P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond.
I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath.
I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected.
I see some remarkable overflowed ice. Here is one shield of an oval form, some twenty feet long, very regularly and interestingly mottled with yellowish or dead leaf color, the stain of the mead, which by some law has been regularly distributed through the white, yet so delicately shaded off that it almost makes you dizzy to look at it.
It reminds me of the beginning of a higher organization, or bony structure in a molluscous fish. The overflow must have been from the centre, where it burst up and flowed each way.
In the proper light I am surprised to detect very fine and perfectly regular curving rays within the ice, just like the veins of some leaves, only finer and more regular, bilateral, perhaps a trace of the water as it flowed, — say like the lines of a cowry shell. It is but imperfectly suggested in the drawing.
Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct.
- The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.
- A distant white birch, erect on a hill against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede a crawling up to heaven.
- The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish.
Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one in my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice.
So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring like rain begins, and we turn about.
The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed.
We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us.
I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1859
We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. See January 13, 1854 ("Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees"); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist. ”)
Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever. See February 16, 1860 ("I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it.") Compare October 31, 1858 ("Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under."); November 1, 1858 ("Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season.")
I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts. See February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.") and note to February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places")
No comments:
Post a Comment