A Book of the Seasons: January 1.

January 1.

Lichen-covered rock

naked in the moonlight and

warm as in summer.

January 1, 1852

Lichen-covered rock

almost warm as in summer –

naked in moonlight.

lichen-covered rock

naked in moonlight almost 

warm as in summer. 

January 1, 1852

I return at last
in a rain and am coated
with glaze like the fields. 

January 1, 1853

Snow is like a mold

showing the form of the wind –

where the wind has been.

January 1, 1854 

Looking closely as

the thin and fragile frostwork

melts under my breath.

January 1, 1856

Pink light on the snow.

The shadow of the bridges

dark indigo blue.

January 1, 1855

Here two fishermen

know not why they have no bites

this clear winter day.

January 1, 1856

January 1, 2017

Moon little more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars dazzlingly bright. It is a remarkably warm night for the season, the ground almost entirely bare . . . Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer. January 1, 1852

This morning we have something between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The whole earth . . . is encased in ice . . . I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. January 1, 1853

This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 a. m., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day. January 1, 1854

We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue. January 1, 1855

The river has risen and flooded the meadows again. The white pines, now seen against the moon, with their single foliage, look thin. January 1, 1852

The stars are dazzlingly bright. The fault may be in my own barrenness, but methinks there is a certain poverty about the winter night's sky . . .  The sky has fallen many degrees.  January 1, 1852

those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky, are scarcely seen at all . January 1, 1852

 I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly.  January 1, 1858

March 5, 1852 ("The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk")

October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.")

November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.")

November 25, 1850 ("I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit . . . the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to my senses like a bird or a beast.")

December 6, 1858  ("Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. ")

December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, — that dun atmosphere instead of clouds reflecting the sun, — and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon")

Venus -- very bright

now in the early twilight.

right after sunset

December 27, 1851

The evening star seen

shining brightly before the

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853

December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies.  . . . The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”)

December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")

January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”)

January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”)

January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”)

January 31, 1859 ("The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. ")
February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight")

February 3, 1852 ("The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, - rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.")
February 12, 1860("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.")

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 © 2009-2017