The sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth.

January 8

Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. The streets are washed bare down to the ice. 

January 8, 2023

It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth.

10 A. M. — To Easterbrooks place 'via old mill site. 

It is now a clear warm and sunny day. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him. Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness.

I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow and in one place a reddish ant about a third of an inch long walking off. 

In the swamps you see the mouths of squirrels’ holes in the snow, with dirt and leaves and perhaps pine scales about them. 

The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1855

The sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth. See December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections."); January 18, 1860 ("The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality, and also darker-blue, and the clouds are blacker and the purple more distinct.")

A crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. See February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow. See December 20, 1854 ("If there is a grub out, you are sure to detect it on the snow or ice. "); January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway."); January 16, 1855 ("Carried to Harris the worms -- brown, light-striped-and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw"); January 22, 1859 ("Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas"); January 24, 1859 ("I see an abundance of caterpillars of various kinds on the ice of the meadows . . . Many of them are frozen in yet, some for two thirds their length, yet all are alive.")

The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds. November 6, 1853 ("The fever bush has small roundish buds, two or three commonly together, probably the blossom-buds.")

The sky reflected 

in the open river-reach

now perfectly smooth.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Sky reflected in the open river-reach

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

 

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