The weather, New Year's Eve.

 

In a journal

it is important 

in a few words 

to describe the weather, 

or character of the day,

 as it affects our feelings.

February 5, 1855 

December 31, 2017

[Walden] pond has frozen over since I was there last . . . The thermometer was down to eight below zero this morning. December 31, 1850

The third warm day; now overcast and beginning to drizzle  . . . Though the sun surely is not a-going to shine, there is a latent light in the mist, t, as if there were more electricity than usual in the air. There are warm, foggy days in winter which excite us.  December 31, 1851

It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut. December 31, 1852

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat. I wade about in the woods through the snow, which certainly averages considerably more than two feet deep where I go. December 31, 1853

A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue . . . How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape! December 31, 1854

The trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night. Now, at 8.30 A. M., I see, collected over the low grounds behind Mr. Cheney’s, a dense fog (over a foot of snow), which looks dusty like smoke by contrast with the snow. This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. December 31, 1855

After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over, and that Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh; but ice under water is slow to thaw. It does not break up so soon as you would expect . . . Warm as it is, underneath all this slosh the ice seems as solid as ever. December 31, 1857

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°. . . The wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west . . . There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. I think that these crystals are particularly large and numerous, and the trees (willows) particularly white, next to the open water spaces, where the vapor even now is abundantly rising. December 31, 1859

December 31, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

December 31

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

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 

https://tinyurl.com/HDTwx

The Whortleberry Family

The blue horizon,

the blueness of the mountain.

Blueberry blueness!

August 5, 1860

It is remarkable how universally, as it respects soil and exposure, the whortleberry family is distributed with us, one kind or another (of those of which I am speaking) flourishing in every soil and locality, — the Pennsylvania and Canada blueberries especially in elevated cool and airy places-on hills and mountains, and in openings in the woods and in sprout-lands; the high blueberry in swamps, and the second low blueberry in intermediate places, or almost anywhere but in swamps hereabouts; while we have two kinds confined to the Alpine tops of our highest mountains. 

The family thus ranges from the highest mountain-tops to the lowest swamps and forms the prevailing small shrubs of a great part of New England. Not only is this true of the family, but hereabouts of the genus Gaylussacia, or the huckleberries proper, alone. 

I do not know of a spot where any shrub grows in this neighborhood but one or another species or variety of the Gaylussacia may also grow there. 

It is stated in Loudon ( page 1076 ) that all the plants of this order “require a peat soil, or a soil of a close cohesive nature,” but this is not the case with the huckleberry. 

The huckleberry grows on the tops of our highest hills; no pasture is too rocky or barren for it; it grows in such deserts as we have, standing in pure sand; and, at the same time, it flourishes in the strongest and most fertile soil. 

One variety is peculiar to quaking bogs where there can hardly be said to be any soil beneath, not to mention another but unpalatable species, the hairy huckleberry, which is found in bogs. 

It extends through all our woods more or less thinly, and a distinct species, the dangle-berry, belongs especially to moist woods and the edges of swamps. 

Such care has nature taken to furnish to birds and quadrupeds, and to men, a palatable berry of this kind, slightly modified by soil and climate, wherever the consumer may chance to be. 

Corn and potatoes, apples and pears, have comparatively a narrow range, but we can fill our basket with whortleberries on the summit of Mt. Washington, above almost all the shrubs with which we are familiar, the same kind which they have in Greenland,-and again, when we get home, with another species in Beck Stow's Swamp. 

I find that in Bomare's “Dictionnaire Raisonné" the Vitis Idæa (of many kinds) is called “raisin des boi.” 

Our word “ berry,” according to lexicographers, is from the Saxon beria, a grape or cluster of grapes; but it must acquire a new significance here, if a new word is not substituted for it. 

According to Father Rasles' Dictionary, the Abenaki word for bluets ' was, fresh, satar in another place saté, tar ); dry, sakisatar. 

First there is the early dwarf blueberry, the smallest of the whortleberry shrubs with us, and the first to ripen its fruit, not commonly an erect shrub, but more or less reclined and drooping, often covering the earth with a sort of dense matting. 

The twigs are green, the flowers commonly white. 

Both the shrub and its fruit are the most tender and delicate of any that we have. 

The Vaccinium Canadense may be considered a more northern form of the same. 

Some ten days later comes the high blueberry, or swamp blueberry, the commonest stout shrub of our swamps, of which I have been obliged to cut down not a few when running lines as a surveyor through the low woods. 

They are a pretty sure indication of water, and, when I see their dense curving tops ahead, I prepare to wade, or for a wet foot. 

The flowers have an agreeable sweet and berry-promising fragrance, and a handful of them plucked and eaten have a subacid taste agreeable to some palates. 

At the same time with the last the common low blueberry is ripe. 

This is an upright slender shrub with a few long wand-like branches, with green bark and pink-colored recent shoots and glaucous-green leaves. 

The flowers have a considerable rosy tinge, of a delicate tint. 

The last two more densely flowered than the others. 

The huckleberry, as you know, is an upright shrub, more or less stout depending on the exposure to the sun and air, with a spreading, bushy top, a dark-brown bark, and red recent shoots, with thick leaves. 

The flowers are much more red than those of the others. 

As in old times they who dwelt on the heath remote from towns were backward to adopt the doctrines which prevailed there, and were therefore called heathen in a bad sense, so we dwellers in the huckleberry pastures, which are our heath lands, are slow to adopt the notions of large towns and cities and may perchance be nick named huckleberry people. 

But the worst of it is that the emissaries of the towns care more for our berries than for our salvation. 

In those days the very race had got a bad name, and ethnicus was only another name for heathen. 

All our hills are or have been huckleberry hills, the three hills of Boston and, no doubt, Bunker Hill among the rest. 

In May and June all our hills and fields are adorned with a profusion of the pretty little more or less bell-shaped flowers of this family, commonly turned toward the earth and more or less tinged with red or pink and resounding with the hum of insects, each one the fore runner of a berry the most natural, wholesome, palatable that the soil can produce. 

The early low blueberry, which I will call "bluet," adopting the name from the Canadians, is probably the prevailing kind of whortleberry in New England, for the high blueberry and huckleberry are unknown in many sections. 

In many New Hampshire towns a neighboring mountain-top is the common berry-field of many villages, and in the berry season such a summit will be swarming with pickers. 

A hundred at once will rush thither from all the surrounding villages, with pails and buckets of all descriptions, especially on a Sunday, which is their leisure day. 

When camping on such ground, thinking myself quite out of the world, I have had my solitude very unexpectedly interrupted by such an advent, and found that the week-days were the only Sabbath-days there. 

For a mile or more on such a rocky mountain-top this will be the prevailing shrub, occupying every little shelf from several rods down to a few inches only in width, and then the berries droop in short wreaths over the rocks, sometimes the thickest and largest along a seam in a shelving rock,-either that light mealy-blue, or a shining black, or an intermediate blue, without bloom. 

When, at that season, I look from Concord toward the blue mountain-tops in the horizon, I am reminded that near at hand they are equally blue with berries. The mountain-tops of New England, often lifted above the clouds, are thus covered with this beautiful blue fruit, in greater profusion than in any garden. 

What though the woods be cut down, this emergency was long ago foreseen and provided for by Nature, and the interregnum is not allowed to be a barren one. 

She is full of resources: she not only begins instantly to heal that scar, but she consoles (compensates ?) and refreshes us with fruits such as the forest did not produce. 

To console us she heaps our baskets with berries. 

The timid or ill-shod confine themselves to the land side, where they get comparatively few berries and many scratches, but the more adventurous, making their way through the open swamp, which the bushes overhang, wading amid the water andromeda and sphagnum, where the surface quakes for a rod around, obtain access to those great drooping clusters of berries which no hand has disturbed. 

There is no wilder and richer sight than is afforded from such a point of view, of the edge of a blueberry swamp where various wild berries are intermixed. 

As the sandalwood is said to diffuse its perfume around the woodman who cuts it, so in this case Nature rewards with unexpected fruits the hand that lays her waste. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1860 

The family thus ranges from the highest mountain-tops to the lowest swamps and forms the prevailing small shrubs of a great part of New England. See May 28, 1854 ("The huckleberries, excepting the late, are now generally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves; frequented by honey-bees, full of promise for the summer. One of the great crops of the year. These are the blossoms of the Vacciniece, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these. The berry-promising flower of the Vacciniece. This crop grows wild all over the country, — wholesome, bountiful, and free."); January 3, 1861 ("The berries which I celebrate appear to have a range -- most of them — very nearly coterminous with what has been called the Algonquin Family of Indians, whose territories are now occupied by the Eastern, Middle, and Northwestern States and the Canadas, and completely surrounded those of the Iroquois, who occupied what is now the State of New York. These were the small fruits of the Algonquin and Iroquois families. The Algonquins appear to have described this kind of fruits generally by words ending in the syllables meenar."); January 8, 1861 (" What we call huckleberry cake, made of Indian meal and huckleberries, was evidently the principal cake of the aborigines, and was generally known and used by them all over this part of North America")

When, at that season, I look from Concord toward the blue mountain-tops in the horizon, I am reminded that near at hand they are equally blue with berries. See August 5, 1860 ("The whole mountain-top for two miles is covered, on countless little shelves and in hollows between the rocks, with low blueberries, just in their prime. . . .When we behold this summit at this season of the year, far away and blue in the horizon, we may think of the blueberries as blending their color with the general blueness of the mountain.")

The unpalatable species, the hairy huckleberry. ---Gaylussacia bigeloviana (Gaylussacia dumosa var. bigeloviana; Gaylussacia dumosa, var. hirtella, Vaccinium dumosum)  -- bog huckleberry. See August 30, 1856 ([Beck Stow's Swamp]"I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella. . . It grows from one to two feet high, the leaves minutely resinous- dotted — are not others ? — and mucronate, the racemes long, with leaf-like bracts now turned conspicuously red. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth ; has very prominent calyx-lobes. I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert's Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society. . . . That wild hairy huckleberry, inedible as it was, was equal to a domain secured to me and reaching to the South Sea. That was an unexpected harvest. "); June 25, 1857 ("To Gowing's Swamp. . . . Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.”): July 2, 1857 (" To Gowing's Swamp. . . .The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. This is commonly an inconspicuous bush, eight to twelve inches high, half prostrate over the sphagnum in which it grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc., but sometimes twenty inches high quite on the edge of the swamp. It has a very large and peculiar bell-shaped flower, with prominent ribs and a rosaceous tinge, and is not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. The flower deserves a more particular description than Gray gives it. But Bigelow says well of its corolla that it is "remarkable for its distinct, five angled form." Its segments are a little recurved. The calyx-segments are acute and pink at last; the racemes, elongated, about one inch long, one-sided; the corolla, narrowed at the mouth, but very wide above; the calyx, with its segments, pedicels, and the whole raceme (and indeed the leaves somewhat), glandular-hairy."); July 8, 1857 (to Gowing's Swamp. The Gaylussacia dumosa is now in prime at least"); August 30, 1860 ("Am surprised to find on Minott's hard land, where he once raised potatoes, the hairy huckleberry, which before I had seen in swamps only. The berries are in longer racemes or clusters than any of our huckleberries. They are improved, you would say, by the firmer ground. They are the prevailing berry all over this field. Are now in prime.") August 30, 1856 ("Consider how remote and novel that [Gowings] swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck -bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees.”) ; August 8, 1858 (“The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella is the prevailing low shrub, perhaps. I see one ripe berry. This is the only inedible species of Vaccinieaz that I know in this town"); July 15, 1859 ("To Ledum Swamp. Hairy huckleberry still in bloom, but chiefly done.");  July 24, 1859 ("The hairy huckleberry still lingers in bloom, — a few of them.")

lichenous thoughts

December 29.

Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla
The cars are nowhere.
True winter birds, these winged snowballs.
Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1853

Both for bodily and mental health, court the present.

December 28.


Brought my boat from Walden in rain.

No snow on ground. Grass in the churchyard and elsewhere green as in the spring.

I omitted some observations apparently between the 18th and 22d, to the effect that the berries that hold on into winter are to be remarked, — the winterberry, alder and birch fruit, smilax, pyrus, hips, etc. 

Both for bodily and mental health, court the present.

Embrace health wherever you find her.

A clump of birches raying out from one centre make a more agreeable object than a single tree.

The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me.

It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life, surely.

I find myself oftenest wise in little things and foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well, I live my whole life coarsely.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe? 

We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food.

We consult our will and understanding and the expectation of men, not our genius.

I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion, and this I am but too inclined to do.

One moment of life costs many hours, hours not of business but of preparation and invitation.

Yet the man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a leader, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while, which shall surely be opened to him.

That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline.

How much, what infinite, leisure it requires, as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life, having reached your land of promise, and give yourself wholly to it. It must stand for the whole world to you, symbolical of all things.

The least partialness is your own defect of sight and cheapens the experience fatally.

Unless the humming of a gnat is as the music of the spheres, and the music of the spheres is as the humming of a gnat, they are naught to me.

It is not communications to serve for a history, — which are science, — but the great story itself, that cheers and satisfies us.

As I have not observed the rainbow on the Juncus militaris nor the andromeda red the past fall, it suggests the great difference in seasons. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1852

 

Brought my boat from Walden in rain. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out.”)

Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. see January 7, 1851(“I must live above all in the present.”); Walden: Where I lived and what I lived for ("God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages."); April 24, 1859 ("Find your eternity in each moment. Live in the present. On any other course life is a succession of regrets")

Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe? See August 19, 1851 ("The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind, as the astronomer watches the aspects of the heavens. What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? The humblest observer would see some stars shoot. A faithful description as by a disinterested person of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten, as when one reports the number and character of the vehicles which pass a particular point. ")

A clump of birches raying out from one centre make a more agreeable object than a single tree.See January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond")

The rosettes in the ice. See December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday"); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter"); February 2, 1860 ("The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized."); February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"). 

Moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe.  See  June 22, 1851("My pulse must beat with Nature"); December 12, 1851 ("I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days."); January 11, 1852 ("We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes."); January 26, 1852 ("Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.");  May 28, 1854 ("To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe."); See also notes to September 7, 1851 ("The art of life") and December 15, 1852 ("A man should not live without a purpose")

As I have not observed the rainbow on the Juncus militaris it suggests the great difference in seasons. See October 27, 1858 ("The bayonet rush also has partly changed, and now, the river being perhaps lower than before this season, shows its rainbow colors. . . .Though a single stalk would not attract attention, when seen in the mass they have this singular effect. I call it, therefore, the rainbow rush.")

 

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

December 27.

Saturday.

Sunset from Fair Haven Hill.

This evening there are many clouds in the west into which the sun goes down so that we have our visible or apparent sunset and red evening sky as much as fifteen minutes before the real sunset.

You must be early on the hills to witness such a sunset, — by half past four at least.

Then all the vales, even to the horizon, are full of a purple vapor, which half veils the distant mountains, and the windows of undiscoverable farmhouses shine like an early candle or a fire.

After the sun has gone behind a cloud, there appears to be a gathering of clouds around his setting, and for a few moments his light in the amber sky seems more intense, brighter, and purer than at noonday.

I think you never see such a brightness in the noon day heavens as in the western sky sometimes, just before the sun goes down in clouds, like the ecstasy which we are told sometimes lights up the face of a dying man.

That is a serene or evening death, like the end of the day.

Then, at last, through all the grossness which has accumulated in the atmosphere of day, is seen a patch of serene sky fairer by contrast with the surrounding dark than midday, and even the gross atmosphere of the day is gilded and made pure as amber by the setting sun, as if the day's sins were forgiven it.

The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.

There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though the snow covers the earth.

The sky is always ready to answer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter.

Snow and drifts on the earth; it swiftly descends from the heavens and leaves them pure.

The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter.

It is remarkable that the sun rarely goes down without a cloud.

Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1851

Fair Haven Hill. See July 27, 1852 ("On Fair Haven Hill. . . .All the clouds in the sky are now close to the west horizon, so that the sun is nearly down before they are reached and lighted or gilded. . . . The sun is now set. All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle. The solemnity of the evening sky! Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered."); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”); February 21, 1855 (“I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.”); October 7, 1857 (" When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape. . . I think that Concord affords no better view.”); March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim.")

The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset. See December 20, 1851( Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods."); December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset."); December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it . . . having got home , I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and . . . just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon."); December 25, 1851 ("I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand? whether it will go down in clouds or a clear sky?"); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.")

There is no winter necessarily in the sky. . . we can see summer there or winter.. . .The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter. Compare December 31, 1851 ("Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones "); December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies. . . . The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”); January 1, 1852 ("The stars of higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, and therefore appear more near and numerable, while those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky, are scarcely seen at all. . . .These are some of the differences between this and the autumn or summer nights . . . the dazzle and seeming nearness of the stars."); January 17, 1852 (“sunset these winter days . . . is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.") January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky.. . .Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this so finely. "); January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”); February 3, 1852 ("The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, - rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.")March 20, 1852 ("the stars twinkle as in winter night.")

Venus is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight See  December 27, 1853 ("It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon.") 

A TRUE WINTER SUNSET December 27, 2017

The sky is always ready to answer to our moods. See January 17, 1852. ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind."); January 26, 1852. ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")

A red screech owl.

December 26.

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. This is now generally made the same with the nævia, but, while some consider the red the old, others consider the red the young. 

This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" like a hazelnut or dried hazel bur (not hazel). It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long. Feet extend one inch beyond tail.

Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the young.

How well fitted these and other owls to withstand the winter! a mere core in the midst of such a muff of feathers! Then the feet of this are feathered finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in winter; hawks, scarce.


It is no worse, I allow, than almost every other practice which custom has sanctioned, but that is the worst of it, for it shows how bad the rest are. To such a pass our civilization and division of labor has come that A, a professional huckleberry - picker, has hired B’s field and, we will suppose, is now gathering the crop, perhaps with the aid of a patented machine; C, a professed cook, is superintending the cooking of a pudding made of some of the berries; while Professor D, for whom the pudding is intended, sits in his library writing a book, a work on the Vaccinieæ, of course. And now the result of this downward course will be seen in that book, which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckleberry field and account for the existence of the two professors who come between D and A.

It will be worthless. There will be none of the spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a homely illustration, this is to save at the spile but waste at the bung.

I believe in a different kind of division of labor, and that Professor D should divide himself between the library and the huckleberry-field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1860

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect  Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. See May 7, 1855 ("I looked in, and, to my great surprise, there squatted, filling the hole, which was about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon-brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face."); May 12, 1855 ("One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs .. . .Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio) , — with which this apparently corresponds , and not with the mottled, though my egg is not " pure white, ” – that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.");,February 5, 1861 ("Horace Mann brings me a screech owl . . . This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.") Also   J. J. Audubon  ("The Red Owl of Wilson and other naturalists is merely the young of the bird called by the same authors the Mottled Owl,"))

I go forth to see the sun set.

 

December 25.

Thursday.

Via spruce swamp on Conantum to hilltop, returning across river over shrub oak plain to Cliffs.

A wind is now blowing the light snow which fell a day or two ago into drifts, especially on the lee, now the south, side of the walls, the outlines of the drifts corresponding to the chinks in the walls and the eddies of the wind.

The snow glides, unperceived for the most part, over the open fields without rising into the air (unless the ground is elevated), until it reaches an opposite wall, which it sifts through and is blown over, blowing off from it like steam when seen in the sun.

As it passes through the chinks, it does not drive straight onward, but curves gracefully upwards into fantastic shapes, somewhat like the waves which curve as they break upon the shore; that is, as if the snow that passes through a chink were one connected body, detained by the friction of its lower side.

It takes the form of saddles and shells and porringers.

It builds up a fantastic alabaster wall  behind the first, a snowy sierra.

It is wonderful what sharp turrets it builds up, - builds up, i. e. by accumulation though seemingly by attrition, though the curves upward to a point like the prows of ancient vessels look like sharp carving, or as if the material had been held before the blowpipe.

So what was blown up into the air gradually sifts down into the road or field, and forms the slope of the sierra.

Astonishingly sharp and thin overhanging eaves it builds, even this dry snow, where it has the least suggestion from a wall or bank, — less than a mason ever springs his brick from.

This is the architecture of the snow.

On high hills exposed to wind and sun, it curls off like the steam from a damp roof in the morning.

Such sharply defined forms it takes as if the core had been the flames of gaslights.

I go forth to see the sun set.

Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand? whether it will go down in clouds or a clear sky? 

I feel that it is late when the mountains in the north and northwest have ceased to reflect the sun. The shadow is not partial but universal.

In a winter day the sun is almost all in all.

I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing.

 I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon.

 You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence.  If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient.

 If there is nothing in it which speaks to my imagination, what boots it? 

What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs the imagination? not merely robs Peter to pay Paul, but takes from Peter more than it ever gives to Paul ? 

That is simply the way in which it speaks to the understanding, and that is the account which the understanding gives of it; but that is not the way it speaks to the imagination, and that is not the account which the imagination gives of it.

 Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine.

 If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really? 

It would be a truer discipline for the writer to take the least film of thought that floats in the twilight sky of his mind for his theme, about which he has scarcely one idea (that would be teaching his ideas how to shoot), faintest intimations, shadowiest subjects, make a lecture on this, by assiduity and attention get perchance two views of the same, increase a little the stock of knowledge, clear a new field instead of manuring the old; instead of making a lecture out of such obvious truths, hackneyed to the minds of all thinkers.

We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove our gossamer truths practical, to show their connection with our every-day life (better show their distance from our every-day life), to relate them to the cider-mill and the banking institution.

Ah, give me pure mind, pure thought!

Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it!

Much finer themes I aspire to, which will yield no satisfaction to the vulgar mind, not one sentence for them.

Perchance it may convince such that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy.

Dissolve one nebula, and so destroy the nebular system and hypothesis.

Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed.

By perseverance you get two views of the same rare truth.

That way of viewing things you know of, least insisted on by you, however, least remembered, — take that view, adhere to that, insist on that, see all things from that point of view.

Will you let these intimations go unattended to and watch the door-bell or knocker? That is your text.

Do not speak for other men; speak for yourself.

They show you as in a vision the kingdoms of the world, and of all the worlds, but you prefer to look in upon a puppet-show.

Though you should only speak to one kindred mind in all time, though you should not speak to one, but only utter aloud, that you may the more completely realize and live in the idea which contains the reason of your life, that you may build yourself up to the height of your conceptions, that you may remember your Creator in the days of your youth and justify His ways to man, that the end of life may not be its amusement, speak — though your thought presupposes the non-existence of your hearers — thoughts that transcend life and death.

What though mortal ears are not fitted to hear absolute truth!

Thoughts that blot out the earth are best conceived in the night, when darkness has already blotted it out from sight.

We look upward for inspiration.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 25, 1851

On high hills exposed to wind and sun, it curls off like the steam from a damp roof in the morning. See note to December 24, 1850 ("I notice that the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain.") 

I go forth to see the sun set. See December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it"); July 23, 1852 ("I sit at my window to observe the sun set"); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down.");; November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,"); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. How red its light at this hour! I covered its orb with my hand, and let its rays light up the fine woollen fibres of my glove. They were a dazzling rose-color.")

Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it! See November 9, 1851 (“Observing me still scribbling, [Channing] will say that he confines himself to the ideal. . . he leaves the facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say a little petulantly, "I am universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.”")

What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs the imagination? See May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. ”);November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”): December 8, 1859 ("How is it that what is actually present and transpiring is commonly perceived by the common sense and understanding only, is bare and bald, without halo or the blue enamel of intervening air? . . . It is not simply the understanding now, but the imagination, that takes cognizance of it. The imagination requires a long range. It is the faculty of the poet to see present things as if, in this sense, also past and future, as if distant or universally significant. ")

We look upward for inspiration. See December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset."); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days.."); January 26, 1852 ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")

The second important snow (cont.)

December 23. 


[The second important snow] ---- there is seven or eight inches of snow at least.

Larks were about our house the middle of this month.



H. D. Thoreau , Journal, December 23, 1860

Seven or eight inches of snow at least. See December 22, 1860 ("This evening and night, the second important snow.")

Larks were about our house the middle of this month. See note to  November 8, 1853 ("Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous, reminding me of arctic snowbirds by their size and form also.")

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds.

December 22.

The apples are now thawed. This is their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and uneatable are now filled with a rich, sweet cider which I am better acquainted with than with wine.

And others, which have more substance, are a sweet and luscious food, — in my opinion of more worth than the pineapples which are imported from the torrid zone. Those which a month ago I tasted and repented of it, which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the shrub oak.

It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first solid as stones, and then the sun or a warm winter day for it takes but little heat — to thaw them, and they to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang.

I find when I get home that they have thawed in my pocket and the ice is turned to cider. But I suspect that after the second freezing and thawing they will not be so good. I bend to drink the cup and save my lappets.

What are the half-ripe fruits of the torrid south, to this fruit matured by the cold of the frigid north. There are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face to tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them, and grow more social with their wine.

Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not dislodge it? It is a fruit never brought to market that I am aware of, quite distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider.

It is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. It is a dark-aired winter day, yet I see the summer plants still peering above the snow.

There are but few tracks in all this snow. It is the Yellow Knife River or the Saskatchewan.

The large leafy lichens on the white pines, especially on the outside of the wood, look almost a golden yellow in the light reflected from the snow, while deeper in the wood they are ash-colored.

In the swamps the dry, yellowish-colored fruit of the poison dogwood hangs like jewelry on long, drooping stems. It is pleasant to meet it, it has so much character relatively to man.

Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree. Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that they contained an almond before the naturalist did. He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets.

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1850

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere. See December 22, 1853 ("Here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it.") 

Winter Colors (The solstice)

solstice 2019

We are tempted to call these

 the finest days of the year. 

  December 21, 1854

Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud, and with scarcely any redness following, so pure is the atmosphere, only a faint rosy blush along the horizon.  December 19, 1851

A faint rosy blush,

horizon without a cloud -- 

sun sets suddenly.

December 19, 1851

Walden froze completely over last night. . . and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. December 19, 1856

Walden froze last night.

Transparent green ice through which

I see the bottom.

December 19, 1856

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. December 20, 1851

Red, white, green colors 

and, in the distance, dark brown --

The winter landscape.

December 20, 1851

It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice. December 20, 1854 

The icy water

reflecting the warm colors

of the sunset sky.

December 20, 1855

Long after the sun has set

and downy clouds have turned dark

and the shades of night

have taken possession of the east

some rosy clouds will be seen

in the upper sky

over the portals of the darkening west. 

December 21, 1851

Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. December 21, 1854

Dark evergreen woods,

untrodden snow pure and still --

these the finest days.

December 21, 1854

Last rays of the sun 

falling on the Baker Farm 

reflect a clear pink.

December 21, 1854

A few simple colors now prevail. December 21, 1855

I look back to the wharf rock shore and see . . , the warmest object in the landscape, — a narrow line of warm yellow rushes — for they reflect the western light, — along the edge of the somewhat snowy pond and next the snow-clad and wooded shore. December 22, 1859

A narrow line of

yellow rushes lit up by 

the westering sun.

December 22, 1859

A narrow white line

of snow on the storm side of

every exposed tree.

December 23, 1851

These are the colors of the earth now:

• all land that has been some time cleared, except it is subject to the plow, is russet;
• the color of withered herbage and the ground finely commixed, a lighter straw-color where are rank grasses next water;
• sprout-lands, the pale leather-color of dry oak leaves;
• pine woods, green;
• deciduous woods (bare twigs and stems and withered leaves commingled), a brownish or reddish gray;
• maple swamps, smoke-color;
• land just cleared, dark brown and earthy;
• plowed land, dark brown or blackish;
• ice and water, slate-color or blue;
• andromeda swamps, dull red and dark gray;
• rocks, gray.

December 23, 1855

You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. . . . I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. How red its light at this hour! I covered its orb with my hand, and let its rays light up the fine woollen fibres of my glove. They were a dazzling rose-color. December 23, 1859

Now all the clouds grow black, and I give up to-night; but unexpectedly, half an hour later when I look out, having got home, I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon. December 23, 1851

Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; . . .some of them, when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps , with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be. December 24, 1851

December 24, 2015

I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand? . . . I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination. . . . I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies. December 25, 1851


The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.  . . . How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. Unless you watch it, you do not know when the sun goes down. It is like a candle extinguished without smoke. A moment ago you saw that glittering orb amid the dry oak leaves in the horizon, and now you can detect no trace of it. In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.

Full of soft pure light

western sky after sunset,

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

December 20.

Saturday. 2 P. M. – To Fair Haven Hill and plain below.

Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight.

Travelling ever by wider circles.

What a symbol of the thoughts, now soaring, now descending, taking larger and larger circles, or smaller and smaller. It flies not directly whither it is bound, but advances by circles, like a courtier of the skies. No such noble progress! How it comes round, as with a wider sweep of thought! But the majesty is in the imagination of the beholder, for the bird is intent on its prey.

Circling and ever circling, you cannot divine which way it will incline, till perchance it dives down straight as an arrow to its mark.

It rises higher above where I stand, and I see with beautiful distinctness its wings against the sky, primaries and secondaries, and the rich tracery of the outline of the latter (?), its inner wings, or wing-linings, within the outer, - like a great moth seen against the sky.

A will-o'-the-wind. Following its path, as it were through the vortices of the air. The poetry of motion.

Not as preferring one place to another, but enjoying each as long as possible. Most gracefully so surveys new scenes and revisits the old.

As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my thought, how bravely he came round over those parts of the wood which he had not surveyed, taking in a new segment, annexing new territories! Without ”heave-yo!” it trims its sail. It goes about without the creaking of a block.

That America yacht of the air that never makes a tack, though it rounds the globe itself, takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter, -- its sky - scrapers all under its control.

Holds up one wing, as if to admire, and sweeps off this way, then holds up the other and sweeps that. If there are two concentrically circling, it is such a regatta as Southampton waters never witnessed.

Flights of imagination, Coleridgean thoughts.

So a man is said to soar in his thought, ever to fresh woods and pastures new. Rises as in thought. 

Snow-squalls pass, obscuring the sun, as if blown off from a larger storm. 

Since last Monday the ground has been covered half a foot or more with snow; and the ice also, before I have had a skate. Hitherto we had had mostly bare, frozen ground.

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. I view it now from the cliffs. The red shrub oaks on the white ground of the plain beneath make a pretty scene.

Most walkers are pretty effectually shut up by the snow.

I observe that they who saw down trees in the woods with a cross-cut saw carry a mat to kneel on. It is no doubt a good lesson for the woodchopper, the long day alone in the woods, and he gets more than his half dollar a cord. 

Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste. 

The red oak leaves are even more fresh and glossy than the white.

A clump of white pines, seen far westward over the shrub oak plain, which is now lit up by the setting sun, a soft, feathery grove, with their gray stems indistinctly seen, like human beings come to their cabin door, standing expectant on the edge of the plain, impress me with a mild humanity.

The trees indeed have hearts.

With a certain affection the sun seems to send its farewell ray far and level over the copses to them, and they silently receive it with gratitude, like a group of settlers with their children.

The pines impress me as human.

A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon.

Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.


The dull and blundering behavior of clowns will as surely polish the writer at last as the criticism of men of thought. It is wonderful, wonderful, the unceasing demand that Christendom makes on you, that you speak from a moral point of view. Though you be a babe, the cry is, Repent, repent. The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner."

What made the hawk mount? Did you perceive the manæuvre? Did he fill himself with air? Before you were aware of it, he had mounted by his spiral path into the heavens. 

Our country is broad and rich, for here, within twenty miles of Boston, I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. 

Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods, about Well Meadow Head. 

December 20, 2019

They say that the Indians of the Great Basin live on the almonds of the pine. Have not I been fed by the pine for many a year? 

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1851

<<<<< December 19, 1851             December 21, 1851 >>>>>

The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner." See 1850? (“Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him.”)

A large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight. See December 20, 1857 ("A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail.");See also June 15, 1852 ("I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it "); June 8, 1853 ("As I stand by this pond, I hear a hawk scream, and, looking up, see, a pretty large one circling not far off and incessantly screaming, as I at first suppose to scare and so discover its prey, but its screaming is so incessant and it circles from time to time so near me, as I move southward, that I begin to think it has a nest near by and is angry at my intrusion into its domains."); October 28, 1857 ,("His scream . . . is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? Is it to scare his prey, that he may see by its motion where it is, or to inform its mate or companion of its where about? ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. See  December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail."); December 21, 1854 ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.") See also December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice."); February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us,")

The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Compare December 19, 1851 ("Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it? . . .Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud– & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon."); December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west.");  December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. ”); December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”);December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”)

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”)November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.")

I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the distant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. See January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns.  . . . How long will these last?")