January Thaw

January 7.

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind, contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw. 

The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and I hear the pleasant sound of running water. The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air, —how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. 

Still birds are very rare. Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note.

It is a lichen day. The ground is covered with cetrariee, etc., under the pines. How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark! 

It would not be worth the while to die and leave all this life behind one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1855

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind. . . It is, in fact, a January thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. ");January 7, 1860 ("A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. ")

Here comes a little flock of titmice. See January 7, 1851 ("The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

It is a lichen day. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

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