A morning of creation.

December 31.

It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night. 

Now, at 8.30 A. M., I see, collected over the low grounds behind Mr. Cheney’s, a dense fog (over a foot of snow), which looks dusty like smoke by contrast with the snow. Though limited to perhaps twenty or thirty acres, it is as dense as any in August. 

This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. 

Clearing out the paths, which the drifting snow had filled, I find already quite a crust, from the sun and the blowing making it compact; but it is soft in the woods. 

9 A. M. — To Partridge Glade.

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night. 

In a hollow in the glade, a gray rabbit’s track, apparently, leading to and from a hole in the snow, which, following, and laying open, I found to extend curving about this pit, four feet through and under the snow, to a small hole in the earth, which apparently led down deep. 

At ten the frost leaves are nearly all melted. 

It is invariably the east track on the railroad causeway which has the least snow on it. Though it is nearly all blown off elsewhere on the causeway, Trillium Woods have prevented its being blown off opposite to them. 

The snow-plow yesterday cast the snow six feet one side the edge of the cars, and it fell thick and rich, evenly broken like well-plowed land. It lies like a rich tilth in the sun, with its glowing cottony-white ridges and its shadowy hollows.

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

One of the mornings of creation. See January 26, 1860 ("There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew . . .”)

The trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost. See January 6, 1853 ("This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost."; February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”); February 14, 1855 ("There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails, — slight leaves or feathers, a quarter to a half inch long by an eighth wide, standing out around the slightest core . . . .These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

This [dense fog]accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. See December 31, 1859 (''There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind.")

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow . . . also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks. See December 31, 1854 ("I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river") See also December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")

A Book of the Seasons: December 31.

December 31

Morning creations, 

frost now seen against the sun –

a mist in the night.

December 31, 1855 

Nature has a day

for each of her creations.

This is their solstice.

December 31, 1851

Hearing the whistle

takes me out of my body

and I see clearly.

December 31, 1853

Hearing the whistle

of the locomotive takes

me out of body.

 

I see clearly what

at other times I only

dimly remember . . .

 

The earth's extent

the freedom of all nature

and the sky's depth.

December 31, 1853

Sugar is not so

sweet to the palate as sound

to the healthy ear.

December 31, 1853

How glorious the

perfect stillness and peace of

the winter landscape.

December 31, 1854

A mist in the night,

frost now seen against the sun –

morning creation.

December 31, 1855

December 31, 2017

I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. December 31, 1853

I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. December 31, 1853

I get the value of the earth's extent and the sky's depth. December 31, 1853

 It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. December 31, 1853

I leave my body in a trance and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance. December 31, 1853

He that hath ears, let him hear. December 31, 1853

 Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear. December 31, 1853

The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. December 31, 1853

*****

April 15, 1859 ("We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. . . . Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work.")

May 1, 1857 ("The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind.")

May 23, 1854 ("Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music . . .There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music.")

August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”)

August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”)

September 12, 1851 ("I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating . . .. It told me by the faintest imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher, infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget.")

November 21, 1857 ("Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction.. . . the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one.")

 January 12, 1855 (" 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.”)

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. “)

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 © 2009-2015

A Book of the Seasons: December 30.

December 30.

Man in winter is
to a slight extent dormant --
partially awake.
December 30, 1853

To study birds' nests
look for them in Winter as

well as midsummer.
December 30 1855 

In this clear cold air

that fine evanishing edge

of clouds in the west.

December 30, 1855

The deepest snow yet.
Those who depend on skylights
find theirs a dim light.
December 30, 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 © 2009-2019

Winter now first fairly commenced.

December 30.

The snow which began last night has continued to fall very silently but steadily, and now it is not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet; a dry, light, powdery snow. 

When I come down I see it in miniature drifts against the panes, alternately streaked dark and light as it is more or less dense. A remarkable, perfectly regular conical peak, a foot high, with concave sides, stands in the fireplace under the sink-room chimney. The pump has a regular conical Persian(?) cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. 

About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps. Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel. 

The places which are slowest to freeze in our river are, first, on account of warmth as well as motion, where a brook comes in, and also probably where are springs in banks and under bridges; then, on account of shallowness and rapidity, at bends. I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest. The open water at a bend seems to be owing to the swiftness of the current, and this to the shallowness, and this to the sands taken out of the opposing bank and deposited there. 

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. 

What a horrid shaggy and stiff low wilderness were the Andromeda Ponds yesterday! What then must they have been on the 21st! As it was, it was as if I walked through a forest of glass (with a tough woody core) up to my middle. That dense tufted grass with a greenish tinge was still stiffly coated with ice, as well as everything else, and my shoes were filled with the fragments, but here I and there the crimson sphagnum blushed through the crust beneath. Think of that dense grass, a horrid stiff crop, each stem as big as your finger, firm but brittle and about two feet high, and the countless birds’ nests filled even with ice!

P. M. - Across river and over Hill. 

The wind has been blowing and the snow drifting. The paths are filled up again. The surface of the snow is coarsely waved and rough now, as if it caught at every straw and faced its windy foe again. It appears a coarser grain now. By the river are conspicuous the now empty and spread pods of the water milkweed, gray-brown without, silky—white within, — in some a seed or two left still; also the late rose corymbs of red hips; also the eupatorium some with brown fuzz and seeds still; the sium sometimes, with its very flat cymes; and that light-brown sedge or rush. Some black ash keys still hang on amid the black abortions(?)

For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there. 

See one downy woodpecker and one or two chickadees. 

The track of a squirrel on the Island Neck. Tracks are altered by the depth of the snow. 

Looking up over the top of the hill now,  southwest, at 3.30 P.M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints, and methinks the same or rainbow tints in the drifting snow there, against the bright light of the unseen sun. 

Only in such clear cold air as this have the small clouds in the west that fine evanishing edge. It requires a state of the air that quickly dissipates all moisture. It must be rare in summer. In this rare atmosphere all cloud is quickly dissipated and mother-o’-pearl tinted as it passes away. 

The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it.

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, as if seen through a junk-bottle. Perhaps I never observed this phenomenon but when the sun was low. 

He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds. He will often be surprised to find how many have haunted where he little suspected, and will receive many hints accordingly, which he can act upon in the summer. I am surprised to find many new ones (i. e. not new species) in groves which I had examined several times with particular care in the summer. 

This was not a lodging snow, and the wind has already blown most of it off the trees, yet the long-limbed oak on the north of the hill still supports a ridge of its pure white as thick as its limbs. They lie parallel like the ulna and radius, and one is a bare white bone. 

Beside the other weeds on the last page, I might have shown the tall rough golden nod, still conspicuous. 

Found, in the Wheeler meadow southwest of the Island, a nest in the fork of an alder about eight feet from ground, partly saddled on, made apparently chiefly of fine grass and bark fibres, quite firm and very thick bottomed, and well bound without with various kind of lint. This is a little oval, three by three and a half inches within and seven eighths deep, with a very firm, smooth rim of fine grass and dark shreds, lined with the same and some lint. A few alder leaves dangle from the edge, and, what is remarkable, the outer edge all around is defiled, quite covered, with black and white caterpillar like droppings of the young birds. It is broader and shallower than a yellowbird’s and larger than a wood pewee’s. Can it be a redstart’s? I should think it too large.

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

Not far from a foot deep, much the most we have had yet. See December 30, 1859 ("I awake to find it snowing fast. Perhaps seven or eight inches have fallen, - the deepest snow yet.”); December 30, 1853 (“I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday. . . it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches.”) and note to January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now.")

The track of a squirrel . . .The snow is too deep and soft yet for many tracks. No doubt the mice have been out beneath it. See December 39, 1853 ("I see the tracks of mice, and squirrels, probably gray ones, leading straight to or from the feet of the largest pines and oaks, which they had plainly ascended.")

Winter now first fairly commenced, I feel.  See December 29, 1853 ("The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.")  See also  March 16, 1859 ("A new phase of the spring is presented; a new season has come.. . . The earth has cast off her white coat and come forth in her clean-washed sober russet early spring dress . . .This first sight of the bare tawny and russet earth, seen afar, perhaps, over the meadow flood in the spring, affects me as the first glimpse of land, his native land, does the voyager who has not seen it a long time."); March 20, 1853 ("It is glorious to behold the life and joy of this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun. . . There is the difference between winter and spring. The bared face of the pond sparkles with joy."); March 26, 1860 ("The brown season extends from about the 6th of March ordinarily into April. . . Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.") ; April 25, 1859 ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail. . .Even the grass begins to wave . . . and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived. This is the beginning of that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink and Viola pedata. It begins when the first toad is heard.");  May 14, 1858 ("To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and just leafing trees."); May 17, 1852  ("Does not summer begin after the May storm? "); May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come.  . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); July 18, 1854 ("A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity."); July 28, 1854 ("Methinks the season culminated about the middle of this month, — that the year was of indefinite promise before, but that, after the first intense heats, we postponed the fulfillment of many of our hopes for this year, and, having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year."); August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 9, 1853 ("How fatally the season is advanced toward the fall! I am not surprised now to see the small rough sunflower. There is much yellow beside now in the fields.");August 26, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct."); September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); November 10, 1858 ("The season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc. ")

The countless birds’ nests filled even with ice! See December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); December 29, 1855 (“I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice.”); January 7, 1856 ("I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests"); January 24, 1856 (“The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. . . .They have only an ice egg in them now.”); February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined. See December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”);  December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly.”);  January 1, 1856 (“Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing, though commonly there is a thin dark beneath. . . . A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water.”) Compare December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green, a vitreous green, See  .February 19, 1852 ("Returning across the river just as the sun was setting behind the Hollowell place, the ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, though all around, above and below, was one unvaried white, — a vitreous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. This phenomenon is to be put with the blue in the crevices of the snow"); January 7, 1856 (" Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, when the ice turns green

A good time to walk in swamps

December 29

Down railroad to Andromeda Ponds. 

I occasionally see a small snowflake in the air against the woods. It is quite cold, and a serious storm seems to be beginning. 

Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible).

It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male. 

Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly. If quite cold, it will probably freeze to-night. [Not quite. Say the night of the 30th.]

I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing(?) suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice. I count twenty-one within fifteen rods of a centre, and have no doubt there are a hundred in that large swamp, for I only looked about the edge part way. 

It is remarkable that I do not remember to have seen flocks of these birds there. It is an admirable place for them, these swamps are so impassable and the andromeda so dense. It would seem that they steal away to breed here, are not noisy here as along the river. 

The nests are suspended very securely between eight or ten andromeda stems, about half way up them; made of more or less coarse grass or sedge without, then about half an inch of dense and fine, now frozen sphagnum, then fine wild grass or sedge very regularly, and sometimes another layer of sphagnum and of fine grass above these, the whole an inch thick, the bottom commonly rounded. The outside grasses are well twisted about whatever andromeda stems stand at or near the river. I saw the traces of mice in some of them.

I never knew, or rather do not remember, the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. I see the tracks of skaters on all the roads, and they seem hardly to prefer the ice. 

Above Abiel Wheeler’s, on the back road, the crust is not broken yet, though many sleds and sleighs have passed. The tracks of the skaters are as conspicuous as any there. But the snow is but trim or three inches deep. 

Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls; so that he cut off the trees in Jenny’s lot three feet from the ground, and cut again after the snow was melted. 

When two men, Billings and Prichard, were dividing the stock of my father and Hurd, the former acting for Father, P. was rather tight for Hurd. They came to a cracked bowl, at which P. hesitated and asked, “Well, what shall we do with this?” B. took it in haste and broke it, and, presenting him one piece, said, “There, that is your half and this is ours.” 

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. It is a good walk along the edge of the river, the wild side, amid the button-bushes and willows. The eupatorium stalks still stand there, with their brown hemispheres of little twigs, orreries. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1855

Eight or ten acres of Walden still open... See December 30, 1853 ("[Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.”).Also A Book of the Seasons: First Ice

I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice. See December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”)

I never knew . . .the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. See February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields . . ..")

A Book of the Seasons: December 29.

December 29

How admirable

it is that we can never

foresee the weather.

What measureless joy

to know nothing about the

day that is to dawn!

This day yesterday –

incredible as any

other miracle.

December 29, 1851

The melted snow forms

large puddles and ponds, and

runs in the sluices.

December 29, 1851

The reflected sky

and water are dull dark green,

but not the real sky.

December 29, 1856

*****

December 29, 2022

How admirable it is that we can never foresee the weather, — that that is always novel !  December 29, 1851

What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! December 29, 1851

Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of tomorrow.    December 29, 1851 

 

This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle    December 29, 1851

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 © 2009-2019

What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are encased in ice?

December 28.

December 28, 2015

P. M. — Hollowell place and back near Hubbard’s Bridge. 

To-day and yesterday the boys have been skating on the crust in the streets, —it is so hard, the snow being very shallow. 

Considerable ice still clings to the rails and trees and especially weeds, though much attenuated. 

The birches were most bent— and are still—in hollows on the north sides of hills. 

See some rabbit’s fur on the crust and some (apparently bird?) droppings, since the sleet fell,—a few pinches of fur the only trace of the murder. Was it a hawk’s work? 

Cross the river on the ice in front of Puffer’s. 

What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are thus encased in ice?

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

A Book of the Seasons: December 28.

December 28


At Tommy Wheeler's,
great pitch pine timbers tell of
the primitive forest here.
December 28, 1851

White pines look greener -- 

a drop on every needle 

in this gentle rain.

December 28, 1851

Partially concealed

by mist in the air they seem 

of a piece with it.

December 28, 1851

One moment of life 

costs hours of preparation 

and invitation.

To appreciate

a single phenomenon 

requires a lifetime.

That which requires the

finest discipline is the 

highest aim in life. 

December 28, 1852

We live too fast  just

as we eat too fast and do 

not savor our food.

Keep the time -- observe
the hours of the universe --
those divine moments

In which your life is

coincident with the life 

of the universe.

December 28, 1852

One moment of life 

costs many hours of preparation and invitation.

moments 

of divine leisure 

in which your life is 

coincident with the life 

of the universe? 

December 28, 1852

 

. 

The days seem lengthened
since the snow due to increased
light after sundown.

The fishermen sit,
still catching what they went for
if not many fish.
December 28, 1856

Looking at the shores

I have not paddled about 

the pond of late years. 

December 28,1858

in life the highest 

aim requires the highest and 

finest discipline.

  

One moment of life 

costs  hours of preparation 

and invitation.

to appreciate

a single phenomenon 

requires  a lifetime

you must give yourself 

wholly to it each moment

of divine leisure

in which your life is 

coincident with the life 

of the universe 

December 28, 1852

December 28. 2019

Perhaps the coldest night. The pump is slightly frozen. December 28, 1853

In the morning the windows are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out. December 28, 1859

Sleds creak or squeak along the dry and hard snow-path. December 28, 1859

Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather. December 28, 1859

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists.  December 28, 1851

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. December 28, 1851

There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. December 28, 1851

The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond forming; unfathomable water beneath the snow. December 28, 1851

A January thaw. December 28, 1851

Grass in the churchyard and elsewhere green as in the spring. December 28, 1852

Brought my boat from Walden in rain. December 28, 1852

No snow on ground. December 28, 1852

The earth is bare. December 28, 1858

I hear and see tree sparrows about the weeds in the garden. December 28, 1853

They seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow; or is it that they are more obvious against the white ground? December 28, 1853

By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. December 28, 1853

Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here. December 28, 1856

I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. December 28, 1858

One a little further off utters the phoebe note. December 28, 1858

That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light, is only three feet wide by one foot high; yet there even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge, and just off this shore the pickerel are most abundant. December 28, 1858

This is the warm and sunny side to which any one — man, bird, or quadruped — would soonest resort in cool weather. December 28, 1858

There is a foot more or less of clear open water at the edge here, and, seeing this, one of these birds hops down as if glad to find any open water at this season, and, after drinking, it stands in the water on a stone up to its belly and dips its head and flirts the water about vigorously, giving itself a good washing. December 28, 1858

I had not suspected this at this season. December 28, 1858

No fear that it will catch cold. December 28, 1858

I walk about the pond looking at the shores, since I have not paddled about it much of late years. December 28, 1858

What a grand place for a promenade! December 28, 1858

Methinks it has not been so low for ten years, and many alders, etc., are left dead on its brink. December 28, 1858

The high blueberry appears to bear this position, alternate wet and dry, as well as any shrub or tree. December 28, 1858

I see winterberries still abundant in one place. December 28, 1858

As I have not observed the rainbow on the Juncus militaris nor the andromeda red the past fall, it suggests the great difference in seasons. December 28, 1852

I observe that some shrub oak leaves have but little silveriness beneath, as if they were a variety, the color of the under approaching that of the upper surface somewhat. December 28, 1856

Walden completely frozen over again last night. December 28, 1856

Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water. December 28, 1856

The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. December 28, 1858

And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated. December 28, 1858

The ice is about six inches thick. December 28, 1858

Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. December 28, 1856

There lies a pickerel or perch on the ice, waving a fin or lifting its gills from time to time, gasping its life away. December 28, 1856

They have had but poor luck. One middling-sized pickerel and one large yellow perch only, since 9 or 10 a. m. It is now nearly sundown. December 28, 1856

The perch is very full of spawn. December 28, 1856

How handsome, with its broad dark transverse bars, sharp narrow triangles, broadest on the back! December 28, 1856

The men are standing or sitting about a smoky fire of damp dead wood, near by the spot where many a fisherman has sat before, and I draw near, hoping to hear a fish story. December 28, 1856

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. December 28, 1856

There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. December 28, 1856

Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently. December 28, 1851

The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me. December 28, 1852

I noticed the other day that the ice on the river and pond was cracked very coarsely, and lay in different planes a rod or two in diameter. December 28, 1853

It being very smooth and the light differently reflected from the different surfaces, this arrangement was very obvious. December 28, 1853

To-day and yesterday the boys have been skating on the crust in the streets, —it is so hard, the snow being very shallow. December 28, 1855

The birches were most bent— and are still—in hollows on the north sides of hills. December 28, 1855

A clump of birches raying out from one centre make a more agreeable object than a single tree. December 28, 1852

Considerable ice still clings to the rails and trees and especially weeds, though much attenuated. December 28, 1855

What do the birds do when the seeds and bark are thus encased in ice? December 28, 1855

See some rabbit’s fur on the crust December 28, 1855

Cross the river on the ice in front of Puffer’s. December 28, 1855

The open places in the river yesterday between Lee's Bridge and Carlisle Bridge were [eight]. December 28, 1859

In one place where the river was open yesterday, the water tossed into waves, looked exceedingly dark and angry. December 28, 1853

When you come to where the river is winding, there is shallower and swifter water — and open places as yet. December 28, 1859

And all places not more than five and a quarter feet deep were open  December 28, 1859

The places where the river was certainly (i. e. except 4th) open yesterday were all only five feet or less in depth, according to my map, and all except 8th at bends or else below the mouth of a brook. December 28, 1859

There was no opening between the Holt shoal and Carlisle Bridge, for there was none on the 25th. December 28, 1859

The most solidly frozen portions are the broad and straight reaches. December 28, 1859

All broad bays are frozen hard. December 28, 1859

It is remarkable that the river should so suddenly contract at Pelham Pond. It begins to be Musketaquid there. December 28, 1859

It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life, surely. December 28, 1852

I find myself oftenest wise in little things and foolish in great ones. December 28, 1852

That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well, I live my whole life coarsely. December 28, 1852

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. December 28, 1852

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. December 28, 1852

Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. December 28, 1852

What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe? December 28, 1852

We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food. December 28, 1852

We consult our will and understanding and the expectation of men, not our genius. December 28, 1852

I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion, and this I am but too inclined to do. December 28, 1852

One moment of life costs many hours, hours not of business but of preparation and invitation. December 28, 1852

How much, what infinite, leisure it requires, as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life, having reached your land of promise, and give yourself wholly to it. It must stand for the whole world to you, symbolical of all things . . . Unless the humming of a gnat is as the music of the spheres, and the music of the spheres is as the humming of a gnat, they are naught to me. December 28, 1852 

The least partialness is your own defect of sight and cheapens the experience fatally. December 28, 1852

Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. December 28, 1852

That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline. December 28, 1852

Embrace health wherever you find her. December 28, 1852

I thrive best on solitude. December 28, 1856

If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. December 28, 1856

It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. December 28, 1856

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. December 28, 1856

*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Chickadee in Winter

 Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should . . . The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.”)

 Walden: Where I lived and what I lived for ("God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.")

*****

April 24, 1859 ("Find your eternity in each moment. Live in the present. On any other course life is a succession of regrets")

May 28, 1854 ("To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe.")

June 22, 1851("My pulse must beat with Nature")

June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind. The mass of men are still and always young men in this respect. They do not think they are lucky unless they get a long string of fish, though they have the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.")

August 2, 1854 ("I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much.")

August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”)

September 7, 1851 ("The art of life") 

October 4, 1858 ("A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. . . There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")

October 27, 1858 ("The bayonet rush also has partly changed, and now, the river being perhaps lower than before this season, shows its rainbow colors. . . .Though a single stalk would not attract attention, when seen in the mass they have this singular effect. I call it, therefore, the rainbow rush.")

November 9, 1850 (“The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note”)

 November 29, 1850 ("The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")

December 1, 1853 (“They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)

December 3, 1856 (“And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you. ”)

December 4, 1856 ("Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white-barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter.") 

December 5, 1852 ("This great rise of [Walden] pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge, — pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, etc., — and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore")

December 12, 1851 ("I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days.")

December 15, 1852 ("A man should not live without a purpose")

December 17, 1850 ("I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer.")

December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle. . ., is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together. ")

December 19, 1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night")

December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before")

 December 20, 1855 (A few chickadees busily inspecting the buds at the willow-row ivy tree, for insects, with a short, clear chink from time to time, as if to warn me of their neighborhood."")

December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday.")

December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday")

December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.")

December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”)

December 25, 1858 (“[T]he rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end.. . . reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, as if the pond showed its teeth.”) 

December 26, 1853 ("Their metallic chip is much like the lisp of the chickadee. ") 

December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.").

December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out.”)

December 27, 1853 (“The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food.”)

 

December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist. . . . Your eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things only. They eclipse the trees they cover.")

January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.")

January 7, 1851(“I must live above all in the present.”);

January 7, 1856 ("The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses")

January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter"); 

January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond")

January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes.")

January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”)

January 20, 1856 ("It is remarkable that the short strip in the middle below the Island yesterday should be the only open place between Hunt’s Bridge and Hubbard’s, at least, -—-probably as far as Lee’s. The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th,"). 

 January 23, 1852 ("The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village")

January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side,. . . like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. . . . as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. ”)

January 24, 1856(“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again ”)

January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st.")

January 23, 1858 ("I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time.")

January 23, 1852 ("The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village.”)

 January 24, 1858 ("The river is broadly open, as usual this winter. . . . What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude? ")

January 26, 1852 ("Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.");

January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed. . .and the sun-sparkles where the river is open are very cheerful to behold.");
January 31, 1855 ("I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, . . . It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice.")

February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night").

February 27, 1856 ("The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks")

March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half.")

March 26, 1860 ("Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.. . .The river may be either only transiently closed, as in '52-'53 and '57-'58, or it may not be open entirely (up to pond) till April 4th.")

March 29, 1852 (“There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black.”)

December 28, 2022

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 © 2009-2020