The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
It begins to snow
so gradually I thought
I imagined it.
December 26, 1859
Snows all day — the first
snow of any consequence
three or four inches.
December 26, 1857
It has snowed for hours
and, as it ceases, I go out
to see the new snow.
Gently fallen snow
has formed an upright wall on
the slenderest twig.
And every twig
thus laden is as still as
the hillside itself.
All weeds with their seeds
rising dark above the snow
now conspicuous.
The branches and trees
bend over the trackless road
with snowy burdens.
This pure and trackless
road up Brister's Hill tempts us
to start life again.
December 26, 2017
I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated. December 26, 1855
After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had. December 26, 1855
The sun comes out at 9 A. M. and lights up the ice-incrusted trees. December 26, 1855
Already the wind is rising and a brattling is heard overhead in the street. December 26, 1855
Now, at 10 A. M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace. December 26, 1855
Now, at 10 A. M., there blows a very strong wind from the northwest, and it grows cold apace. December 26, 1855
This forenoon it snows pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep. December 26, 1853
Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. December 26, 1857
I go out at 2.30, just as it ceases. Now is the time, before the wind rises or the sun has shone, to go forth and see the snow on the trees. December 26, 1853
It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. December 26, 1853
And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. December 26, 1853
It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. December 26, 1853
And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. December 26, 1853
December 26, 2013
The sun, shining down a gorge over the woods at Brister’s Hill. December 26, 1855
The sight of the pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side, would tempt us to begin life again. December 26, 1853
The ice is covered up, and skating gone. December 26, 1853
The bare hills are so white that I cannot see their outlines against the misty sky. December 26, 1853
Now that the ground is covered with snow, the pine woods seen from the hilltops are not green but a dark brown, greenish-brown perhaps. You see dark patches of wood. December 26, 1850
The bare hills are so white that I cannot see their outlines against the misty sky. December 26, 1853
Now that the ground is covered with snow, the pine woods seen from the hilltops are not green but a dark brown, greenish-brown perhaps. You see dark patches of wood. December 26, 1850
The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles off in the horizon, is of sharp points. December 26, 1855
Trees seen in the West against the dark cloud, the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as frostwork, and their outlines very perfectly and distinctly revealed, December 26, 1855
The walls and fences are encased, and the fields bristle with a myriad of crystal spears. December 26, 1855
I passed by the pitch pine that was struck by lightning. I was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing that broad, distinct spiral mark, more distinct even than when made eight years ago, as one might groove a walking-stick, — mark of an invisible and in tangible power, a thunderbolt, mark where a terrific and resistless bolt came down from heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. It seemed a sacred spot. December 26, 1853
There are still half a dozen fresh ripe red and glossy oak leaves left on the bush under the Cliffs. December 26, 1850
Saw a small flock of tree sparrows in the sprout- lands under Bartlett's Cliff. Their metallic chip is much like the lisp of the chickadee.. December 26, 1853
Walden not yet more than half frozen over. December 26, 1850
Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, with the markings, as far as I saw, of the crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail. December 26, 1853
It dove and swam a few rods under water, and, when on the surface, kept turning round and round warily and nodding its head the while. This being the only pond hereabouts that is open. December 26, 1853
Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe? December 26, 1857
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. December 26, 1860
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. December 26, 1860
But the low and spreading weeds in the fields and the wood-paths are the most interesting. December 26, 1855
All weeds, with their seeds, rising dark above the snow, are now remarkably conspicuous, which before were not observed against the dark earth. December 26, 1853
The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are. December 26, 1855
Each little blue-curls calyx has a spherical button like those brass ones on little boys’ jackets, — little sprigs on them, —and the pennyroyal has still smaller spheres, more regularly arranged about its stem, chandelier-wise, and still smells through the ice. December 26, 1855
Each little blue-curls calyx has a spherical button like those brass ones on little boys’ jackets, — little sprigs on them, —and the pennyroyal has still smaller spheres, more regularly arranged about its stem, chandelier-wise, and still smells through the ice. December 26, 1855
The finest grasses support the most wonderful burdens of ice and most branched on their minute threads. December 26, 1855
These weeds are spread and arched over into the snow again, — countless little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice, which you break with a tinkling crash at each step. December 26, 1855
These weeds are spread and arched over into the snow again, — countless little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice, which you break with a tinkling crash at each step. December 26, 1855
The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all all, for the scarlet is increased and multiplied by reflection through the bubbles and hemispherical surfaces of the crust, as if it covered some vermilion grain thickly strewn. And the brown cup lichens stand in their midst. The whole rough bark, too, is encased. December 26, 1855
Twice this winter I have noticed a musquash floating in a placid open place in the river when it was frozen for a mile each side, looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen meadow, but showing its whole upper outline from nose to end of tail; perfectly still till he observed me, then suddenly diving and steering under the ice toward some cabin's entrance or other retreat half a dozen or more rods off. December 26, 1859
4 P. M. — Up railroad. Since the sun has risen higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. December 26, 1855
The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs, etc. December 26, 1855
The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs, etc. December 26, 1855
The sun is gone before five. Just before I looked for rainbow flocks in the west, but saw none, only some small pink-dun (?) clouds. In the east still larger ones, which after sunset turned to pale slate. December 26, 1855
After being uniformly overcast all the forenoon, still and moderate weather, it begins to snow very gradually, at first imperceptibly, this afternoon, — at first I thought I imagined it, — and at length begins to snow in earnest about 6 P. M., but lasts only a few minutes. December 26, 1859
The cockerels crow just as in a spring day at home. I feel the winter breaking up in me; if I were home I would try to write poetry. December 26, 1854
*****
.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Snow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
*****
December 26, 2013
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.")
July 10, 1856 ("I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down,. . .Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound . . . I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant.")
July 10, 1856 ("I find myself suddenly within a rod of a gray screech owl sitting on an alder bough with horns erect, turning its head from side to side and up and down,. . .Another more red, also horned, repeats the same warning sound . . . I draw near and find a young owl a third smaller than the old, all gray without obvious horns --only four or five feet distant.")
October 28, 1855 ("As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sitting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. . . . So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand. ");
November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.”)
November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.”)
November 24, 1858 (“Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it.")
November 27, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says . . .that the little dipper is not a coot. . - but he appears not to know a coot”)
November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)
December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night.”)
December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.")
December 5, 1850 ("Seen from the Cliffs, the evergreens are greener than ever. There is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems.”)
December 5, 1858 ("The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.")
December 5, 1858 ("Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow")
December 5, 1858 ("The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms.")
November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)
December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night.”)
December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.")
December 5, 1850 ("Seen from the Cliffs, the evergreens are greener than ever. There is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems.”)
December 5, 1858 ("The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.")
December 5, 1858 ("Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow")
December 5, 1858 ("The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms.")
December 6, 1856 ("Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage.”)
December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle. . ., is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together.")
December 17, 1858 ("The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them")December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle. . ., is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together.")
December 19, 1859 ("Stow is as good a town for mink as any, but none of them have more musquash than Concord.")
December 20, 1859 ("Snows very fast, large flakes, a very lodging snow,. . . it lodges on the twigs of the trees and bushes, — there being but little wind, — giving them a very white and soft, spiritual look. Gives them a still, soft, and light look. ")
December 23, 1851 ("There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree.")
December 23, 1858 ("How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river.")
December 24, 1853 ("Walden almost entirely open again.")December 23, 1851 ("There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree.")
December 23, 1858 ("How perfectly at home the musquash is on our river.")
December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast")
December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!")
December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produces a slight glaze, the first of the winter. ")
December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”)
December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”)
Snow collects like down
in little columns about
every twig and stem
December 24, 1856
December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground, and with it the first tree sparrows I have noticed in the yard.")
December 25, 1858 ("In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")December 27, 1852 (“Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. ... A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.”)
December 27, 1853 (“There is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night.”)
December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.")
December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night")
December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night")
December 27, 1857 ("A clear, pleasant day. Tree sparrows about the weeds in the yard.")
December 28, 1853 ("By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. ")
December 29, 1851 ("It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring.")
December 29, 1853 ("All day a driving snow-storm . . . in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field.")
December 28, 1853 ("By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. ")
December 29, 1851 ("It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring.")
December 29, 1853 ("All day a driving snow-storm . . . in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field.")
December 29, 1856 (“The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring.”)
December 29, 1859 ("The musquash make a good deal of use of these open spaces. I have seen one four times in three several places this winter, or within three weeks. They improve all the open water they can get. . . . This is all the water to reflect the sky now, whether amber or purple. I sometimes see the musquash dive in the midst of such a placid purple lake.")
December 29, 1859 ("The musquash make a good deal of use of these open spaces. I have seen one four times in three several places this winter, or within three weeks. They improve all the open water they can get. . . . This is all the water to reflect the sky now, whether amber or purple. I sometimes see the musquash dive in the midst of such a placid purple lake.")
December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. “)
December 30, 1859 ("What a different phenomenon a musquash now from what it is in summer! Now if one floats, or swims, its whole back out, or crawls out upon the ice at one of those narrow oval water spaces in the river, some twenty rods long (in calm weather, smooth mirrors), in a broad frame of white ice or yet whiter snow, it is seen at once, as conspicuous (or more so) as a fly on a window-pane or a mirror. ")
December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”)
December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”)
December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night.")
January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow . . . and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”);
January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")
January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow . . . and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”);
January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")
January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”)
January 14, 1856 ("I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.“)
January 14, 1856 ("I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.“)
January 18, 1859 ("I notice in two places where a musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail")
January 22, 1859 ("I notice where a musquash has lately swam under this thin ice, breaking it here and there, and his course for many rods is betrayed by a continuous row of numerous white bubbles as big as a ninepence under the ice.")
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.") See 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,")
January 22, 1859 ("I notice where a musquash has lately swam under this thin ice, breaking it here and there, and his course for many rods is betrayed by a continuous row of numerous white bubbles as big as a ninepence under the ice.")
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.") See 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,")
February 6, 1857 ("Insignificant weeds and stubble along the railroad causeway and elsewhere are now made very conspicuous, both by their increased size and bristling stiffness and their whiteness.”)
February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.”)
February 21, 1854 (“The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees”)
February 24, 1858 (“Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it.”)
March 2, 1858 (“The snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)
February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.”)
February 21, 1854 (“The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees”)
February 24, 1858 (“Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it.”)
March 2, 1858 (“The snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)
December 26, 2018
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,December 26
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
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