When I first saw that snow-cloud, all the rest was clear sky.

December 2

When I first saw that snow-cloud it stretched low along the northwest horizon, perhaps one quarter round and half a dozen times as high as the mountains, and was remarkably horizontal on its upper edge, but that edge was obviously for a part of the way very thin, composed of a dusky mist which first suggested snow. 

When, soon after, it had risen and advanced and was plainly snowing, it was as if some great dark machine was sifting the snow upon the mountains. 

There was at the same time the most brilliant of sunsets, the clearest and crispiest of winter skies. 

We have had every day since similar slight flurries of snow, we being in their midst.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1858

When I first saw that snow-cloud. See November 30, 1858 (“We saw a large, long, dusky cloud in the northwest horizon, apparently just this side of Wachusett, or at least twenty miles off, which was snowing, when all the rest was clear sky. . . . It was a rare and strange sight, that of a snow -storm twenty miles off on the verge of a perfectly clear sky. Thus local is all storm, surrounded by serenity and beauty”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Days and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

December 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 2

Snow cloud stretched along

the horizon sifting snow 

upon the mountains 

and at the same time

the most brilliant of sunsets –

clearest winter skies. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  When I first saw that snow-cloud.

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

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