January 2.
The trees are white with a hoar frost this morning, small leafets, a tenth of an inch long, on every side of the twigs. They look like ghosts of trees.
Took a walk on snow-shoes at 9 A. M. to Hubbard's Grove.
A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.
P. M. - - Up Union Turnpike.
The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and ethereal than in the coldest winter days. This evening, though the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystalline and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very beautiful.
I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape.
We go about these days as if we had fetters on our feet. We walk in the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our predecessors.
I noticed yesterday that the damp snow, falling gently without wind on the top of front-yard posts, had quite changed the style of their architecture, -- to the dome style of the East, a four-sided base becoming a dome at top.
I observe other revelations made by the snow.
The team and driver have long since gone by, but I see the marks of his whip-lash on the snow, -- its re coil, — but alas ! these are not a complete tally of the strokes which fell upon the oxen's back. The unmerciful driver thought perchance that no one saw him, but unwittingly he recorded each blow on the unspotted snow behind his back as in the book of life. To more searching eyes the marks of his lash are in the air.
I paced partly through the pitch pine wood and partly the open field from the Turnpike by the Lee place to the railroad, from north to south, more than a quarter of a mile, measuring at every tenth pace. The average of sixty-five measurements, up hill and down, was nine teen inches; this after increasing those in the woods by one inch each (little enough) on account of the snow on the pines.
So that, apparently, it has settled about as much as the two last snows amount to. I think there has been but little over two feet at any one time.
I think that one would have to pace a mile on a north and south line, up and down hill, through woods and fields, to get a quite reliable result. The snow will drift sometimes the whole width of a field, and fill a road or valley beyond. So that it would be well that your measuring included several such driftings.
There is very little reliance to put on the usual estimates of the depth of snow. I have heard different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight inches.
My snow-shoes sank about four inches into the snow this morning, but more than twice as much the 29th.
On north side the railroad, above the red house crossing, the cars have cut through a drift about a quarter of a mile long and seven to nine feet high, straight up and down. It reminds me of the Highlands, the Pictured Rocks, the side of an iceberg, etc. Now that the sun has just sunk below the horizon, it is wonderful what an amount of soft light [ it ] appears to be absorbing. There appears to be more day just here by its side than anywhere. I can almost see into [ it ] six inches. It is made translucent, it is so saturated with light.
I have heard of one precious stone found in Concord, the cinnamon stone. A geologist has spoken of it as found in this town, and a farmer has described to me one which he once found, perhaps the same referred to by the other. He said it was as large as a brick, and as thick, and yet you could distinguish a pin through it, it was so transparent.
If not a mountain of light, it was a brickbatful, at any rate.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1854
Took a walk on snow-shoes at 9 A. M. to Hubbard's Grove.
A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.
P. M. - - Up Union Turnpike.
The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and ethereal than in the coldest winter days. This evening, though the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystalline and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very beautiful.
I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape.
We go about these days as if we had fetters on our feet. We walk in the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our predecessors.
I noticed yesterday that the damp snow, falling gently without wind on the top of front-yard posts, had quite changed the style of their architecture, -- to the dome style of the East, a four-sided base becoming a dome at top.
I observe other revelations made by the snow.
The team and driver have long since gone by, but I see the marks of his whip-lash on the snow, -- its re coil, — but alas ! these are not a complete tally of the strokes which fell upon the oxen's back. The unmerciful driver thought perchance that no one saw him, but unwittingly he recorded each blow on the unspotted snow behind his back as in the book of life. To more searching eyes the marks of his lash are in the air.
I paced partly through the pitch pine wood and partly the open field from the Turnpike by the Lee place to the railroad, from north to south, more than a quarter of a mile, measuring at every tenth pace. The average of sixty-five measurements, up hill and down, was nine teen inches; this after increasing those in the woods by one inch each (little enough) on account of the snow on the pines.
So that, apparently, it has settled about as much as the two last snows amount to. I think there has been but little over two feet at any one time.
I think that one would have to pace a mile on a north and south line, up and down hill, through woods and fields, to get a quite reliable result. The snow will drift sometimes the whole width of a field, and fill a road or valley beyond. So that it would be well that your measuring included several such driftings.
There is very little reliance to put on the usual estimates of the depth of snow. I have heard different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight inches.
My snow-shoes sank about four inches into the snow this morning, but more than twice as much the 29th.
On north side the railroad, above the red house crossing, the cars have cut through a drift about a quarter of a mile long and seven to nine feet high, straight up and down. It reminds me of the Highlands, the Pictured Rocks, the side of an iceberg, etc. Now that the sun has just sunk below the horizon, it is wonderful what an amount of soft light [ it ] appears to be absorbing. There appears to be more day just here by its side than anywhere. I can almost see into [ it ] six inches. It is made translucent, it is so saturated with light.
I have heard of one precious stone found in Concord, the cinnamon stone. A geologist has spoken of it as found in this town, and a farmer has described to me one which he once found, perhaps the same referred to by the other. He said it was as large as a brick, and as thick, and yet you could distinguish a pin through it, it was so transparent.
If not a mountain of light, it was a brickbatful, at any rate.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1854
A flock of snow buntings. See January 2, 1856 ("They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather."); December 29, 1853 ("These are the true winter birds . . . these winged snowballs."); January 6, 1856 ("While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings.”); January 6, 1859 (“They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape. See May 3, 1852 (“How cheering and glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence!”); December 31, 1854 ("How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!"); December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail."); December 9, 1856 ("A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape.”)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 2.
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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