Red ice.

January 31.

I notice in one place that the last six or more inches of the smooth sumach's lusty twigs are dead and withered, not having been sufficiently matured, not withstanding the favorable autumn. This is attaining one's growth through difficulties. 

Saw one faint tinge of red on red ice pond-hole, six inches over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1858

A faint tinge of red on red ice pond-hole. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last [Andromeda] pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?"); January 25, 1855 ("I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice.. . . The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope. . ."); February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden . . .ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge."); March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . .It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice."); March 7, 1855 ("The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle."); December 21, 1855 ("Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days. . . .I see, close under the high bank on the east side, a distinct tinge of that red in the ice for a rod.")

Measuring the depth of Gowing's Swamp

January 30. 

P. M. – To Gowing's Swamp. 

I thought it would be a good time to rake in the mud of that central pool, and see what animal or vegetable life might be there, now that it is frozen. I supposed that tortoises and frogs might be buried in the mud. 

The pool, where there is nothing but water and sphagnum to be seen and where you cannot go in the summer, is about two rods long and one and a half wide, with that large-seeded sedge in a border a rod wide about it. Only a third of this (on one side) appears as water now, the rest a level bed of green sphagnum frozen with the water, though rising three or four inches above the general level here and there. 

I cut a hole through the ice, about three inches thick, in what alone appeared to be water, and, after raking out some sphagnum, found that I could not fairly reach the mud and tortoises, – if there are any there, — though my rake was five feet and nine inches long; but with the sphagnum I raked up several kinds of bugs, or insects. 

I then cut a hole through the frozen sphagnum nearer the middle of the pool, though I supposed it would be a mere mass of sphagnum with comparatively little water, and more mud nearer the surface. To my surprise, I found clear water under this crust of sphagnum to about five feet in depth, but still I could not reach the mud with my rake through the more decayed sphagnum beneath.

I returned to the thicket and cut a maple about eighteen feet long. This dropped down five or six feet, and then, with a very slight pressure, I put it down the whole length. I then went to the thicket again, searched a long while for a suitable pole, and at last cut another maple thirty feet long and between four and five inches thick at the butt, sharpened and trimmed and carried it on my shoulder to the spot, and, rough as it was, it went down with very little pressure as much as twenty feet, and with a little more pressure twenty-six feet and one inch; and there I left it, for I had measured it first. If the top had not been so small that it bent in my hands, I could probably have forced it much further. 

I suspect that the depth of mud and water under where I walk in summer on the water andromeda, Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, sphagnum, etc., is about the same. The whole swamp would flow off down an inclined plane. 

Of course there is room enough for frogs and turtles, safe from frost. 

I noticed that the sap flowed very freely from one of the maples which I cut. 

In the meanwhile the hole which I had first cut had skimmed over. I stooped to look at the ice-crystals. The thin skimming, which did not yet cover the whole surface, was minutely marked with feathers, as in the frost on windows in the morning. The crystallization was, as usual, in deep furrows, some a third of an inch wide and finely grained or channelled longitudinally. These commonly intersected each other so as to form triangles of various sizes, and it was remarkable that there was an elevated space between the sides of the triangles, which in some cases was not yet frozen, while you could see and feel the furrow where the crystals had shot on each side much lower. The water crystallizes in certain planes only. 

It seems, then, that sphagnum will grow on the surface of water five feet deep!

What means the maple sap flowing in pleasant days in midwinter, when you must wait so late in the spring for it, in warmer weather? It is a very encouraging sign of life now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1858

I supposed that tortoises and frogs might be buried in the mud. See November 23, 1857 ("Garfield, who was working in what was Moore's Swamp, tells me that he sometimes digs up frogs in the winter, when ditching in springy places, one at a time."); December 13, 1857 ("Apparently many [tortoises] winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes.")

The pool, where there is nothing but water and sphagnum to be seen and where you cannot go in the summer, is about two rods long and one and a half wide. See November 23, 1857 ("I looked down over the large open space with its navel pool in the centre."); See May 31, 1857 (“That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel,”); August 23, 1854 ("There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter,. . .an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds.”). See also February 1, 1858 ("When the surface of a swamp shakes for a rod around you, you may conclude that it is a network of roots two or three feet thick resting on water or a very thin mud. The surface of that swamp, composed in great part of sphagnum, is really floating.")

What means the maple sap flowing in pleasant days in midwinter, when you must wait so late in the spring for it. See March 14, 1856 ("Tapped several white maples with my knife, but find no sap flowing; but, just above Pinxter Swamp, one red maple limb was moistened by sap trickling along the bark.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

Beck Stow’s Swamp in Winter

January 29. 

P. M. – To Great Meadows at Copan. 

It is considerably colder. 

I go through the northerly part of Beck Stow's, north of the new road. For a great distance it is an exceedingly dense thicket of blueberry bushes, and the shortest way is to bend down bushes eight feet high and tread on them. The small red and yellow buds, the maze of gray twigs, the green and red sphagnum, the conspicuous yellowish buds of the swamp-pink with the diverging valves of its seed-vessels, the dried choke-berries still common, these and the like are the attractions.

The cranberry rising red above the ice is seen to be allied to the water andromeda, but is yet redder. 

In the ditches on Holbrook's meadow near Copan, I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. Even this green is exhilarating, like a spring in winter. I am affected by the sight even of a mass of conferva in a ditch. I find some radical potamogeton leaves six inches long under water, which look as if growing. 

Found some splendid fungi on old aspens used for a fence; quite firm; reddish-white above and bright vermilion beneath, or perhaps more scarlet, reflecting various shades as it is turned. It is remarkable that the upper side of this fungus, which must, as here, commonly be low on decaying wood, so that we look down on it, is not bright-colored nor handsome, and it was only when I had broken it off and turned it over that I was surprised by its brilliant color. This intense vermilion (?) face, which would be known to every boy in the town if it were turned upward, faces the earth and is discovered only by the curious naturalist. Its ear is turned down, listening to the honest praises of the earth. It is like a light-red velvet or damask. These silent and motionless fungi, with their ears turned ever downward toward the earth, revealing their bright colors perchance only to the prying naturalist who turns them upward, remind me of the “Hear-all” of the story.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1858

I go through the northerly part of Beck Stow’s. See January 10, 1856 (“I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now,”); January 10, 1855 (“To Beck Stow’s. The swamp is suddenly frozen up again.”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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 rumor of geese.

January 28. 

White pine. Red pine.
January 28, 2018

Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird. Though confined to his dooryard by the rheumatism, he commonly hears them sooner than the widest rambler. Maybe he listens all day for them, or they come and sing over his house, — report themselves to him and receive their season ticket. He is never at fault. If he says he heard such a bird, though sitting by his chimney-side, you may depend on it. He can swear through glass. He has not spoiled his ears by attending lectures and caucuses, etc. 

The other day the rumor went that a flock of geese had been seen flying north over Concord, midwinter as it was, by the almanac. I traced it to Minott, and yet I was compelled to doubt. I had it directly that he had heard them within a week. I saw him, – I made haste to him. His reputation was at stake. He said that he stood in his shed, – it was one of the late warm, muggy, April-like mornings, – when he heard one short but distinct honk of a goose. He went into the house, he took his cane, he exerted himself, or that sound imparted strength to him. Lame as he was, he went up on to the hill, – he had not done it for a year, — that he might hear all around. He saw nothing, but he heard the note again. It came from over the brook. It was a wild goose, he was sure of it. 

And hence the rumor spread and grew. He thought that the back of the winter was broken, — if it had any this year, — but he feared such a winter would kill him too. 

I was silent; I reflected; I drew into my mind all its members, like the tortoise; I abandoned myself to unseen guides. Suddenly the truth flashed on me, and I remembered that within a week I had heard of a box at the tavern, which had come by railroad express, containing three wild geese and directed to his neighbor over the brook. The-April-like morning had excited one so that he honked; and Minott's reputation acquired new lustre. 

He has a propensity to tell stories which you have no ears to hear, which you cut short and return unfinished upon him. 

I notice much cotton-like down attached to the long curled-up seed-vessels of the Epilobium angustifolium, such as I think I have seen used in some birds' nests. 

It has been spitting a little snow to-day, and we were uncertain whether it would increase or turn to rain. Coming through the village at 11 P.M., the sky is completely overcast, and the (perhaps thin) clouds are very distinctly pink or reddish, somewhat as if reflecting a distant fire, but this phenomenon is universal all round and overhead. I suspect there is a red aurora borealis behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 28, 1858

Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird. See September 2, 1856 ("Minott, whose mind runs on them [pigeons] so much, but whose age and infirmities confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago.. . . One man's mind running on pigeons, will sit thus in the midst of a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where even naturalists do not observe, and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning till night, will surely see them.")

The other day the rumor went that a flock of geese had been seen flying north over Concord, See February 21, 1855 ("Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers")

He thought that the back of the winter was broken, but he feared such a winter would kill him too. See  March 5, 1854 ("Channing, talking with Minott the other day about his health, said, " I suppose you 'd like to die now." "No," said Minott, "I 've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more.");  January 8, 1857 ("Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism ");  February 20, 1857 ("Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on"); September 30, 1857 ("Minott says he is seventy-five years old."); and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

A Reminiscence – Spring Rain

January 27.

moonrise at the double chair
January 26, 2018

Wednesday. P. M.–To Hill and beyond. 

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 could hug the clods that defile you. 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. 

Every step in the old rye-field is on virgin soil. 

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, seeing far ahead, a courageous knight [?], a great philosopher, not indebted to any academy or college for this expansion, but chiefly to the April rain, which descendeth on all alike; not encouraged by men in your walks, not by the divines nor the professors, and to the law giver an outlaw; not encouraged- (even) when you are reminded of the government at Washington. 

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. 

The ground being bare this winter, I attend less to buds and twigs. Snow covering the ground secures our attention to twigs, etc., which rise above it. 

I notice a pretty large rock on the Lee farm, near the site of the old mill over the Assabet, which is quite white and bare, with the roots of a maple, cut down a few years ago, spreading over it, and a thin dark-green crust or mould, a mere patch of soil as big as a dollar, in one or two places on it. It is evident that that rock was covered as much as three inches deep with soil a few years since, for the old roots are two inches thick, and that it has been burnt and washed off since, leaving the surface bare and white. There are a few lichens started at one end. 

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 some what 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. 

Steadily the eternal rain falls, — drip, drip, drip, – the mist drives and clears your sight, the wind blows and warms you, sitting on that sandy upland by the edge of the wood that April day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1858

I remember, or anticipate, one of those warm rain-storms in the spring. See June 6, 1857 ("Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. See May 23, 1853 ("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"); June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all."); April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry")

The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life. And then the rain comes thicker and faster than before, 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. See January 26, 1858 ("I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain."); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); April 19 1852 (" When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.’); December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); March 8, 1859 ("If there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage.").

Time never passes so quickly and unaccountably, as when I am engaged in composition. See 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.”); 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")

*****

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.

January 27, 1858

*****

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/hdt18580127

Nature loves gradation.

January 26. 

At the Doublechair
January 26, 2018

A warm rain from time to time. 

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp down the brook. 

When it rains it is like an April shower. The brook is quite open, and there is no snow on the banks or fields. 

From time to time I see a trout glance, and sometimes, in an adjoining ditch, quite a school of other fishes, but I see no tortoises. In a ditch I see very light-colored and pretty large lizards moving about, and I suspect I may even have heard a frog drop into the water once or twice. 

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. 

On the side-hill at the swamp, I see how the common horizontal birch fungus is formed. I see them in all stages and of all sizes on a dead Betula alba, both on the upper and under sides, but always facing the ground. At first you perceive the bark merely raised into a nub and perhaps begun to split, and, removing a piece of the bark, you [find] a fibrous whitish germ like a mildew in the bark, as it were of a fungus be neath, in the bark and decayed wood. Next you will see the fungus pushed out like a hernia, about the size as well as form of a pea. At first it is of a nearly uniform convex and homogeneous surface, above and below, but very soon, or while yet no larger than a pea,it begins to show a little horizontal flat disk, always on the under side, which you would not suspect with out examining it, and the upper surface already be gins to be water. So it goes on, pushing out through the bark further and further, spreading and flatting out more and more, till it has attained its growth, with a more or less elongated neck to its peninsula. The fungus as it grows fills the rent in the bark very closely, and the edges of the bark are recurved, lip-like. They commonly break off at the junction of the true bark with the wood, bringing away some of the woody fibre. Apparently the spongy decayed bark and wood is their soil. 

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. 

The yellow birch tree is peculiarly interesting. It might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. The edges of the curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree, corresponding to the twist of the nerve or grain. 

Nature loves gradation. Trees do not spring abruptly from the earth. Mosses creep up over the insteps of the trees and endeavor to reclaim them. Hence the propriety of lacing over the instep. 

Is not the moccasin a more picturesque and fitter sort of shoe than ours in which to move amid the herbage? 

How protean is life! One may eat and drink and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if he is as truly alive or his life is as valuable and divine as that of an oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick himself with a pin to see if he is alive. 

It is wonderful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a living creature may be. No more energy may it have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a decaying tree. 

I raised last summer a squash which weighed 123 1/2 pounds. If it had fallen on me it would have made as deep and lasting an impression as most men do. I would just as lief know what it thinks about God as what most men think, or are said to think. In such a squash you have already got the bulk of a man. My man, perchance, when I have put such a question to him, opes his eyes for a moment, essays in vain to think, like a rusty firelock out of order, then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat and goes to sleep, as it is called, — and that is no great distance to go, surely. 

Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it hadn’t been January. Some say that this particularly warm weather within a few days is the January thaw, but there is nothing to thaw. The sand-banks in the Deep Cut are as dry as in summer. 

Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words, mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes like the bear her cubs,—words like “tribal” and “ornamentation,” which drag a dead tail after them. They will pick you out of a thousand the still-born words, the falsettos, the wing-clipped and lame words, as if only the false notes caught their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. 

The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens cackle and scratch, all this winter. Eggs must be plenty.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1858

I like to sit still under my umbrella and meditate in the woods in this warm rain. See May 30, 1857 (“Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower.”)  Also January 27, 1858 ("sit long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. . . .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, , , ,You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain. ")

Edges of the yellow birch curls, like a line of breakers, form commonly diagonal lines up and down the tree. See February 18, 1854 (“The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. ”)

 She takes me out  to see bear tracks.  We continue on straight up the mountain to our north east corner.. The snow is  a hard packed crust. The walking is easy everywhere in the woods as there is a smooth surface covering all imperfections. I am wearing studded boots

We stop at the double chair and sit. This is one of those blue sky days. Now in late afternoon we see the first quarter moon in the east

We bushwhack down off the mountain to the top of the rocky trail and then bushwhack straight up to the view. Nature is putting on another orange sunset way to the south. It seems to be setting right over Giant. 

I start to feel chilled. Even though the day seem to be in the 30s the temperature here is now 16°

We head north through the woods and then down to the under view Trail where it connects with the rocky trail. We feel the freedom to go anywhere on this crusty snow

Though we have our headlamps we do not pull them out as it gets dark. Jane suddenly exclaims what is that shadow – we realize we are now walking in the moonlight– Moon light and shadows the rest of the way home.

Moonlight and shadows.

Freedom to go anywhere 

on this crusty snow.

Zypx 20180126

A warm, moist day. A Book of Buds.

January 25. 

Monday. A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.

What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts! — the impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep under the armor of their black scales, sleeping along the twigs; the birch and oak sprouts, and the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts; the round red buds of the blueberries; the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda; the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, etc. 

How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things! 

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain. 

The creditor is servant to his debtor, especially if he is about paying his due. I am amused to see what airs men take upon themselves when they have money to pay me. No matter how long they have deferred it, they imagine that they are my benefactors or patrons, and send me word graciously that if I will come to their houses they will pay me, when it is their business to come to me.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1858

What a rich book might be made about buds.See January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale."); January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them."); January 10, 1856 ("We are reduced to admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, —the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, sleeping along its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid-growing dogwood, the pale-brown and cracked blueberry. Even a little shining bud which lies sleeping behind its twig and dreaming of spring, perhaps half concealed by ice, is object enough.")

How many water-bugs make a quorum?

January 24. 

Sunday. P. M. — Nut Meadow Brook. 

The river is broadly open, as usual this winter. You can hardly say that we have had any sleighing at all this winter, though five or six inches of snow lay on the ground five days after January 6th. But I do not quite like this warm weather and bare ground at this season. What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude? The bare earth is unsightly. This winter is but unburied summer.

At that gully or ravine in the Clamshell bank, methinks the sides fall away faster in the winter; and such a winter as this, when the ground is bare, [faster] than ever. The subsoil and sand keeps freezing and thawing, and so bursts off, and the larger stones roll down on each side and are collected in a row at the bottom, so that there will be a sort of wall there of stones as big as a hen's egg propped up and finally covered with sand.

The inside of the swallow-holes there appears quite firm yet and regular, with marks where it was pecked or scratched by the bird, and the top is mottled or blotched, almost as if made firm in spots by the saliva of the bird. There is a low oven-like expansion at the end, and a good deal of stubble for the nest. I find in one an empty black cherry stone and the remains of a cricket or two. Probably a mouse left them there.

I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places. One on the railroad causeway where it is high, in the open meadow.

I see a couple of broken small turtle eggs here which have been trodden out of the banks by cows going to drink in the river.

At Hosmer's tub spring a small frog is active!

At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. I see forty or fifty circling together in the smooth and sunny bays all along the brook. This is something new to me. What must they think of this winter? It is like a child waked up and set to playing at midnight. Methinks they are more ready to dive to the bottom when disturbed than usual. At night, of course, they dive to the bottom and bury themselves, and if in the morning they perceive no curtain of ice drawn over their sky, and the pleasant weather continues, they gladly rise again and resume their gyrations in some sunny bay amid the alders and the stubble. I think that I never noticed them more numerous, but the fact is I never looked for them so particularly. But I fear for their nervous systems, lest this be too much activity, too much excitement. The sun falling thus warmly for so long on the open surface of the brook tempts them upward gradually, till there is a little group gyrating there as in summer. What a funny way they have of going to bed! They do not take a light and retire up-stairs; they go below. Suddenly it is heels up and heads down, and they go down to their muddy bed and let the unresting stream flow over them in their dreams. They go to bed in another element. What a deep slumber must be theirs, and what dreams, down in the mud there! So the insect life is not withdrawn far off, but a warm sun would soon entice it forth. Sometimes they seem to have a little difficulty in making the plunge. Maybe they are too dry to slip under. I saw one floating on its back, and it struggled a little while before it righted itself. Suppose you were to plot the course of one for a day; what kind of a figure would it make? Probably this feat too will one day be performed by science, that maid of all work. I see one chasing a mote, and the wave the creature makes always causes the mote to float away from it. I would like to know what it is they communicate to one another, they who appear to value each other's society so much. How many water-bugs make a quorum? How many hundreds does their Fourier think it takes to make a complete bug? Where did they get their backs polished so? They will have occasion to remember this year, that winter when we were waked out of our annual sleep! What is their precise hour for retiring?

I see stretching from side to side of this smooth brook, where it is three or four feet wide, apparently an in visible waving line like a cobweb, against which the water is heaped up a very little. This line is constantly swayed to and fro, as by the current or wind bellying forward here and there. I try repeatedly to catch and break it with my hand and let the water run free, but still, to my surprise, I clutch nothing but fluid, and the imaginary line keeps its place. Is it the fluctuating edge of a lighter, perhaps more oily, fluid, overflowing a heavier? I see several such lines. It is somewhat like the slightest conceivable smooth fall over a dam. I must ask the water-bug that glides across it.

Ah, if I had no more sins to answer for than a water bug! They are only the small water-bugs that I see. They are earlier in the spring and apparently hardier.

I walked about the long pond-hole beyond the wooded moraine. There are prinos bushes with much moss on them, such as grows on the button-bush around. There is considerable rattlesnake grass there, which, with its drooping end above the ice, reminds me of wild rice meadows.

 On every old oak stump the ends of the pores are the prominent part, while only the scale-like silver ray is left between their circles.

The sprouts of the canoe birch are not reddish like the white, but a yellowish brown. The small white begin to cast off their red cuticle the third or fourth year and reveal a whitish one.

The poison sumach, with its recurved panicles of pale-greenish fruit massed together in profusion at the base of last year's stout blunt twigs, is very interesting and handsome. It is one of the chief ornaments of the swamps, dry and durable, befitting the season, and always attracts me. It might be the symbol of a vigorous swamp. The wood is very brittle to split down in the forks, and, just broken, has a strong, some what liquorice-like scent. I do not know that any bird eats them.

I see a few fishes dart in the brooks.

Between winter and summer there is, to my mind, an immeasurable interval.

As, when I pry into the old bank swallows’ holes to-day, – see the marks of their bills and even whole eggs left at the bottom, – it affects me as the phenomena of a former geological period. Yet perchance the very swallow which laid those eggs will revisit this hole next spring. The upper side of his gallery is a low arch, quite firm and durable.

Like the water-bugs the dormant buds and catkins which overhang the brook might be waked up in midwinter, but these bugs are much the most susceptible to the genial influences.

In fact, there was a succession of these invisible cables or booms stretched across the stream, though it ran quite swiftly.

I noticed at Walden yesterday that, when the ice cracked, one part was frequently left an eighth of an inch, perhaps, higher than another, and afterward frozen to it in this position. You could both see and with your feet feel the inequality.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1858

At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. See January 30, 1860 ("The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places. See January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. "); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? "); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”);

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

January 23.

Saturday. The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. 

The ground has been bare since the 11th. This morning was colder than before. I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time.

 P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

A fine afternoon. There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March. 

Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on the south side, I see several small water-bugs (Gyrinus) swimming about, as in the spring. 

I see the terminal shield fern very fresh, as an evergreen, at Saw Mill Brook, and (I think it is) the marginal fern and Lycopodium lucidulum. 

lycopodium

I go up the brook, walking on it most of the way, surprised to find that it will bear me. How it falls from rock to rock, as down a flight of stairs, all through that rocky wood, from the swamp which is its source to the Everett farm! The bays or more stagnant parts are thickest frozen, the channel oftenest open, and here and there the water has overflowed the ice and covered it with a thickening mass of glistening spiculae. The white markings on the under side are very rich and varied, – the currency of the brook, the impression of its fleeting bubbles even. It comes out of a meadow of about an acre.

I go near enough to Flint's Pond, about 4 P. M., to hear it thundering. In summer I should not have suspected its presence an eighth of a mile off through the woods, but in such a winter day as this it speaks and betrays itself. 

Returning through Britton's field, I notice the stumps of chestnuts cut a dozen years ago. This tree grows rapidly, and one layer seems not to adhere very firmly to another. I can easily count the concentric circles of growth on these old stumps as I stand over them, for they are worn into conspicuous furrows along the lines of the pores of the wood. One or more rings often gape an eighth of an inch or more, at about their twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year, when the growth, in three or four cases that I examined, was most rapid. 

Looking toward the woods in the horizon, it is seen to be very hazy. 

At Ditch Pond I hear what I suppose to be a fox barking, an exceedingly husky, hoarse, and ragged note, prolonged perhaps by the echo, like a feeble puppy, or even a child endeavoring to scream, but choked with fear, yet it is on a high key. It sounds so through the Wood, while I am in the hollow, that I cannot tell from which side it comes. I hear it bark forty or fifty times at least. It is a peculiar sound, quite unlike any other woodland sound that I know. 

Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side, which is first in the shade, for I hear it cracking there, though it is still in the sun around me. It is not so sonorous and like the dumping of frogs as I have heard it, but more like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. Most shivering, splintery, screeching cracks these are, as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. Methinks my weight sinks it and helps to crack sometimes. 

Who can doubt that men are by a certain fate what they are, contending with unseen and unimagined difficulties, or encouraged and aided by equally mysterious auspicious circumstances? Who can doubt this essential and innate difference between man and man, when he considers a whole race, like the Indian, inevitably and resignedly passing away in spite of our efforts to Christianize and educate them? Individuals accept their fate and live according to it, as the Indian does. Everybody notices that the Indian retains his habits wonderfully, — is still the same man that the discoverers found. The fact is, the history of the white man is a history of improvement, that of the red man a history of fixed habits of stagnation. 

To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; he must be conscious of a friendliness in her; when human friends fail or die, she must stand in the gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life which deserves the name, unless there is a certain tender relation to Nature. This it is which makes winter warm, and supplies society in the desert and wilderness. Unless Nature sympathizes with and speaks to us, as it were, the most fertile and blooming regions are barren and dreary. 

Mrs. William Monroe told Sophia last evening that she remembered her (Sophia’s) grandfather very well, that he was taller than Father, and used to ride out to their house—she was a Stone and lived where she and her husband did afterward, now Darius Merriam’s —when they made cheeses, to drink the whey, being in consumption. She said that she remembered Grand mother too, Jennie Burns, how she came to the school room (in Middle Street (?), Boston) once, leading her little daughter Elizabeth, the latter so small that she could not tell her name distinctly, but spoke thick and lispingly, — “Elizabeth Orrock Thoreau.”  

The dog is to the fox as the white man to the red. The former has attained to more clearness in his bark;  it is more ringing and musical, more developed; he explodes the vowels of his alphabet better; and beside he has made his place so good in the world that he can run without skulking in the open field.

What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox! It seems as if he scarcely dared raise his voice lest it should catch the ear of his tame cousin and inveterate foe.

I observe that the ice of Walden is heaved up more than a foot over that bar between the pond and Cyrus Hubbard’s basin. The gravelly bank or bar itself is also heaved up considerably where exposed. So that I am inclined to think that such a tilting is simply the result of a thawing beneath and not merely of a crowding or pressure on the two sides.

I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature. If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify? I do not think much of that chemistry that can extract corn and potatoes out of a barren [soil], but rather of that chemistry that can extract thoughts and sentiments out of the life of a man on any soil. 

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1858

I see several small water-bugs (Gyrinus) swimming about, as in the spring. See January 24, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. . . .This is something new to me. What must they think of this winter? It is like a child waked up and set to playing at midnight."); January 30, 1860 ("The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae) 

I go up [Saw Mill Brook] walking on it most of the way. How it falls from rock to rock, as down a flight of stairs. See April 1, 1852 ("We love to see the water stand, or seem to stand, at many different levels within a short distance, while we sit in its midst, some above, some below us, and many successive falls in different directions, meandering in the course of the fall. . .I enjoy this little fall on Saw Mill Run more than many a large one on a river that I have seen.")

A fox barking, an exceedingly husky, hoarse, and ragged note, prolonged perhaps by the echo, like a feeble puppy, or even a child endeavoring to scream, but choked with fear, yet it is on a high key. It sounds quite unlike any other woodland sound that I know. See May 20, 1858 ("She uttered at very short intervals a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound, more like the scream of a large and angry bird than the bark of a dog, trilled like a piece of vibrating metal at the end.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time. Compare January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st."); January 24, 1856 (" You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again, . . . I do not find a foot of open water, even, on this North Branch, as far as I go, . . .The river has been frozen unusually long and solidly.") 

I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature. See April 23, 1857 ("Does he chiefly own the land who coldly uses it and gets corn and potatoes out of it, or he who loves it and gets inspiration from it? . . . All nature is my bride."); August 23, 1853("Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health."); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”); June 30, 1852 ("Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place, for instance. She is most significant to a lover. A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man."); November 16, 1850 ("My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world,”)

If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify?   See January 1, 1852 ("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 17, 1854 ("Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inanimate matter, — rocks or earth. Looking on the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred."); August 30, 1856 (“If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing.”); August 30 1856 (“ I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter. . .”);  February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.")

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you. See October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! "); 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."). See also August 19, 1851 ("How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”