P. M. — Up Assabet to Sam Barrett’s Pond.
Cold weather at last; — 8° this forenoon. This is much the coldest afternoon to bear as yet, but, cold as it is,-—four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below, twenty rods off. I see, in the Island wood, where squirrels have dug up acorns in the snow, and frequently where they have eaten them on the trees and dropped the shells about on the snow.
Hemlock is still falling on the snow, like the pitch pine. The swamp white oaks apparently have fewer leaves — are less likely to have any leaves, even the small ones — than any oaks except the chinquapin, me thinks. Here is a whole wood of them above Pinxter Swamp, which you may call bare.
Even the tawny (?) recent shoots of the black willow, when seen thickly and in the sun along the river, are a warm and interesting sight. These gleaming birch and alder and other twigs are a phenomenon still perfect, — that gossamer or cobweb-like reflection.
The middle of the river where narrow, as south side Willow Island, is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly.
The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides. It seems to dread the winter less than other plants. It has a certain heyday and cheery look, and less stiff than most, with more of the flexible grace of summer. With those dangling clusters of red catkins which it switches in the face of winter, it brags for all vegetation. It is not daunted by the cold, but hangs gracefully still over the frozen stream.
At Sam Barrett’s Pond, where Joe Brown is now get ting his ice, I think I see about ten different freezings in ice some fifteen or more inches thick. Perhaps the successive cold nights might be discovered recorded in each cake of ice.
See, returning, amid the Roman wormwood in front of the Monroe place by the river, half a dozen goldfinches feeding just like the sparrows. How warm their yellow breasts look! They utter the goldfinches’ watery twitter still.
I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset.
About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6°), I observe all the sheets of ice (and they abound everywhere now in the fields), when I look from one side about at right angles with the sun’s rays, reflect a green light. This is the case even when they are in the shade.
I walk back and forth in the road waiting to see the pink.
The windows on the skirts of the village reflect the setting sun with intense brilliancy, a dazzling glitter, it is so cold. Standing thus on one side of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets.
This gradually deepens to purple and violet in some places, and the pink is very distinct, especially when, after looking at the simply white snow on other sides, you turn your eyes to the hill. Even after all direct sunlight is withdrawn from the hill top, as well as from the valley in which you stand, you see, if you are prepared to discern it, a faint and delicate tinge of purple or violet there. This was in a very clear and cold evening when the thermometer was -6°.
This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.
The cold rapidly increases; it is -14° in the evening.
I hear the ground crack with a very loud sound and a great jar in the evening and in the course of the night several times. It is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the Acton powder-mills. This cracking is heard all over New England, at least, this night.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1859
The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter. See January 10, 1858 ("If you are sick and despairing, go forth in winter and see the red alder catkins”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
Half a dozen goldfinches feeding just like the sparrows. See November 24, 1859 ("a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. "): December 22, 1858 ("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 . . . These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow."); January 7, 1860 ("Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows.")
I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. See December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us."); January 31, 1859 (" The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters."); December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.")
I hear the ground crack with a very loud sound and a great jar in the evening and in the course of the night several times. It is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the Acton powder-mills. See February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”) December 23, 1856 ("The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights"); December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.")
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
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