Snow turning to rain.

January 31. 

Snows fast, turning to rain at last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1857

Snow turning to rain. See December 20, 1859  ("Snows very fast, large flakes, a very lodging snow, quite moist; turns to rain in afternoon"); January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail."); January 27, 1855 (“Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain”); See also December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

To improve the nick of time.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. 

But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. 

And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us.

H. D. Thoreau,  Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for

See Economy, ("In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”); April 24, 1859 ("Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this.”); May 12, 1857 ("Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.”);  June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought. Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolutions of the seasons, as two cog-wheels fit into each other. We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ")

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

I drink at it 

but while I drink I see 

the sandy bottom

and detect how shallow it is.

 

Its thin current 

slides away.

But eternity remains.

 

I would drink deeper –

fish in the sky whose bottom 

is pebbly with stars.

I cannot count one. 

I know not the first letter

of the alphabet . . .

always regretting

that I was not as wise as

the day I was born.

H. D. Thoreau, Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for

if we are alive, let us go about our business. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet, I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. 

See May 22, 1854 (“[W] e come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time.”); January 4, 1857 ("Having waded in the very shallowest stream of time, I would now bathe my temples in eternity.”)

See also September 2, 1856 ("When you hear him you have got to the end of the alphabet and may imagine the &.")

and  Walden, Conclusion:

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection.

One day it came into his mind to make a staff.

Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life.

He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment.

His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth.

As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him.

Before he had found a stock in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick.

Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work.

By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole–star; and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times.

But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma.

He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places.

And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain.

The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful?

A song sparrow on the wood-pile in the yard.

January 28. 

Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard. It is unwilling to move. People go to the pump, and the cat and dog walk round the wood-pile without starting it. I examine it at my leisure through a glass. 

Remarkable that the coldest of all winters these summer birds should remain. Perhaps it is no more comfortable this season further south, where they are accustomed to abide. 

In the afternoon this sparrow joined a flock of tree sparrows on the bare ground west of the house. 

It was amusing to see the tree sparrows wash themselves, standing in the puddles and tossing the water over themselves. 

Minott says they wade in to where it is an inch deep and then "splutter splutter," throwing the water over them. They have had no opportunity to wash for a month, perhaps, there having been no thaw. 

The song sparrow did not go off with them. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Notice many heaps of leaves on snow on the hillside southwest of the pond, as usual. Probably the rain and thaw have brought down some of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1857

Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard. .See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed”) See also January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter.”) See also January 28, 1858 ("The other day the rumor went that a flock of geese had been seen flying north over Concord.")

The coldest of all winters. See note to January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day by our thermometer.")

The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them.

January 27. 

Thawing a little at last. Thermometer 35°. 

JANUARY 27, 2017

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.

Accordingly I love most to read the accounts of a country, its natural productions and curiosities, by those who first settled it, and also the earliest, though often unscientific, writers on natural science.

Hear the unusual sound of pattering rain this after noon, though it is not yet in earnest.

Thermometer to-day commonly at 38°. 

Wood in the stove is slow to burn; often goes out with this dull atmosphere. But it is less needed. 

10 p. m. — Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at. 

Was struck to-day with the admirable simplicity of Pratt. He told me not only of the discovery of the tower of Babel, which, from the measures given, he had calculated could not stand between the roads at the Mill Pond, but of the skeleton of a man twenty feet long. 

Also of an eyestone which he has, bought of Betty Nutting, about as big as half a pea. Just lay it in your eye, bind up your eye with a handkerchief, and go to bed. It will not pain you, but you will feel it moving about, and when it has gathered all the dirt in the eye to itself, it will always come out, and you will probably find it in the handkerchief. It is a little thing and you must look sharp for it. He often lends his.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1857

The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them,. . .Accordingly I love most to read. . . the earliest, though often unscientific, writers on natural science. See February 16, 1852 ("Linnæus says elements are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. . . .By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department."); February 17, 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnaeus at once"); December 16, 1859 ("To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal. His . . descriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not according to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. He brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves. . . .It is the keen joy and discrimination of the child who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends. . . . He has really seen, and smelt, and tasted, and reports his sensations.")

Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at. See January 13, 1857 (“I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived.”)

Boston Harbor frozen over

January 26. 

Another cold morning. None looked early, but about eight it was -14°. 

A. M. — At Cambridge and Boston. 

Saw Boston Harbor frozen over (for some time). Reminded me of, I think, Parry's Winter Harbor, with vessels frozen in. 

Saw thousands on the ice, a stream of men reaching down to Fort Independence, where they were cutting a channel toward the city. Ice said to reach fourteen miles. 

Snow untracked on many decks. [Ice did not finally go out till about Feb. 15th.] 

At 10 p.m., +14°.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1857

Saw Boston Harbor frozen over. See January 20, 1857 (" I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence.")  See also December 2, 1853 ("A communication to a newspaper, dated Bangor, 28th (November), says of the Penobscot :“The navigation is closed here, the anchor ice with the surface ice making an obstruction of several feet thickness. There are enclosed in the ice from 60 to 80 vessels with full cargoes, besides the steamers. The ice obstruction extends about five miles,")

Still another very cold morning.

January 25. 

Still another very cold morning. Smith's thermometer over ours at -29°, ours in bulb; but about seven, ours was at -8° and Smith's at -24; ours therefore at first about -23°. 

P. M. — To Bittern Rock on river. 

The road beyond Hubbard's Bridge has been closed by snow for two or three weeks; only the walls show that there has been a road there. Travellers take to the fields. 

I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface, and this has formed a lee behind which a narrow drift has formed, extending a foot or two south easterly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1857

Still another very cold morning. See January 25, 1852 (The cold for some weeks has been intense""); January 25, 1854 ("A very cold day . . .The 22d, 23d, 24th, and 25th of this month have been the coldest spell of weather this winter."); January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. "); See also January 23, 1857 (The coldest day that I remember recording.").

Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface. See  January 8, 1860 (" Those [tracks] of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. . . .There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there . . . like white stepping-stones"); January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.");

The cold spell that began the evening of the 22d ended to-day noon.

January 24.

Thermometer about 6.30 a.m. in the bulb!! but Smith's on the same nail, -30°; Wilds', early, -16°; Emerson's, the same; at 9.15 a.m., ours, -18°; Smith's, -22°; which would indicate that ours would have stood at -26° at 6.30, if the thermometer had been long enough. 

At 11.30 a.m. ours was -1°, at 4 p.m., +12°. 

So the cold spell that began the evening of the 22d ended to-day noon.

H. D Thoreau. Journal, January 24, 1857

See January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording . . .I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day . . ")

The coldest day.

January 23. 

The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. 

Ink froze. 

Had to break the ice in my pail with a hammer.

Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°; Wilds', -7°, the last being in a more sheltered place); at 12.45, -9°; at 4 p.m., -5 1/2°; at 7.30 p. m., -8°. 

I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day by our thermometer. 

Walking this afternoon, I notice that the face inclines to stiffen, and the hands and feet get cold soon. On first coming out in very cold weather, I find that I breathe fast, though without walking faster or exerting myself any more than usual.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1857

I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day. See January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above  -6° to-day.")

I notice that the face inclines to stiffen. See February 7, 1857("Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before.")

The winter of 1856-57 was one of the severest winters ever known in New England, USA (Perley 2001). It began much earlier than usual, and continued far into the spring. There were 32 snow storms in total, three more than the average number for the preceding period, and the snow covered the landscape to a depth of six feet and two inches This was one of the coldest winters ever known in USA . (1856-1857: A severe winter in New England)

During the coldest month of the 19th century, January, 1857, the 23rd ranks as the coldest day. The temperature in Burlington was minus 30 to start the morning, and reached a high of minus 17. (Weather Journal by Mark Breen)

, 

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass.

January 22. 

January 22, 2017

Snows all day, clearing up at night, — a remarkably fine and dry snow, which, looking out, you might suspect to be blowing snow merely. Yet thus it snows all day, driving almost horizontally, but it does not amount to much. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass. The air is filled, so that you cannot see far against it, i.e. looking north-north west, yet but an inch or two falls all day. There is some drifting, however. 

You wonder how the tree sparrows can seek their food on the railroad causeway, flying in the face of such a fine, cold, driving snow-storm. 

Within the woods it is comparatively still. 

In the woods by Abel Brooks's rye hollow I hear a faint note, and see undoubtedly a brown creeper inspecting the branches of the oaks. It has white and black bars on the head, uttering from time to time a fine, wiry, screeping tse, tse, or tse, tse, tse. 

Brown Creeper

Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. When it did not help itself he used to feed it with meal, for he was glad of its company; so, what with the dashing water and the crumbs of meal, it must have fared well. 

I asked M. about the Cold Friday. He said, "It was plaguy cold; it stung like a wasp." He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker's shop, usually a very warm place, and when it struck the floor it was frozen and rattled like so many shot. 

Old John Nutting used to say, "When it is cold it is a sign it's going to be warm," and "When it 's warm it 's a sign it 's going to be cold.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1857

A remarkably fine and dry snow, . . . driving almost horizontally ... See January 19, 1857 ("A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.”);  December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north”)

I asked M. about the Cold Friday [January 19, 1810]. . . .See January 11, 2017 ("Mother remembers the Cold Friday very well. . . .“);February 7, 1855 ("The old folks still refer to the Cold Friday, when they sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze on the mantelpiece.”)

A song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed")

A very large flock of snow buntings.

January 21. 

P. M. — Up river to W. Wheeler's Bridge and back by road. 

The roads are perhaps more blocked up than last winter, yet with hardly more than half as much snow. The river is now so concealed that a common eye would not suspect its existence. It is drifted on it exactly as on the meadow, i. e. successive low drifts with a bluff head toward the wind. 

It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. 

The overflow, under the snow, is generally at the bends, where the river is narrower and swifter. 

I noticed that several species of birds lingered late this year. The F. hyemalis, and then there was that woodcock, and song sparrow! What does it mean?

The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) , so white and arctic

 As I flounder along the Corner road against the root fence, a very large flock of snow buntings alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds rising above the snow in Potter's heater piece, — a hundred or two of them. They run restlessly amid the weeds, so that I can hardly get sight of them through my glass; then suddenly all arise and fly only two or three rods, alighting within  three rods of me. (They keep up a constant twittering.) It was as if they were any instant ready for a longer flight, but their leader had not so ordered it. 

Suddenly away they sweep again, and I see them alight in a distant field where the weeds rise above the snow, but in a few minutes they have left that also and gone further north. 

Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter, and from the loiterers you hear quite a tender peep, as they fly after the vanishing flock. 

What independent creatures! They go seeking their food from north to south. If New Hampshire and Maine are covered deeply with snow, they scale down to Massachusetts for their breakfasts. Not liking the grain in this field, away they dash to another distant one, attracted by the weeds rising above the snow. Who can guess in what field, by what river or mountain they breakfasted this morning. 

They did not seem to regard me so near, but as they went off, their wave actually broke over me as a rock. They have the pleasure of society at their feasts, a hundred dining at once, busily talking while eating, remembering what occurred at Grinnell Land. As they flew past me they presented a pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of white alternating with bars of black.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1857

The roads are perhaps more blocked up than last winter, yet with hardly more than half as much snow. See January 6, 1856 ("I am come forth to observe the drifts. . . .Neither man, woman, nor child, dog nor cat nor fowl, has stirred out to-day.”)


A regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. See February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. . . . “); November 25, 1857 ("Returning .I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst, and is so original so far as any resemblance to our race is concerned. Perhaps I like him better than his tame cousin the dog for it."); May 20, 1858 (“[J]ust before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. . . I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. . . . I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. . . .t was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me.”)

Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter . . .As they flew past me they presented a pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of white alternating with bars of black. See January 2, 1856 ("They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.”); November 29, 1859 ("The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Snow Bunting

The milkman came with oxen.

January 20. 

There probably is not more than twelve to fifteen inches of snow on a level, yet the drifts are very large. Neither milkman nor butcher got here yesterday, and to-day the milkman came with oxen, partly through the fields. Though the snow is nowhere deep in the middle of the main street, the drifts are very large, especially on the north side, so that, as you look down the street, it appears as uneven as a rolling prairie. 

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 (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago. 

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence. 

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st. 

At R. W. E.'s this evening, at about 6 p. m., I was called out to see Eddy's cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long, into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed, as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that the mouth of the cave was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of this lamp was remarkaoly reflected and distributed. The snowy walls were one universal reflector with countless facets. I think that one lamp would light sufficiently a hall built of this material. The snow about the mouth of the cave within had the yellow color of the flame to one approaching, as if the lamp were close to it. We afterward buried the lamp in a little crypt in this snow drift and walled it in, and found that its light was visible, even in this twilight, through fifteen inches' thickness of snow. The snow was all aglow with it. If it had been darker, probably it would have been visible through a much greater thickness. 

But, what was most surprising to me, when Eddy crawled into the extremity of his cave and shouted at the top of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if he were a quarter of a mile off, and at first I could not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us crawled in by turns, and though our heads were only six feet from those outside, our loudest shouting only amused and surprised them. Apparently the porous snow drank up all the sound. The voice was, in fact, muffled by the surrounding snow walls, and I saw that we might lie in that hole screaming for assistance in vain, while travellers were passing along twenty feet distant. It had the effect of ventriloquism. 

So you only need make a snow house in your yard and pass an hour in it, to realize a good deal of Esquimau life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1857

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over See Special to The New York Times.FEB. 22, 1904,

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

BOSTON HARBOR FROZEN OVER. For First Times Since 1855 Ice Extends Mile from Shore.

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places. See January 19, 1856 ("The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock.”); January 19, 1860 (“It is evident mere shallowness is not enough to prevent freezing, for that shallowest space of all, in middle of river at Barrett's Bar, has been frozen ever since the winter began. It is the swifter though deeper, but not deep, channels on each side that remain open.”); January 20, 1856 ("The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time. .”)

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. See November 21, 1852("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. ”);   December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. . . .The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.

January 19. 

A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. 

Though not much snow falls (perhaps seven or eight inches), it is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.! 

There is no vehicle passing the house before 2 p. m.!

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1857

It is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.! See February 18, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow drifting. No cars from above or below till 1 P. M.”)

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face, almost as much so as sand."); January 19, 1852  ("It is pleasant to make the first tracks in this road through the woods, . . . the fine, dry snow blowing and drifting still.")

A very cold day.

January 18. 

A very cold day. 

Thermometer at 7.30 a. m., -14° (Smith's hanging on same nail -20°); at 1.15 p. m., -3°; 2.15 p. m., -4°; 3.45 p. m., 0°. 

It is cloudy and no sun all day, and considerable wind also. There was no Sabbath-school on account of the cold; could not warm the room. 

We sometimes think that the inferior animals act foolishly, but are there any greater fools than mankind ? Consider how so many, perhaps most, races — Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Mussulmans generally, Russians — treat the traveller; what fears and prejudices he has to contend with. So many millions believing that he has come [to] do them some harm. 

Let a traveller set out to go round the world, visiting every race, and he shall meet with such treatment at their hands that he will be obliged to pronounce them incorrigible fools. 

Even in Virginia a naturalist who was seen crawling through a meadow catching frogs, etc., was seized and carried before the authorities. 

Three little pigs were frozen to death in an Irish man's pen last night at the Green Store. 

Began to snow in the evening, the thermometer at zero.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1857

Thermometer at 7.30 a. m., -14° (Smith's hanging on same nail -20°); at 1.15 p. m., -3°; 2.15 p. m., -4°; 3.45 p. m., 0°. See January 23, 1857 ("Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°. . .)"); January 9, 1856 ("Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M. . . . When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°."); January 7, 1856 ("At breakfast time the thermometer stood at - 12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning."); February 11, 1855 ("Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.")  and note to January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")

January 18. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow.

January 16. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

This morning was one of the coldest. It improves the walking on the river, freezing the overflow beneath the snow. 

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. The ice therefor a few feet in width slants up to it, and, owing to this, the snow is blown off it. This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow, methinks. So, too, where the ice, settling, has rested on a rock which has burst it and now holds it high above the surrounding level. The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north. 

I observe that the holes which I bored in the white maples last spring were nearly grown over last summer, commonly to within a quarter or an eighth of an inch, but in one or two instances, in very thriftily growing trees, they were entirely closed. 

When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day, McManus, who was helping me, said that they would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more if it were not for the willow-rows which bound and separate them, for you could not plow parallel with them within five rods on account of the roots, you must plow at right angles with them. Yet it is not many years since they were set out, as I remember. However, there should be a great amount of root to account for their wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year when trimmed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1857

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice. See January 1, 1857 (" I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze"); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight."); February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.");  February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places.")

The wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year, of Shattuck's willow row. See December 4, 1855 ("The younger osiers on Shattuck’s row do shine."); January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.")


As I pass the Island (Egg Rock). . .Egg Rock is an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Thoreau surveyed Nawshawtuct Hill in December 1856 and January 1857, producing a map which included Egg Rock. ~ Wikipedia

January 16 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? / The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow.

January 15. 

January 15, 2017

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond and across to railroad. 

As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what I thought a tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere roof open at the side, under which several men were at that time employed sawing wood with a horse power. Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having the usual marks on its breast and no bright-chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in this shed, where was much bare ground exposed by removing the wood. When I advanced, instead of flying away, it concealed itself in the wood, just as it often dodges behind a wall.

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. 

Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. 

The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves.

The tracks of the mice near the head of Well Meadow were particularly interesting. There was a level surface of pure snow there, unbroken by bushes or grass, about four rods across, and here were nine tracks of mice running across it from the bushes on this side to those on the other, the tracks quite near together but repeatedly crossing each other at very acute angles, but each particular course was generally quite direct. The snow was so light that only one distinct track was made by all four of the feet, five or six inches apart, but the tail left a very distinct mark. 

A single track, thus stretching away almost straight, sometimes half a dozen rods, over unspotted snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new pattern; and then they suggest an airy lightness in the body that impressed them. Though there may have been but one or two here, the tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. 

Such is the delicacy of the impression on the surface of the lightest snow, where other creatures sink, and night, too, being the season when these tracks are made, they remind me of a fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors were here. I can easily imagine all the rest. Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves. 

Yet I should like much to see by broad daylight a company of these revellers hopping over the snow. There is a still life in America that is little observed or dreamed of. Here were possible auditors and critics which the lecturer at the Lyceum last night did not think of. How snug they are somewhere under the snow now, not to be thought of, if it were not for these pretty tracks! 

And for a week, or fortnight even, of pretty still weather the tracks will remain, to tell of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse who was not beneath the notice of the Lord. 

So it was so many thousands of years before Gutenberg invented printing with his types, and so it will be so many thousands of years after his types are forgotten, perchance.  The deer mouse will be printing on the snow of Well Meadow to be read by a new race of men. 

Cold as the weather is and has been, almost all the brook is open in the meadow there, an artery of black water in the midst of the snow, and there are many sink-holes, where the water is exposed at the bottom of a dimple in the snow. Indeed, in some places these little black spots are distributed very thickly, the snow in swells covering the intervening tussocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1857



Looking closer, I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, taken refuge in this shed. January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter."); January 28, 1857 (“Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.”)

What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? See  January 13, 1857 ("one thrumming a guitar . . . reminds me of moments that I have lived. . . .”); May 19, 1856 ("I am always thus affected when I hear in the fields any singing or instrumental music at the end of the day. “);April19, 1856 ("Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, — passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. “); May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.”); December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. . . . It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. . . . The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); August 3, 1852 (" At the east window. — A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano. . . . At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”);  July 16, 1851("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes ! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — " There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

The tracks suggesting quite a little company that had gone gadding over to their neighbors under the opposite bush. See January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding.”); December 27, 1857 ("Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks.”)

There is so much more life than is suspected in the most solitary and dreariest scene.

January 14. 

P. M. — Up Assabet on ice. 

I go slumping four or five inches in the snow on the river, and often into water above the ice, breaking through a slight crust under the snow, which has formed in the night. 

Each cold day this concealed overflow, mixing with the snow beneath, is converted into ice, and so raises it, makes the surface snow shallower, and improves the walking; but unless it is quite cold, this snow and water is apt to get a slight crust only, through which you sink. 

I notice, on the black willows and also on the alders and white maples overhanging the stream, numerous dirty-white cocoons, about an inch long, attached by their sides to the base of the recent twigs and disguised by dry leaves curled about them, — a sort of fruit which these trees bear now. The leaves are not attached to the twigs, but artfully arranged about and fastened to the cocoons. Almost every little cluster of leaves contains a cocoon, apparently of one species. 

So that often when you would think that the trees were retaining their leaves, it is not the trees but the caterpillars that have retained them. I do not see a cluster of leaves on a maple, unless on a dead twig, but it conceals a cocoon. Yet I cannot find one alive; they are all crumbled within. 

The black willows retain very few of their narrow curled leaves here and there, like the terminal leafet of a fern (the alders and maples scarcely any ever), yet these few are just enough to withdraw attention from those which surround the cocoons. 

What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it? 

I thus walk along the edge of the trees and bushes which overhang the stream, gathering the cocoons, which probably were thought to be doubly secure here. These cocoons, of course, were attached before the leaves had fallen. Almost every one is already empty, or contains only the relics of a nymph. It has been attacked and devoured by some foe. 

These numerous cocoons attached to the twigs over hanging the stream in the still and biting winter day suggest a certain fertility in the river borders, — impart a kind of life to them, — and so are company to me. There is so much more life than is suspected in the most solitary and dreariest scene. They are as much as the lisping of a chickadee. 

Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow. 

The birch (white) catkins appear to lose their seeds first at the base, though that may be the uppermost. They are blown or shaken off, leaving a bare threadlike core.

Mr. Wild tells me that while he lived on Nantucket he never observed the thermometer lower than 2° above zero.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1857

What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it? See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons, wrinkled and flatfish, on young alders in a meadow, three or four inches long, fastened to the main stem and branches at same time, with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them; of some great moth.”); December 24, 1853 ("The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it." Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it.”); February 19, 1854 ("Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, . . . there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind that, as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to. Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago, in a full senate of all intellects, determined how cocoons had best be suspended . . .”);