I do not know but thoughts written down in a journal
might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than
if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.
Henry Thoreau, January 27, 1852
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
A wild man is a
willed man – a man of hope and
of the future tense.
January 27, 1853
The fates are wild, for
they will – and the Almighty
is wild above all.
I have some good friends
who neither care what I think
nor mind what I say.
(The greatest compliment
that was ever paid me was when
one asked me what I thought,
and attended to my answer.)
Followed a fox track
to its den under a rock –
sat here many times.
January 27, 1855
I remember or
anticipate one of those
warm spring rain-storms
when the wind is south
the cladonia lichens
swollen and lusty
you wander wet to
the skin indefinitely
in a serene rain
sit on moss-clad rocks
and stumps sit long at a time
still and have your thoughts –
the part of you that
is wettest is fullest of
life like the lichens
and when the rain comes
thicker and faster you are
more comfortable
you can not go home –
you stay and sit in the rain
free as the sparrow
you glide along the
distant wood-side full of joy
and expectation
wind blows and warms you
the mist drives and clears your sight
eternal rain falls –
drip, drip, drip – sitting
there by the edge of the
wood that April day.
Time never passes
so quickly as when I am
writing down my thoughts.
The part of you that
is wettest is fullest of
life — like the lichens.
January 27, 1858
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| JANUARY 27, 2017 |
The lodging snow of January 13th, just a fortnight ago, still adheres in deep and conspicuous ridges to large exposed trees, too stubborn to be shaken by the wind, showing from which side the storm came. January 27, 1856
As I came home day before yesterday, over the railroad causeway, at sunset, the sky was overcast, but beneath the edge of the cloud, far in the west, was a narrow stripe of clear amber sky coextensive with the horizon, which reached no higher than the top of Wachusett. I wished to know how far off the cloud was by comparing it with the mountain. It had somewhat the appearance of resting on the mountain, concealing a part of its summit. I did not suppose it did, because the clouds over my head were too high for that, but when I turned my head I saw the whole outline of the mountain distinctly. I could not tell how far the edge of the cloud was beyond it, but I think it likely that that amber light came to me through a low narrow skylight, the upper sash of whose frame was forty miles distant. The amount of it is that I saw a cloud more distant than the mountain. January 27, 1858
Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust that bears where the snow is very shallow, but lets you through to water in many places on the meadow. January 27, 1855
Trench says a wild man is a willed man. January 27, 1853
Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. January 27, 1853
The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all. January 27, 1853
What are our fields but felds or felled woods. They bear a more recent name than the woods, suggesting that previously the earth was covered with woods. Always in the new country a field is a clearing. January 27, 1853
I have just sawed a wheel an inch and three quarters thick off the end of (apparently) a stick of red oak in my pile. I count twenty-nine rings, and about the same number of rings, or divisions of some kind, with more or less distinctness, in the bark, which is about a quarter of an inch thick. January 27, 1856
Thawing a little at last. Thermometer 35°. January 27, 1857
Fair and hardly a cloud to be seen. Thermometer 28. (But it is overcast from the northwest before sun set.) January 27, 1860
Have we not more finely divided clouds in winter than in summer? . . . What hieroglyphics in the winter sky! January 27, 1860
Such clouds as the above are the very thin advance-guard of the cloud behind. It soon comes on more densely from the northwest, and darkens all. January 27, 1860
See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. January 7, 1860
Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. January 27, 1854
The river ice inclines to a more opaque white. January 27, 1854
[The river] is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. January 27, 1856
I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. It was made last night, after the sleet and probably the rain was over, before it froze; it must have been at midnight or after. The tracks are commonly ten or twelve inches apart and each one and three quarters or two inches wide. Some times there is a longer interval and two feet fell nearer together, as if in a canter. Their tracks are larger than you would expect, as large as those of a much heavier dog, I should think. It doubles directly on its track in one place for a rod or two, then goes up the north end of the Cliff where it is low and went along southward just on its edge, ascending gradually. In one place it made water like a dog, and I perceive the peculiar rank fox odor without stooping. It did not wind round the prominent rocks, but leaped upon them as if to reconnoitre. Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock which seems to lie loose on the top of the ledge and about two feet from the nearest track. By stooping it had probably squeezed under this and passed into its den beneath. I can find no track leading from it. What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning! With what relish they must relate their midnight adventures to one another there in their dens by day, if they have society! I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time. January 27, 1855
I see some of those little cells, perhaps, of a wasp or bee, made of clay or clayey mud. It suggests that these insects were the first potters. They look somewhat like small stone jugs. January 27, 1859
As I go along the edge of Hubbard's Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun — and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy! January 27, 1860
It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by the wall east of the Hill that I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring, when the earth is just laid bare, the wind is south, and the cladonia lichens are swollen and lusty with moisture
- your foot sinking into them and pressing the water out as from a sponge, and the sandy places also are drinking it in.
- You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat, wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of migrating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts.
- A rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggesting fairer weather than was ever seen. . . .
- You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind.
- The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens.
- You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines.
- You cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts of life.
- . .. And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, thawing the remaining frost in the ground, detaining the migrating bird; and
- you turn your back to it, full of serene, contented thought, soothed by the steady dropping on the withered leaves, more at home for being abroad, more comfortable for being wet, sinking at each step deep into the thawing earth, gladly breaking through the gray rotting ice.
- The dullest sounds seem sweetly modulated by the air.
- You leave your tracks in fields of spring rye, scaring the fox-colored sparrows along the wood-sides.
- You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain.
- You glide along the distant wood-side, full of joy and expectation, seeing nothing but beauty, hearing nothing but music, as free as the fox-colored sparrow. . .
These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. January 27, 1860
Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. . . . They perch on the slender twigs which are beaded with cones, and swing and teeter there while they perseveringly peck at them. January 27, 1860
I walk in the woods, where the snow is not so deep, part having been caught in the trees and dissipated in the air, and a part melted by the warmth of the wood and the reflection. January 27, 1852
When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open. January 27, 1860
No bright sunset to-night. What fine and pure reds we see in the sunset sky! Yet earth is not ransacked for dye-stuffs. It is all accomplished by the sunlight on vapor at the right angle, and the sunset sky is constant if you are at the right angle. The sunset sky is sometimes more northerly, sometimes more southerly. January 27, 1860
I saw one the other day occupying only the south horizon, but very fine, and reaching more than half-way to the zenith from west to east. This may either be for want of clouds or from excess of them on certain sides. January 27, 1860
I saw one the other day occupying only the south horizon, but very fine, and reaching more than half-way to the zenith from west to east. This may either be for want of clouds or from excess of them on certain sides. January 27, 1860
10 p. m. — Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at. January 27, 1857
The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.~ January 27, 1857
Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition, i. e. in writing down my thoughts. Clocks seem to have been put forward. January 27, 1858
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Larch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
Walden ("Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers.)
November 11, 1858 ("Certain localities are thus distinguished. And they retain this peculiarity permanently, unless it depends on a wood which may be cut. Thousands of years hence this may still be the warmest and sunniest spot in the spring and fall.")
December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . .Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain. ")
December 19, 1856 ("[T]he ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep.")
January 7, 1857 ("But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,. . . I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine")
January 8, 1860 ("Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? ]")
January 9, 1852 (Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water?)
January 13, 1857 (“I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.”)
January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?).");
January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown)
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")
January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse")
January 26, 1852 (About 2 o'clock P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon , there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens , but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast .")
January 13, 1857 (“I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.”)
January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?).");
January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown)
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")
January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse")
January 26, 1852 (About 2 o'clock P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon , there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens , but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast .")
January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.")
January 30, 1854 (Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers);
February, 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down.”);
February 5, 1854 ("I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.”)
February 29, 1852 (The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color);
March 8, 1859 ("Such a day as this, I. . . explore the moist ground for the radical leaves of plants, while the storm blows overhead, and I forget how the time is passing")
May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me, . . .");
June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home")
January 27, 2014
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, January 27
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
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
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