The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
Pure greenish-blue sky
under clouds in the southwest
just before sunset.
December 14, 2021
Snow-storms might be classified. December 14, 1859
The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business. December 14, 1851
We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. December 14, 1852
It began to snow again last evening, but soon ceased, and now it has turned out a fine winter morning, with half an inch of snow on the ground, the air full of mist, through which the smokes rise up perfectly straight; and the mist is frozen in minute leafets on the fences and trees and the needles of the pines, silvering them. December 14, 1855
Looking more closely at the light snow there near the swamp, I found that it was sprinkled all over (as with pellets of cotton) with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry. December 14, 1855
This morning it begins to snow, and the ground is whitened again, but in an hour or two it turns to rain, and rains all the rest of the day. At night clears up, and in the night a strong and gusty northwest wind blows, which, by morning, — has dried up almost all the water in the road. December 14, 1856
At 2 p. m. begins to snow again. I walk to Walden. December 14, 1859
The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautiful smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections . . . Your eye slides first over a plane surface of smooth ice of one color to a water surface of silvery smoothness, like a gem set in ice, and reflecting the weeds and trees and houses and clouds with singular beauty. December 14, 1854
The warm sun has quite melted the thin snow on the south sides of the hills, but I go to see the tracks of animals that have been out on the north sides. December 14, 1855
There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset. December 14 1851
Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came. Ah, what isles those western clouds! in what a sea! Just after sunset there is a broad pillar of light for many minutes in the west. December 14, 1852
*****
December 14. 2021
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections
*****
December 14, 2023
December 8, 1854 (“There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm”)
December 9, 1856 ("A slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame. Such is a winter eve.")
December 9, 1859 (" I observe at mid-afternoon, the air being very quiet and serene, that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .[T]here is just enough invisible vapor, perhaps from the snow, to soften the blue, giving it a slight greenish tinge. Thus, methinks, it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer")
December 11, 1854 ("I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely")
December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.")
Night comes on early.
Pine tree tops outlined against
the cold western sky,
December 15, 1856 (" The smooth serenity and the reflections of the pond, still alone free from ice.")
December 16, 1855 (" As we go over the bridge, admire the reflection of the trees and houses from the smooth open water over the channel, where the ice has been dissolved by the rain.")
December 18, 1852 ("Loring's Pond beautifully frozen. So polished a surface, I mistook many parts of it for water.")
December 19, 1851 ("Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon.")
December 20, 1851 ("The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon.")
December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass.")
December 20, 1855 ("How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! ")
December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west.")
The icy water
reflecting the warm colors
of the sunset sky.
December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle!")
December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it.")
December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting.”)
December 23, 1851 ("The evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.")
December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”)
December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”)
December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")
Western sky full of
soft pure light after sunset,
the outlines of pines.
December 25, 1858
December 27, 1853 (" It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon")
The evening star seen
shining brightly before the
twilight has begun.
To look over pines
so rich and distinct, into
the soft western sky.
January 9, 1859
January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset.")
January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east.");
January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. . . .As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind.")
The unclouded mind,
serene, pure, ineffable
like the western sky.
January 17, 1860 ("When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset.)")
January 26, 1852. ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")
December 14, 2021
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
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 © 2009-2023
tinyurl.com/hdt14dec
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