A Book of the Seasons: February 5 (tracking weather, fox, otter & Melvin; the trunks and branches of the trees)

The year is but 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

February 5.

Though on the back track

I draw nearer to the fox –

my thoughts grow foxy.

February 5, 1854

February 5, 2012

(black, white, yellow and grey birch)

The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley. February 5, 1855

The first slight rain and thaw of this winter was February 2d . February 5, 1861

The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day. February 5, 1852

(In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. ) February 5, 1855

It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed. It sparkled as if we lived inside of a cave, but this morning it has moderated considerably and is snowing. Already one inch of snow has fallen. February 5, 1855

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting . . . I should say the average cold was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M. February 5, 1856

Mizzling rain. February 5, 1857

2 p. m., 40°. February, 5, 1860

A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. February 5, 1853

You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. February 5, 1853

The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, -- in sun, rain, and in the night. February 5, 1852

The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree. February 5, 1852

The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens. February 5, 1852

All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth. February 5, 1853

I see where crows have pecked the tufts of cladonia lichens which peep out of the snow, pulling them to pieces, no doubt looking for worms. Also have eaten the frozen-thawed apples under the trees, tracking all the ground over there. February, 5, 1860

In the afternoons I have walked off freely up or down the river, without impediment or fear, looking for birds and birds’ nests and the tracks of animals; and, as often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. February 5, 1856

I see at the Assabet stone bridge where, apparently, one or two otters travelled about on the ice last night in the thin snow. The river is open eight or ten rods there . . . They had entered the water in many places, also travelled along under the slanting ice next the bank long distances. They were evidently attracted by that open water. February 5, 1860

At Hubbard's blueberry swamp woods, near the bathing-place, came across a fox's track, which I think was made last night or since. 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 5, 1854

Here was one track that crossed the road, — did not turn in it like a dog, — track of a wilder life. How distinct from the others! Such as was made before roads were, as if the road were a more recent track. February 5, 1854

And to-day, seeing a peculiar very long track of a man in the snow, who has been along up the river this morning, I guessed that it was George Melvin. . .when I experimented, and tried to make a track like this by not lifting my feet but gliding and partly scuffing along, I found myself walking just like Melvin, and that perfectly convinced me that it was he.  February, 5, 1860

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, 1852

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.   February 5, 1852

February 5, 2022

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo.

 

*****

February 5, 2017

December 2, 1856 ("Saw Melvin's lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. . . . I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent . . . Awkward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him.")
December 3, 1856 ("I see Melvin all alone filling his sphere, in russet suit, which no other could fill or suggest. He takes up as much room in nature as the most famous.”)

January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light")

January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.");

January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.")

January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.")

January 21, 1853 (''The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me.")

January 22, 1860 ('"Oh," said he, "I took the back track. It would be of no use to go the other way, you know."')
January 26, 1852 ("Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.")

January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);  

January 26, 1858 ("This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.") 

January 27, 1855 ("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. . . I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.")

January 27, 1858 ("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.");

February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")

February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.”)

February 3, 1856 ("See near the Island a shrike glide by . . . with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion")

February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually. . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them.")

February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers. The separate foot-tracks are quite round, more than two inches in diameter, showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, which is about half an inch deep.”)

February 4, 1852 ("Coming home through the village by this full moonlight, . . . the sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.")

Silvery-lighted boughs

and shadowy intervals

belong to one tree.

February 5, 1852

 

February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.);

February 6, 1860 ("A rainy day.")

February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.");

February 7, 1856 (" During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

February 8, 1857 ("The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through. I should not wonder if one went up and down the whole length of the river. ") 

February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.”)

February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains.")

 May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.")

September 24, 1859 (" Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created. The artist cannot be in [a] hurry.")

February 5, 2017

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.

  April 7, 1853 

February 3 <<<<<<<<   February 5 >>>>>>>>  February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 5

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt05feb