majesty. There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1855

Skate with a rapidity which astonished myself. See January 15, 1855 (“Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet.”)

Muddy, wet, and slippery.

January 13.

Warm and wet, with rain-threatening clouds drifting from southwest. Muddy, wet, and slippery. 

Surprised to see oak balls on a red oak. 

Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel. The successive grooves made by his teeth while probably he bent it down were quite distinct. The woody stem was a quarter of an inch thick, and I counted eight strokes of his chisel.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 13, 1855

A pitch pine cone cut off by a squirrel. See March 3, 1855 (“A few rods from the broad pitch pine beyond, I find a cone which was probably dropped by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was cut off; and it has probably been buried by the snow till now, for it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. . . . Most fallen pitch pine cones show the marks of squirrels’ teeth, showing they were cut off.”); January 8, 1856 (“All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open.”); January 22, 1856 (“At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead.”)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

January 13.  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 13

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

I am part of one great creature.

January 12.

After a spitting of snow in the forenoon, I see the blue sky here and there, and the sun is coming out. It is still and warm. The earth is two thirds bare. I walk along the Mill Brook below Emerson’s, looking into it for some life.

Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What beauty in the running brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core, far, far within. 

It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side. What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. Ah, bless the Lord, O my soul! bless him for wildness, for crows that will not alight within gunshot! and bless him for hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard!

Where are the shiners now, and the trout? I see none in the brook. Have the former descended to the deep water of the river? Ah, may I be there to see when they go down! Why can they not tell me? Or gone into the mud? There are few or no insects for them now. 

The strong scent of this red oak, just split and corded, is a slight compensation for the loss of the tree. 

How cheering the sight of the evergreens now, on the forest floor, the various pyrolas, etc., fresh as in summer! 

What is that mint whose seed-vessels rubbed are so spicy to smell—minty—at the further end of the pond by the Gourgas wood-lot? 

On Flint’s Pond I find Nat Rice fishing. He has not caught one. I asked him what he thought the best time to fish. He said, “When the wind first comes south after a cold spell, on a bright morning.”

Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1855

Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. See October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show")

The warmth of the sun on our backs. See January 31, 1854 ("The wind is more southerly, and now the warmth of the sun prevails, and is felt on the back.”); July 21, 1853 ("The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I have to shade my face with my hands . . .")

I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side.See November 11, 1853 ("I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood.”); February 12, 1855 ("as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance. “)

I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. See February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. “);  May 12, 1857 ("As the bay-wing sang many a thousand years ago, so sang he to-night.  . . .  One with the rocks and with us.”); August 3, 1852 (“By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, ”)

The tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them. See January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale.");  January 10, 1856 ("We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, —the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked blueberry. Even a little shining bud which lies sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, perhaps half concealed by ice, is object enough."); January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts! — the impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep under the armor of their black scales, sleeping along the twigs; the birch and oak sprouts, and the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts; the round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, etc.")

January 12. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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

The air thick with snowflakes

January 11.

P. M. — Skated to Lee’s Bridge and Farrar’s Swamp -— call it Otter Swamp.

A fine snow has just begun to fall, so we make haste to improve the skating before it is too late. Our skates make tracks often nearly an inch broad in the slight snow which soon covers the ice. 

All along the shores and about the islets the water broadly overflows the ice of the meadows, and frequently we have to skate through it, making it fly. The snow soon shows where the water is. 

It is a pleasant time to skate, so still, and the air so thick with snowflakes that the outline of near hills is seen against it and not against the more distant and higher hills. 

Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon.

The ground, which was two thirds bare before, began to gray about Fair Haven Pond, as if it were all rocks.

There were many of those grubs and caterpillars on the ice half a dozen rods from shore, some sunk deep into it.  

This air, thick with snowflakes, making a background, enables me to detect a very picturesque clump of trees on an islet at Pole Brook,—a red oak in midst, with birches on each side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1855

The near horizon. See September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");  August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...").

Close objects stand out

against a near horizon,

air thick with snowflakes.

January 11, 1855

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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 ©  2009-2023

Life in the ice

January 10.

To Beck Stow’s. The swamp is suddenly frozen up again, and they are carting home the mud which was dug out last fall, in great frozen masses.

The twigs of the 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.

Then there is the Andromeda calyculata, its leaves appressed to the twigs, pale-brown beneath, reddish above, with minute whitish dots. As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.

The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened.

At European Cranberry Swamp, I see great quanities of the seeds of that low three-celled rush or sedge, about the edge of the pool on the ice, black and elliptical, looking like the droppings of mice, so thick in many places that by absorbing the sun’s heat they had melted an inch or more into the ice.

Cold and blustering as it is, the crows are flapping and sailing about and buffeting one another as usual.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1855


As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish. See April 17, 1852 (" . . .chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda. The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color;. . . that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows”)


European Cranberry Swamp.[Gowing's Swamp] See August 30, 1856 ("To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp . . . I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe.").")

Cold and blustering as it is, the crows are flapping and sailing about and buffeting one another as usual. See November 25, 1860 (“I see a very great collection of crows far and wide on the meadows, evidently gathered by this cold and blustering weather.”)

We are up to the ridge again it is colder tonight perhaps 14° snow is slippery there are fox and coyote tracks on the way up and we don't stop at the view because of the cold and on the ridge in back we find a bobcat track that follows the trail along our own tracks up the ridge. For the first time this winter we walk on the ice on the pond and a new tree has fallen across the shortcut right above the driveway. Such a remarkable thing to be out in the cold in the woods with the bobcat this is the single thing to remember about today .

A fresh bobcat track

follows the trail up the ridge

along our old tracks.

Zphx20150110