Return on green ice
to walk amid purple clouds
of the sunset sky.
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| February 12, 2020 |
About a quarter of an inch of snow fell last evening. This scarcely colors that part of the ground that was bare, and on all icy surfaces which are exposed to the sweep of the wind it is already distributed very regularly in thin drifts. It lies on the ice in waving lines or in lunar or semicircular, often spread-eagle, patches with very regular intervals, quite like the openings lately seen in the river when breaking up. The whole surface of the icy field is thus watered. That is, it is not collected in one place more than another, but very evenly distributed in these patches over the whole surface.
I speak of what lies on the open ice. It comes flowing like a vapor from the northwest, low over the ice and much faster than a man walks, and a part is ever catching and lodging here and there and building a low drift, the northwest side of which will be abrupt with a sharp, beetling edge an inch or a half-inch high. No doubt these drifts are constantly changing their ground or rolling over.
I see now that this vapor-like snow-dust is really sometimes blown up six or eight feet into the air, though for the most part it merely slides low over the ice.
The greater part of this snow is lodged a foot deep amid the button-bushes, and there it continues to accumulate as long as the wind blows strong.
In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.
Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky- blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water.
That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. Those are peculiar portions of the river which have thus always opened first, — been open latest and longest.
In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted.
It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town.
All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.
But to return to my walk. I proceed over the sky- blue ice, winding amid the flat drifts as if amid the clouds, now and then treading on that thin white ice (much marked) of absorbed puddles (of the surface), which crackles somewhat like dry hard biscuit. Call it biscuit ice. Some of it is full of internal eyes like bird's-eye maple, little bubbles that were open above, and elsewhere I tread on ice in which are traced all kinds of characters, Coptic and Syriac, etc.
How curious those crinkled lines in ice that has been partly rotted, reaching down half an inch per pendicularly, or else at an angle with the surface, and with a channel that may be felt above!
There are places (a few), like that at Hubbard's Grove, commonly thin or open, leading to the shore, with the ice puffed up, as if kept open by a musquash, where apparently a spring comes in. Only betrayed by its being slow to freeze, or by the rottenness of the ice there.
This is the least observed of all tributaries, the first evidence of a tributary.
On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast.
How unexpected is one season by another! Off Pleasant Meadow I walk amid the tops of bayonet rushes frozen in, as if the summer had been overtaken by the winter.
Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the low snow-patches. I see the color from the snow first where there is some shade, as where the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or twilight, then, is necessary, umbra mixed with the reflected sun.
Off Holden Wood, where the low rays fall on the river from between the fringe of the wood, the snow-patches are not rose-color, but a very dark purple like a grape, and thus there are all degrees from pure white to black.
When crossing Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow-patches are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cranberry juice. It is quite a faery scene, surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. What need to visit the crimson cliffs of Beverly?
I thus find myself returning over a green sea, winding amid purple islets, and the low sedge of the meadow on one side is really a burning yellow.
The hunter may be said to invent his game, as Neptune did the horse, and Ceres corn.
It is twenty above at 5.30, when I get home.
I walk over a smooth green sea, or aequor, the sun just disappearing in the cloudless horizon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower. It would not be more enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of the sunset sky.
And, by the way, this is but a sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth.
You have seen those purple fortunate isles in the sunset heavens, and that green and amber sky between them. Would you believe that you could ever walk amid those isles? You can on many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times. The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet.
Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us.
Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon they, as it were, meet and are seen to be one.
I have walked in such a place and found it hard as marble. Not only the earth but the heavens are made our footstool.
That is what the phenomenon of ice means. The earth is annually inverted and we walk upon the sky. The ice reflects the blue of the sky. The waters become solid and make a sky below. The clouds grow heavy and fall to earth, and we walk on them. We live and walk on solidified fluids.
We have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us. How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double! The one is on the earth around us, the other in the horizon.
These snow-clad hills answer to the rosy isles in the west. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky. The ice is a solid sky on which we walk. It is the inverted year.
There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is for ever blue. In winter we are purified and translated. The earth does not absorb our thoughts. It becomes a Valhalla.
Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow.
North of the Warm Woodside (returning) is Bulrush Lagoon, — off Grindstone Meadow, — a good place for lilies; then Nut Meadow Mouth; Clamshell Bend, or Indian Bend; Sunset Reach, where the river flows nearly from west to east and is a fine sparkling scene from the hills eastward at sunset; then Hubbard's Bathing-Place, and the swift place, and Lily Bay, or Willow Bay.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1860
Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds See February 8, 1860 ("The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both.")
It is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. See Walden ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.")
Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. See Walking ("I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is, —I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the 'woods?") See also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.")
Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term See January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .") March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race.")
The phenomenon of ice . . . We live and walk on solidified fluids. See January 31, 1859 ("Surely the ice is a great and absorbing phenomenon. Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies, how much attention it monopolizes! We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")
There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue. See February 3. 1852 ("Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? dark blue? Is it not always bluer when the ground is covered with snow in the winter than in summer?"); February 4, 1852 ("The sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.); February 5, 1852 ("The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day."). See also May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night."); January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day.") See also Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")
Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green . . . 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.")
On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. See March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll
On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. See March 5, 1853 ("They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); January 24, 1860 (" See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . . They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll
Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. See Walking ("I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is, —I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the 'woods?") See also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.")
Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term See January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .") March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race.")
The phenomenon of ice . . . We live and walk on solidified fluids. See January 31, 1859 ("Surely the ice is a great and absorbing phenomenon. Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies, how much attention it monopolizes! We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 12
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 © 2009-2023
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