Wednesday. P. M. —To Great Meadows 'via Sleepy Hollow.
It is a remarkably warm, still, and pleasant afternoon for winter, and the wind, as I discover by my handkerchief, southwesterly.
I noticed last night, just after sunset, a sheet of mackerel sky far in the west horizon, very finely imbricated and reflecting a coppery glow, and again I saw still more of it in the east this morning at sunrise, and now, at 3.30 P. M., looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky.
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| January 15, 2014 2:57 P.M. |
Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. Is not the peculiar propriety of this term lost sight of by the meteorologists?
It is a luxury for the eye to rest on it. What curtains, what tapestry to our halls! Directly overhead, of course, the scales or cloudlets appear large and coarse, while far on one side toward the horizon they appear very fine. It is as if we were marching to battle with a shield, a testudo, over our heads.
I thus see a flock of small clouds, like sheep, some twenty miles in diameter, distributed with wonderful regularity. But they are being steadily driven to some new pasture, for when I look up an hour afterward not one is to be seen and [the] sky is beautifully clear.
The form of these cloudlets is, by the way, like or akin to that of waves, of ripple-marks on sand, of small drifts, wave-like, on the surface of snow, and to the first small openings in the ice of the midstream.
I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak.
Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.
By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, chiefly in the snow, two or more inches deep, on a broad frozen ditch where mud has been taken out. The perpendicular sides of the ditch expose a foot or two of dark, sooty mud which had attracted the crows, and I see where they have walked along beneath it and peeked it. Even here also they have alighted on any bare spot where a foot of stubble was visible, or even a rock.
Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday.
The same crow, or one of the same, has come again to-day, and, the snow being sticky this warm weather, has left a very distinct track. The width of the whole track is about two and three quarters inches, length of pace about seven inches, length of true track some two inches (not including the nails), but the mark made in setting down the foot and withdrawing it is in each case some fifteen or eighteen inches long, for its hind toe makes a sharp scratch four or five inches long before it settles, and when it lifts its foot again, it makes two other fine scratches with its middle and outer toe on each side, the first some nine inches long, the second six.
The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. It must be that they require but little and glean that very assiduously.
The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves.
Walking along the river eastward, I notice that the twigs of the black willow, many of which were broken off by the late glaze, only break at base, and only an inch higher up bend without breaking.
I look down the whole length of the meadows to Ball’s Hill, etc. In a still, warm winter day like this, what warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun.
At this season we do not want any more color.
A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. I know him (looking with my glass) by the axe over his shoulder, with basket of fish and fish-lines hung on it, and the tin pail of minnows in his hand. The pail shines brightly more than a mile off, reflecting the setting sun. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down.
To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all.
The water (where open) is also green.
I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening. At least such were the two evenings on which I saw it this winter.
Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.
H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1859
Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. See November 27, 1858 (“I find scarlet oak acorns like this
in form not essentially different from those of the black oak”); September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak
There is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). 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.”); Compare February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”) See also January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green
At this season we do not want any more color. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors
A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. See December 23, 1859 ("Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home.. . . In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
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