Unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit.

February 19

 

February 19, 2019

 

The sky appears broader now than it did. The day has opened its eyelids wider. The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring. Of course it is then that the ameliorating cause begins to work. 

To White Pond. 

Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest. 

The strains from my muse are as rare nowadays, or of late years, as the notes of birds in the winter, — the faintest occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the woodpecker kind or the harsh jay or crow. It never melts into a song. Only the day-day-day of an inquisitive titmouse. 

Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts about the walls and fences, and, beneath the snow, the frozen ground, and men are compelled to deposit the summer's provision in burrows in the earth like the ground squirrel. Many creatures, daunted by the prospect, migrated in the fall, but man remains and walks over the frozen snow-crust and over the stiffened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. There is no home for you now, in this freezing wind, but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer. You steer straight across the fields to that in season.

I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer and gathered flowers and rested on the grass by the brook-side in the shade, now no grass nor flowers, no brook nor shade, but cold, unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit. 

Look at White Pond, that crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous perch and shiners rose to the surface, and with difficulty you made your way along the pebbly shore in a summer afternoon to the bathing-place. Now you stalk rapidly across where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more level snow -field than usual, furrowed by the wind, its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore all hidden and forgotten, and you would shudder at the thought of wetting your feet in it. 

Returning across the river just as the sun was setting behind the Hollowell place, the ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, though all around, above and below, was one unvaried white, — a vitreous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. This phenomenon is to be put with the blue in the crevices of the snow. So, likewise, give me leave, or require me, to mend my work, and I will chip down the vessel on both sides to a level with the notches which I have made.

A fine display of the northern lights after 10 p. m., flashing up from all parts of the horizon to the zenith, where there was a kind of core formed, stretching south southeast [and] north-northwest, surrounded by what looked like a permanent white cloud, which, however, was very variable in its form. The light flashes or trembles upward, as if it were the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist which undulated in the wind in the upper atmosphere.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1852

The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring. See January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring :The Days have grown Sensibly Longer

Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest. See December 21, 1851 ("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 . . .converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day"); December 29, 1859 ("The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east")

Man remains and walks over the frozen snow-crust and over the stiffened rivers and ponds, See February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer.")

The harsh jay or crow. It never melts into a song. Only the day-day-day of an inquisitive titmouse. See February 12, 1854 ("and you hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of win try trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band.")

The ice eastward of me a few rods, where the snow was blown off, was as green as bottle glass, seen at the right angle, — a vitreous glass green. Just as I have seen the river green in a winter morning. See January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown); 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.”); 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.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”) January 19, 1859 ("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.") February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...")

A fine display of the northern lights after 10 p. m., flashing up from all parts of the horizon to the zenith. See Note to November 5, 1860 ("Last evening, the weather being cooler, there was an arch of northern lights in the north, with some redness. Thus our winter is heralded.") and See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights and the Poetic Science of the Aurora:

On the evening of February 19, 1852, a scientist at the New Haven station of the nascent telegraph witnessed something extraordinary:

A blue line appeared upon the paper, which gradually grew darker and larger, until a flame of fire followed the pen, and burned through a dozen thicknesses of the prepared paper. The paper was set on fire by the flame, and produced considerable smoke. The current then subsided as gradually as it came on, until it entirely disappeared, and was then succeeded by a negative current, which bleached instead of colored, the paper; this also gradually increased, until, as with the positive current, it burned the paper, and then subsided, to be followed by the positive current.

. . . It came in waves of varying intensity all throughout the evening, interpolating between positive and negative current with each wave. Scientists knew of only one phenomenon in nature that corresponds to this pattern: the Aurora Borealis.

February 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 19

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

Unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-520219