Walking on the River.

February 5

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. 

I have walked much on the river this winter, but, ever since it froze over, it has been on a snow-clad river, or pond. They have been river walks because the snow was shallowest there. 

Even the meadows, on account of the firmer crust, have been more passable than the uplands. 

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. 

Fisher tracks

February 5, 2017

If it were still after it, the tracks were beautifully distinct. If strong winds blew, the dry leaves, losing their holds, traversed and scored it in all directions. 

The sleighing would have been excellent all the month past if it had not been for the drifting of the surface snow into the track whenever the wind blew, but that crust on the old snow has prevented very deep drifts.

I should say the average cold was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 5, 1856

The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. See February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather.")

As often as it was written over, a new snow came and presented a new blank page. See January 31, 1856  ("The old tracks are blotted out, and new and fresher ones are to be discerned. It is a tabula rasa. These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album."); and note to February 2, 1856 ("Snows again last night, perhaps an inch, erasing the old tracks and giving us a blank page again, restoring the purity of nature.")

 I have walked much on the river this winter . . .because the snow was shallowest there. See January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter."); 

I should say the average cold [the month past]was about 8° at 8 A. M. and 18° or 20° at 3 P. M. See January 26, 1856 ("Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw."); February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")

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

In the afternoons

I have walked off freely up

or down the river.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Walking on the River

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 ©  2009-2026

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