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| December 25, 2018 |
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.”)
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.
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.
Clear yellow light of
the western sky reflected
from the smooth water.
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
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