Now while the snow is yet falling

January 26

January 26, 2019

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 fine dry snow with no wind to speak of.  See January 26, 1853 (A slight, fine snow has fallen in the night and drifted before the wind.") Compare December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified.This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face."); January 19, 1857 ("A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. . . A fine dry snow, intolerable to face"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

I see where a partridge has waddled through the snow. See January 22, 1856 ("The tracks of the partridges . . . look like broad chains extending straight far over the snow."); January 22, 1860 ("I scare a partridge that was eating the buds and ends of twigs of the Vaccinium vacillans on a hillside.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

What changes in the aspect of the earth!. See  November 13, 1858 ("Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”); November 28, 1858 ("In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?")

The wintriest scene

while the snow is yet falling –

before wind and thaw.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now while the snow is yet falling

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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