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

This morning is a perfect hunter’s morn. See January 16, 1853 ("It was a hunter's day. All tracks were fresh, the snow deep and light.")

Good skating  See February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.") See also 
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

Stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds. See January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me."); February 13, 1859 ("The wonderful stillness of a winter day . . .It is the sabbath of the year, stillness audible")

It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. See January 25, 1852 ("It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon . . . The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer."); January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun and Walking without Gloves

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."); February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden . . . ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.");  March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . . It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice."); March 7, 1855 ("The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle."). See also 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.")

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

January 25. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 25

Clear and bright, yet warm.

 It is a rare winter day –

you dispense with gloves.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The mystery of rose-colored ice

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550125