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 trees indeed have hearts . . . like a group of settlers with their children.The pines impress me as human. See February 15, 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.")

And he looked up, and said,

I see men as trees, walking.

— Mark 8:22-25.

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?")

Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset. See December 27, 1851 ("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.");  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.");  January 20, 1852  ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.");  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."); January 7, 1857 ("I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight . . . I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late.")

December 20.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 20

Sunset in winter 

from a clearing in the woods –

gold clouds like mountains.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods.

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

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