A Book of the Seasons: January 14 (Nature's patience, snow flakes, weeds above snow, winter life, speed skating, blueness )

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

January 14.

Nature does not hurry, 

yet everything is accomplished.

— Lao Tzu

We are related 

to all nature – animate 

and inanimate.

January 14, 1852

There is so much life 

in the most solitary 

and dreariest scene. 

 January 14, 1857

Nature is slow but sure – 

she works no faster 

than need be. 

January 14, 1861

January 14, 2018

We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate, and accordingly we share to some extent the nature of the dormant creatures. We all feel somewhat confined by the winter. January 14, 1852

Coldest morning yet; 20°. January 14, 1861

Sunrise. — Snows again. January 14, 1856

It is the discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth's surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. January 14, 1861

There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws. January 14, 1861

It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are "spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i. e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved. January 14, 1861

Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be. January 14, 1861

She knows that seeds have many other uses than to reproduce their kind. In raising oaks and pines,. . .If every acorn of this year's crop is destroyed, never fear! she has more years to come. It is not necessary that a pine or an oak should bear fruit every year, January 14, 1861

So, botanically, the greatest changes in the landscape are produced more gradually than we expected. If Nature has a pine or an oak wood to produce, she manifests no haste about it. January 14, 1861

I notice, on the black willows and also on the alders and white maples overhanging the stream, numerous dirty-white cocoons, about an inch long, attached by their sides to the base of the recent twigs and disguised by dry leaves curled about them, — a sort of fruit which these trees bear now. January 14, 1857

These numerous cocoons attached to the twigs over hanging the stream in the still and biting winter day suggest a certain fertility in the river borders, — impart a kind of life to them, — and so are company to me. 

January 14, 1857

There is so much more life than is suspected in the most solitary and dreariest scene. They are as much as the lisping of a chickadee. January 14, 1857

What kind of understanding was there between the mind that determined that these leaves should hang on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it? January 14, 1857

Why should the dead corn-stalks occupy the field longer than the green and living did? Many of them are granaries for the birds. January 14, 1852

Who shall say . . . that the squirrel when it plants an acorn, has not a transient thought for its posterity? January 14, 1861

Up Assabet on ice. I go slumping four or five inches in the snow on the river, and often into water above the ice, breaking through a slight crust under the snow, which has formed in the night. January 14, 1857

It is a mild day, and I notice, what I have not observed for some time, that blueness of the air only to be perceived in a mild day. January 14, 1860

You come forth to see this great blue presence lurking about the woods and the horizon. January 14, 1860

I see it between me and woods half a mile distant. January 14, 1860

The softening of the air amounts to this. The mountains are quite invisible. January 14, 1860

There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter. January 14, 1852

When I see the dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow by the roadside, sometimes in dense masses, which carry me back in imagination to their green summer life, I put faintly a question which I do not yet hear answered, Why stand they there? January 14, 1852

Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. January 14, 1860 

Here is a change as great as can well be imagined. Bare, brown, scentless stalks, with the dry heads still adhering. Color, scent, and flavor gone. January 14, 1852

Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. January 14, 1860

It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow. January 14, 1860

The fog-frosts and the fog continue. . . The birch, from its outline and its numerous twigs, is also one of the prettiest trees in this dress. January 14, 1859

The birch (white) catkins appear to lose their seeds first at the base, though that may be the uppermost. They are blown or shaken off, leaving a bare threadlike core. January 14, 1857

Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow. January 14, 1857

About an inch more snow fell this morning. An average snow-storm is from six to eight inches deep on a level. January 14, 1860

The snow having ceased falling this forenoon, I go to Holden Wood, Conantum, to look for tracks. It is too soon. January 14, 1860

I see none at all but those of a hound, and also where a partridge waded through the light snow, apparently while it was falling, making a deep gutter. January 14, 1860

Snows all day. The place of the sun appears through the storm about three o'clock, a sign that it is near its end, though it still snows as hard as ever. It is a very light snow, lying like down or feathery scales. January 14, 1853

Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. January 14, 1853

It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.. January 14, 1853

Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw. January 14, 1853

These thin crystals are piled about a foot deep all over the country, but as light as bran. January 14, 1853

White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness. Already, before the storm is over, the surface of the snow in the high woods is full of indentations and hollows where some of this burden has fallen. January 14, 1853

The surface of fields, as I look toward the western light, appears as if different kinds of flakes drifted together, some glistening scales, others darker; or perhaps the same reflected the light differently from different sides of slight drifts or undulations on the surface. January 14, 1853

Thus beautiful the snow. These starry crystals, descending profusely, have woven a pure white garment, over all the fields. January 14, 1853

The crows are flitting about the houses and alight upon the elms. January 14, 1856

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

Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — the water having settled in the suddenly cold night,—which I had not time to see. January 14, 1855

(See the intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, --betrayed by a morsel of fur left on the ice -- probably the prey of a fox.) January 14, 1855

A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. January 14, 1855

There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion. January 14, 1855

All the water on the meadows lies over ice and snow. January 14, 1854

The channel, or river itself, is still covered with ice, but the meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left. January 14, 1854

And now the snow has quite ceased, blue sky appears, and the sun goes down in clouds. January 14, 1853

I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east. January 14, 1852

After snowing an inch or two it cleared up at night. January 14, 1856

***** 

See Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830–33)

Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle,

***** 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

***** 

January 14, 2018

May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant")

October 18, 1860 ("The development theory implies a greater vital force in nature, equivalent to a sort of constant new creation. We find ourselves in a world that is already planted, but is also still being planted as at first.")

November 8, 1860 ("Consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.")
November 14, 1858 ("Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare)")

November 17, 1858 ("Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner"); 

November 30, 1858 (“The short afternoons are come . . . We see purple clouds in the east horizon.")

December 7, 1857 ("I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.")

December 9, 1856 ("A slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame. Such is a winter eve.")
December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . . I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm.")

December 14, 1855 ("Looking more closely at the light snow there near the swamp, I find that it is sprinkled all over (as with pellets of cotton) with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry.")
December 16, 1837 ("The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon.")

December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass.")
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 (“There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree.”)

December 26, 1855 (“The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs”)

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")

December 23, 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 26, 1855 (“The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs”)

December 28, 1859 ("Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather.")

December 30, 1853 ("In winter even man is to a slight extent dormant . . . he is more or less confined to the highway and wood-path; the weather oftener shuts him up in his burrow; . . . the nights are longest; he is often satisfied if he only gets out to the post-office in the course of the day.”)

December 31, 1851 ("The winter sunsets differ from the summer ones. Shall I ever in summer evenings see so celestial a reach of blue sky ")

December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.")

December 31, 1859 ("Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen . . .  This is a phenomenon of both cold weather and snowy. You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn.")

January 1, 1855 ("The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue.")

January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.") 

January 4, 1860 ("the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken.  I had made him kill the rabbit, and shake and tear the carcass, and eat it all up but . . .  he didn't do it")

January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow — I mean their stems and branches — and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”) 
January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes . . .countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.”)
January 5, 1856 (“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. . . .A divinity must have stirred within them before the crystals did thus shoot and set. Wheels of the storm chariots.”)

January 6, 1858 ("My attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve.
It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes,")
January 6, 1858 ("It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful.")

January 7, 1856 ("The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses")
January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue.")

January 9, 1860 ("I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond.")

January 10, 1851 ("I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge has squatted, the mark or form of her tail very distinct. ")

January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset.")

January 11, 1855 ("This air, thick with snowflakes, making a background, enables me to detect a very picturesque clump of trees on an islet")

January 12, 1860 ("It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now . . . You are struck by its peculiar tracklessness, as if it were a thick white blanket just spread. As it were, each snowflake lies as it first fell. . . This was a star snow, dry, but the stars of considerable size. It lies up light as down. When I look closely it seems to be chiefly composed of crystals in which the six rays or leafets are more or less perfect . . . not yet in the least melted by the sun.") 

January 15, 1855 (“Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet.”)

January 15, 1856 ("A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold.")

January 18, 1852 ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”)
January 20, 1855 (“The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation.”)

January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me . . . The night is not black when the air is clear, but blue still.")  

January 31, 1855 ("A clear, cold, beautiful day. Fine skating. An unprecedented expanse of ice. At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been.")

February 4, 1855 (This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.")

February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black.")
February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. ")

February 21, 1854 (“The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees”)

February 27, 1856 (" Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox.")

March 10, 1856 ("The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever.")
March 30, 1856 ("there are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw.")

January 24, 2021

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 

January 13 <<<<<<<<   January 14  >>>>>>>>  January 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 14

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

tinyurl.com/HDT14Jan