How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised

December 31. 

I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. 

I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. 
First fall the chestnuts with the severe frosts, the greater part of them at least, and then, at length, the rains and winds bring down the leaves which cover them with a thick coat. 

I have wondered sometimes how the nuts got planted which merely fell on to the surface of the earth, but already I find the nuts of the present year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where is all the moisture and manure they want. A large proportion of this year's nuts are now covered loosely an inch deep under mouldy leaves, though they are themselves sound, and are moreover concealed from squirrels thus. 

It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. Will not the trees look finely in the morning?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1852

Gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook.   See December 27, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised."); See also August 14, 1856 ("Just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook”); November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”);  December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow."); January 10, 1853 ("Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith's wood-lot near the Turnpike. Carried four ladies. I raked. We got six and a half quarts"); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")


How chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. See October 22, 1857 ("Nature drops it on the rustling leaves, a done nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again.”)

Scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods. See October 24, 1857 (“I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk . . .It is best to reduce it to a system.”)

A sort of frozen rain this afternoon stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. See
December 6, 1858 (“Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.”). See also See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

Why does not the village bell sound a knell?

December 30.

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it.

It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall.

Still its branches wave in the wind, as if it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sun light is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel's nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast, — the hill is the hulk.

Now, now 's the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestically it starts! as if it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks, advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear.

I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already half divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year's growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make.

And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come.

Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing lay his axe at the root of that also.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1851

The woodman is preparing lay his axe at the root of that also. See January 22, 1852 (“It concerns us all whether these proprietors choose to cut down all the woods this winter or not.”); March 24, 1853 (“ tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.”); March 9, 1855 (“I clamber over those great white pine masts which lie in all directions one upon another on the hillside south of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid waste.”); January 22, 1856 (“With what feelings should not the citizens hear that the biggest tree in the town has fallen!”)

Skating and ice fishing.

December 29

P. M. — Skate to Israel Rice’s. 

I think more. of skates than of the horse or locomotive as annihilators of distance, for while I am getting along with the speed of the horse, I have at the same time the satisfaction of the horse and his rider, and far more adventure and variety than if I were riding. 

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. Just compare him with one walking or running. The walker is but a snail in comparison, and the runner gives up the contest after a few rods. The skater can afford to follow all the windings of a stream, and yet soon leaves far behind and out of sight the walker who cuts across. Distance is hardly an obstacle to him. 

I observe that my ordinary track -- the strokes being seven to ten feet long. The new stroke is eighteen or twenty inches one side of the old. 

The briskest walkers appear to be stationary to the skater. The skater has wings, talaria, to his feet. 

Moreover, you have such perfect control of your feet that you can take advantage of the narrowest and most winding and sloping bridge of ice in order to pass between the button bushes and the open stream or under a bridge on a narrow shelf, where the walker cannot go at all. You can glide securely within an inch of destruction on this the most slippery of surfaces, more securely than you could walk there, perhaps, on any other material. You can pursue swiftly the most intricate and winding path, even leaping obstacles which suddenly present them selves. 

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual (over the middle of the river) but wholly a light yellow-brown. 

Just above south entrance to  Farrar Cut, a large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.

Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. 

It was a very handsome fish,— dark-brown above, yellow and brown on the sides, becoming at length almost a clear golden yellow low down, with a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water and tigers in the jungle. 

The shiner and the red finned minnow (a dace) are the favorite bait for them. 

What tragedies are enacted under this dumb icy platform in the fields! What an anxious and adventurous life the small fishes must live, liable at any moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish of moderate size can go sculling along safely in any part of the stream, but suddenly there may come rushing out this jungle or that some greedy monster and gulp it down.

Parent fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can they trust them abroad out of their sight? It takes so many young fishes a week to fill the maw of this large one. And the large ones! Heavy Haynes and Company are lying in wait for them.

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

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. See January 14, 1855 (“Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — . . . A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. . . . There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.”)

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual. See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); 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.”); February 14, 1857 ("The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.”)

A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river. See October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); December 29, 1856 (“By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”)


He had caught a pickerel, which weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. See July 4, 1857 (“We dropped back and found it to be a pickerel, which apparently would weigh four pounds, and . . We struck him three times with a paddle, and once he nearly jumped into the boat, but at last we could not find him. ”); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once, . . . which weighed four pounds. . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

That rocky shore which so reflects the light.

December 28. 

December 28,2018

P. M. — To Walden. 

The earth is bare. I walk about the pond looking at the shores, since I have not paddled about it much of late years. What a grand place for a promenade! 

Methinks it has not been so low for ten years, and many alders, etc., are left dead on its brink. The high blueberry appears to bear this position, alternate wet and dry, as well as any shrub or tree. I see winterberries still abundant in one place. 

That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light, is only three feet wide by one foot high; yet there even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge, and just off this shore the pickerel are most abundant. This is the warm and sunny side to which any one — man, bird, or quadruped — would soonest resort in cool weather. 

I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. One a little further off utters the phoebe note. 

There is a foot more or less of clear open water at the edge here, and, seeing this, one of these birds hops down as if glad to find any open water at this season, and, after drinking, it stands in the water on a stone up to its belly and dips its head and flirts the water about vigorously, giving itself a good washing. I had not suspected this at this season. No fear that it will catch cold. 

The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated. The ice is about six inches thick. 

Aunt Jane says that she was born on Christmas Day, and they called her a Christmas gift, and she remembers hearing that her Aunt Hannah Orrock was so disconcerted by the event that she threw all the spoons outdoors, when she had washed them, or with the dish water. 

Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street. They had milk of a neighbor, who used to drive his cows to and from the Common every day.

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

That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light. See December 25, 1858 (“[T]he rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end.. . . reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, as if the pond showed its teeth.”)

Chickadees lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. See November 9, 1850 (“The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note”); December 1, 1853 (“They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”); December 3, 1856 (“And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you. ”)

The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. See January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side,. . . 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. . . . as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. ”); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”) Also Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should . . . The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.”)

Father says that he and his sisters were born in Richmond Street, Boston, See December 27, 1855 ("Recalled this evening, with the aid of Mother, the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived and some events of my life.”); December 26, 1855 ("In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them.”)

Do not advise a man who follows his own genius.

December 27. 

Talk of fate! How little one can know what is fated to anotherl—what he can do and what he can not do! I doubt whether one can give or receive any very pertinent advice. In all important crises one can only consult his genius. Though he were the most shiftless land craziest of mortals, if he still recognizes that he has any genius to consult, none may presume to go between him and her. They, methinks, are poor stuff and creatures of a miserable fate who can be advised and persuaded in very important steps. Show me a man who consults his genius, and you have shown me a man who cannot be advised. You may know what a thing costs or is worth to you; you can never know what it costs or is worth to me. All the community may scream because one man is born who will not do as it does, who will not conform because conformity to him is death, — he is so constituted. They know nothing about his case; they are fools when they presume to advise him. The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

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

The man of genius

knows what he is aiming at -- 

nobody else knows.

December 27, 1858

See June 23, 1851 ("My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report.”); August 3, 1852 ("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. "); May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations."); February 16, 1857 ("Genius has evanescent boundaries.")

I am glad to find that our New England life has a genuine humane core to it

December 26. 

P. M. — To Jenny Dugan’s. 

I walk over the meadow above railroad bridge, where the withered grass rises above the ice, the river being low. I notice that water has oozed out over the edge of this ice or next the meadow’s edge on the west, not having come from the river but evidently from springs in the bank. This thin water is turned to a slush of crystals as thick as mortar nearly, and will soon be solid ice. 

Call at a farmer’s this Sunday afternoon, where I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house lounging in very ragged clothes (for which they think it necessary to apologize), and one of them is busy laying the supper table (at which he invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on the end of his knife, and making the tea by the time his mother gets home from church. 

Thus sincere and homely, as I am glad to know, is the actual life of these New England men, wearing rags indoors there which would disgrace a beggar (and are not beggars and paupers they who could be disgraced so?) and doing the indispensable work, however humble. How much better and more humane it was than if they had imported and set up among their Penates a headless torso from the ruins of Ireland! 

I am glad to find that our New England life has a genuine humane core to it; that inside, after all, there is so little pretense and brag. Better than that, methinks, is the hard drinking and quarrelling which we must allow is not uncommon there. The middle-aged son sits there in the old unpainted house in a ragged coat, and helps his old mother about her work when the field does not demand him.

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

Now after sunset the light of the western sky – the outlines of pines.

December 25

December 25, 2018

P. M. —Up river on ice to Fair Haven Pond and across to Walden. 

The ground is still for the most part bare. Such a December is at least as hard a month to get through as November. You come near eating your heart now.

There is a good deal of brown or straw-color in the landscape now, especially in the meadows, where the ranker grasses, many of them uncut, still stand. They are bleached a shade or two lighter. Looking from the sun, there is a good deal of warm sunlight in them. 

I see where one farmer has been getting this withered sedge on the ice within a day or two for litter, in a meadow which had not been cut. Of course he could not cut very close. 

The ice on the river is about half covered with light snow, it being drifted thus, as usual, by the wind. (On Walden, however, which is more sheltered, the ice is uniformly covered and white.) I go running and sliding from one such snow-patch to another. It is easiest walking on the snow, which gives a hold to my feet, but I walk feebly on the ice. It is so rough that it is but poor sliding withal. 

I see, in the thin snow along by the button-bushes and willows just this side of the Hubbard bridge, a new track to me, looking even somewhat as if made by a row of large rain-drops, but it is the track of some small animal. The separate tracks are at most five eighths of an inch in diameter, nearly round, and one and three quarters to two inches apart, varying perhaps half an inch from a straight line. Sometimes they are three or four inches apart. The size is but little larger than that of a mouse, but it is never like a mouse. Goodwin, to whom I described it, did not know what it could be. 

The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast. 

Goodwin says that he once had a partridge strike a twig or limb in the woods as she flew, so that she fell and he secured her. 

Going across to Walden, I see that the fuzzy purple wool-grass is now bleached to a dark straw-color with out any purple. 

I notice that a fox has taken pretty much my own course along the Andromeda Ponds. 

The sedge which grows in tufts eighteen or twenty inches high there is generally recurving. 

I see that the shiners which Goodwin is using for bait to-day have no longitudinal dark bar or line on their sides, such as those minnows of the 11th and 18th had. Yet I thought that by the position of their fins, etc., the latter could not be the banded minnow. 

Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad. 

Now that the sun is setting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-clad pond and strike the rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end. Though the bare rocky shore there is only a foot or a foot and a half high as I look, it reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, as if the pond showed its teeth. 

I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. 

December 25, 2019

How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. Unless you watch it, you do not know when the sun goes down. It is like a candle extinguished without smoke. A moment ago you saw that glittering orb amid the dry oak leaves in the horizon, and now you can detect no trace of it. In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.

Those small sphagnous mountains in the Andromeda Ponds are grotesque things. Being frozen, they bear me up like moss-clad rocks and make it easy getting through the water-brush. 

But for all voice in that serene hour I hear an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him rather than the most eloquent man of the age! 

I saw a few days ago the ground under a swamp white oak in the river meadow quite strewn with brown dry galls about as big as a pea and quite round, like a small fruit which had fallen from it.

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

As hard a month to get through as November. You come near eating your heart now. See November 27, 1853 ("Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow"); November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? “)

Looking from the sun, there is a good deal of warm sunlight in them. See January 4, 1858 (“It is surprising how much sunny light a little straw that survives the winter will reflect. . . .
That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble”)

I notice that a fox has taken pretty much my own course along the Andromeda Ponds. See December 13, 1859 ("I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer.”)

The shiners which Goodwin is using for bait to-day have no longitudinal dark bar or line on their sides. See March 29, 1854 ("poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner. . . distinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it”); July 16, 1856 ("I see many young shiners (?) (they have the longitudinal bar)"): July 17, 1856 (“They have . . . a broad, distinct black band along sides (which methinks marks the shiner)"); December 11, 1858 (“a minnow — apparently a young shiner, but it has a dark longitudinal line along side ”); December 18, 1858 (“They are little shiners with the dark longitudinal stripe”)

The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast. See January 7, 1856 (“Returning just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun . . .It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...”)

Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. See note to December 20, 1858 (“Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”)

Unless you watch it, you do not know when the sun goes down.  See December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); See also July 20, 1852 (“We see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier we might have seen it had we looked.”)

How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it.

Full of soft pure light

western sky after sunset –

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

See December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky."); January 5, 1853 ("A fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon, in which a single tree-top showed finely."); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.");  January 24, 1852 ("A single elm by Hayden's stands in relief against the amber and golden, deepening into dusky but soon to be red horizon.");  See also October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you.");   December 8, 1854 (“There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm”); December 9, 1859 (“I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, . . .giving it a slight greenish tinge.”); December 11, 1854 ("I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely"); December 18, 1853 (“The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky.”); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter day");

The unclouded mind,

serene, pure, ineffable

like the western sky.

January 17, 1852

Clear yellow light of

the western sky reflected

from the smooth water.

November 15, 1853

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

I hear an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him. See November 18, 1851 ("I rejoice that there are owls. . . . This sound faintly suggests the infinite roominess of nature”); January 7, 1854 (“It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

The fourth shrike.

December 24. 

Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night! 

See another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter! It looks much smaller than a jay.

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

Those two places in middle of Walden. See December 20, 1858 (“Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”)

Another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter! See December 24, 1850 ("Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird. At length he took him up in his bill, almost half as big as himself, and flew slowly off with his prey dangling from his beak. I find that I had not associated such actions with my idea of birds It was not birdlike ."); See also November 29, 1858 ("I see a living shrike caught to-day in the barn of the Middlesex House.”); December 12, 1858 (“See a shrike on a dead pine”);December 23, 1858 ("See a shrike on the top of an oak.”). and November 4, 1854 (“Saw a shrike in an apple tree, with apparently a worm in its mouth. ”); December 29, 1855 (“Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible).It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male.”); February 3, 1856 (“see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree”); February 5, 1859 ("I see another butcher-bird on the top of a young tree by the pond."):  December 30, 1859 ("I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree before his house, standing square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time.")

How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river.

December 23. 

P. M. — To Eddy Bridge. 

December 23, 2018

Colder last night. Walden undoubtedly frozen at last, — What was left to freeze.[No.]

See a shrike on the top of an oak. It sits still, pluming itself. At first, when it was flying, I thought it a hairy woodpecker. 

How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river. And then there is an abundance of clams, a wholesome diet for him, to be had for the diving for them. I do not know that he has any competition in this chase, unless it is an occasional otter. The clams are a sizable fish and in time of scarcity would not be contemptible food for man.

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


Walden undoubtedly frozen at last, — [No.] See December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night! “).

How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river. See November 11, 1855 ("The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off. "); November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are . . .of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape."); November 17, 1858 ("The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. They dive off the round-backed, black mossy stones, which, when small and slightly exposed, look much like themselves. In swimming show commonly three parts with water between. One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on”); December 3, 1853 ("I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank, pushing the sand behind them into the water. So they dig these now as places of retreat merely, or for the same purpose as the cabins, apparently."); December 26, 1859 ("Twice this winter I have noticed a musquash floating in a placid open place in the river when it was frozen for a mile each side, looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen meadow, but showing its whole upper outline from nose to end of tail; perfectly still till he observed me, then suddenly diving and steering under the ice toward some cabin's entrance or other retreat half a dozen or more rods off. ")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th.

December 22. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

December 22. 2018

I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. Hear the well-known mew and watery twitter of the last and the drier chilt chilt of the former. These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow. There may be thirty goldfinches, very brisk and pretty tame. They hang head downwards on the weeds. I hear of their coming to pick sunflower seeds in Melvin’s garden these days.

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1858

Quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. See December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here."); February 16, 1854  ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall."); January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod."); March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring,")  

No more frozen than on the 20th. See note to December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”) and December 22, 1853 ("Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open”).

I see where a rabbit has hopped across it in the slosh. See December 22, 1853 (“Last night's sprinkling of snow . . . whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it.”)

Sunlight on pine-needles is the phenomenon of a winter day.

December 21

solstice 2019

Sunday. 

My difficulties with my friends are such as no frankness will settle. There is no precept in the New Testament that will assist me. My nature, it may [be], is secret. Others can confess and explain; I cannot. It is not that I am too proud, but that is not what is wanted. Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that results to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize; and natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fit ted to sympathize there is no veil and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining. I feel sometimes as if I could say to my friends, " My friends, I am aware how I have outraged you, how I have seemingly preferred hate to love, seemingly treated others kindly and you unkindly, sedulously concealed my love, and sooner or later expressed all and more than all my hate." I can imagine how I might utter something like this in some moment never to be realized. But let me say frankly that at the same time I feel, it may be with too little regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am. If the truth were known, which I do not know, I have no concern with those friends whom I misunderstand or who misunderstand me. The fates only are unkind that keep us asunder, but my friend is ever kind. 

***

I am of the nature of stone. It takes the summer's sun to warm it. 

My acquaintances sometimes imply that I am too cold; but each thing is warm enough of its kind. 

Is the stone too cold which absorbs the heat of the summer sun and does not part with it during the night? 

Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold to melt, but it was in melting that they were formed. 

Cold! I am most sensible of warmth in winter days. 

It is not the warmth of fire that you would have, but everything is warm and cold according to its nature. It is not that I am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness are not of the same nature; hence when I am absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you.

Crystal does not complain of crystal any more than the dove of its mate. 

You who complain that I am cold find Nature cold. To me she is warm. My heat is latent to you. Fire itself is cold to whatever is not of a nature to be warmed by it. A cool wind is warmer to a feverish man than the air of a furnace. 

That I am cold means that I am of another nature. 

***

The dogwood and its berries in the swamp by the railroad, just above the red house, pendent on long stems which hang short down as if broken, betwixt yellowish (?) and greenish (?), white, ovoid, pearly (?) or waxen (?) berries. What is the color of them?

Ah, give me to walk in the dogwood swamp, with its few coarse branches! Beautiful as Satan. 

The prinos or black alder berries appear to have been consumed; only the skins left, for the most part, sticking to the twigs, so that I thought there were fewer than usual. Is it that our woods have had to entertain arctic visitors in unusual numbers, who have exhausted their stores? 

Sunlight on pine-needles is the phenomenon of a winter day. 

Who ever saw a partridge soar over the fields? To every creature its own nature. They are very wild; but are they scarce? or can you exterminate them for that? 

As I stand by the edge of the swamp (Ministerial), a heavy-winged hawk flies home to it at sundown, just over my head, in silence. 

I cross some mink or muskrat's devious path in the snow, with mincing feet and trailing body. 

***

To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig. It would serve for a permanent description of the sunset. 

Such is the morning and such the evening, converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day. 

Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west. 

How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 21, 1851


Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold to melt, but it was in melting that they were formed. See December 24, 1850 (“It is never so cold but it melts somewhere. It is always melting and freezing at the same time when icicles form.”)

Sunlight on pine-needles is the phenomenon of a winter day.  See December 24, 1850 (“I observe that there are many dead pine-needles sprinkled over the snow, which had not fallen before.”); October 25, 1853 ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.”) See also  December 20, 1851 ("A clump of white pines, seen far westward over the shrub oak plain, which is now lit up by the setting sun, a soft, feathery grove, with their gray stems indistinctly seen, like human beings come to their cabin door, standing expectant on the edge of the plain, impress me with a mild humanity. The trees indeed have hearts.") 

Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west. See December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. ”); December 24, 1851 (“The few clouds were dark, and I had given up all to night, but when I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”)

December 21.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 21

December 21, 2023

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

tinyurl.com/hdt511221

Walden is frozen over.

December 20. 

Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1858

Walden is frozen over. See December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over.");  December 22, 1858 (“The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th.”); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night! "); December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.”); December 28, 1858 (“The ice is about six inches thick.”)

See also December 21, 1854 "Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th");
December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”); December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 22, 1853 ("Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds.”); December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon”); December 23, 1850 ("Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only"); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”); December 24, 1859 ("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week"); December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open.. . . the only pond hereabouts that is open."); December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it.);  December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.");. December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night");. December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open,. . .It must be owing to the wind partly.");December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. "); December 30, 1855 ("There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined"); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last."); December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”)

Thursday. December 20 It is in the 40s we go out after sunset and take one of those new routes off the rocky trail. The one with the steep climb through rock garden of moss and ferns. The moon will not be full for a couple of days and is concealed by clouds. With the snow cover it is light enough to walk without headlamp (except we use the red light) I read later from Henry’s journal of August 5, 1851“When the moon is on the increase and half full it is already in mid-heaven at sunset so that there is no marked twilight intervening”  and December 10, 1856("The nights are light on account of the snow, and, there being a moon, there is no distinct interval between the day and night.") This seems to be the case tonight. I sit on the bench and look out over the lights in the valley. There is a forecast for rain in 88 minutes so we do not linger, walking back down along the edges of the rocky trail in the crusty snow then heading north to cross the stream and back along the ridge and out.  It begins to rain lightly. ~ zphx 20181220 

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets.

December 19. 

December 19, 2021

Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new- fallen snow, till I came to where she took to flight, and I could track her no further. 

I see where the snowbirds have picked the seeds of the Roman wormwood and other weeds and have covered the snow with the shells and husks. 

The smilax berries are as plump as ever. 

The catkins of the alders are as tender and fresh-looking as ripe mulberries. 

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. 

The witch-hazel is covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still remaining. 

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. 

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider. I am astonished that the animals make no more use of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1850

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. See December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island.")

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. Compare August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near House-leek Rock begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable.")

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets. See November 11, 1853 ("Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket."); December 18, 1859 ("Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.")