A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney.
I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were.
P. M. — The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow. [Call it Black Water.] Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated.
It is a day for those rake and horn icicles; the water, dashing against the southeast shores where they chance to be open, i. e. free of ice, and blown a rod inland, freezes to the bushes, forming rakes and oftener horns. If twigs project above the ice-belt thus: the water freezes over them thus : — The very grass stubble is completely encased for a rod in width along the shore, and the trunks of trees for two or three feet up.
Any sprig lying on the edge of the ice is completely crusted. Sometimes the low button-bush twigs with their few remaining small dark balls, and also the drooping corymbs of the late rose hips, are completely encased in an icicle, and you see their bright scarlet reflected through the ice in an exaggerated manner.
If a hair is held up above the ice where this spray is blowing, it is sufficient to start a thick icicle rake or horn, for the ice forming around it becomes at once its own support, and gets to be two or three inches thick.
Where the open water comes within half a dozen feet of the shore, the spray has blown over the intervening ice and covered the grass and stubble, looking like a glaze, — countless loby fingers and horns over some fine stubble core, — and when the grass or stem is horizontal you have a rake. Just as those great organ-pipe icicles drip from rocks have an annular structure growing downward, so these on the horizontal stubble and weeds, when directed to the point toward which the wind was blowing; i. e., they grow thus southeast.
Then there is the thickened edge of the ice, like a cliff, on the southeast sides of openings against which the wind has dashed the waves, especially on the southeast side of broad meadows.
No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. If the ice is wet, you slip in rubbers; but when it is dry and cold, rubbers give you a firm hold, and you walk with a firm and elastic step. I do not know of any more exhilarating walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day when your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice.
I see that the open places froze last night only on the windward side, where they were less agitated, the waves not yet running so high there.
A little snow, however, even the mere shavings or dust of ice made by skaters, hinders walking in rubbers very much, for though the rubber may give a good hold on clear ice, when you step on a little of the ice dust or snow you slide on that.
Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold, and this shows that they were not forced up accidentally in the first place, but attracted by the light and warmth, probably as those minnows were some time ago. That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1860
A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. See February 10, 1858 ("Grows cold toward night, and windy."); see also February 3, 1856 (“The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.”); February 13, 1856 (“Grew cold again last night, with high wind. . . . I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter.”) and note to November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest")
Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery undersides as last spring. See March 21, 1859 (" I see several white pine cones in the path by Wheildon's which appear to have fallen in the late strong winds, but perhaps the ice in the winter took them off. Others still hold on."); February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually; . . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them. ")
The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high See March 29, 1852 (“The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. . . . There is more water and it is more ruffled at this season than at any other, and the waves look quite angry and black. ”); April 9, 1859( "For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish, in proportion as the day was clear and the wind high from the north west, making high waves and much shadow.”); May 8, 1854 ("They are melaina . . . This is our black sea"); October 15, 1851 (“It is delightful to be tossed about . . . and see the waves look so angry and black.”)
Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. See Theophrastus On Colors (“Darkness is due to privation of light. For we see black under three different conditions. Either (1) the object of vision is naturally quite black (for black light is always reflected from black objects); or (2) no light at all passes to the eyes from the object (for an invisible object surrounded by a visible patch looks black) ; and (3) objects always appear black to us when the light reflected from them is very rare and scanty. This last condition is the reason why shadows appear black. It also explains the blackness of ruffled water, e.g. of the sea when a ripple passes over it: owing to the roughness of the surface few rays of light fall on the water and the light is dissipated, and so the part which is in shadow appears black.”)
No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. See February 9, 1851 ("It is easier to get about the country than at any other season."); see also note to February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer.")
In a thaw in the winter some water-insects will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun. See February 8, 1860 ("About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice"); March 18, 1856 ("Here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)
February 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 10
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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