A Book of the Seasons: January 18 (Nature's moods, winter blues)

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 18

Today I see blue

in crevices of the snow

while it is snowing.

January 18, 1852

The pines, some of them,

seen through this fine driving snow

have a bluish hue.

January 18, 1852

Our very shadows

are no longer black but a

celestial blue.

January 18, 1856

Pine woods seen a mile 

or more off through thin fog are

a distinct dark blue.

January 18, 1859

In the reflection

the clouds are blacker and the

purple more distinct. 

The sky is more green

than in reality and

also darker-blue.

 January 18, 1860

Camel's Hump January 18, 2012

The temperature of the air and the clearness or serenity of the sky are indispensable to a knowledge of a day, so entirely do we sympathize with the moods of nature. January 18, 1860

They are very different seasons in the winter when the ice of the river and meadows and ponds is bare, — blue or green, a vast glittering crystal, — and when it is all covered with snow or slosh; and our moods correspond. January 18, 1860

The former may be called a crystalline winter. January 18, 1860

It is important to know of a day that is past whether it was warm or cold, clear or cloudy, calm or windy, etc. January 18, 1860

A very cold day. January 18, 1857

Thermometer at 7.30 a. m., -14° (Smith's hanging on same nail -20°); at 1.15 p. m., -3°; 2.15 p. m., -4°; 3.45 p. m., 0°. January 18, 1857

It is cloudy and no sun all day, and considerable wind also . . . Began to snow in the evening, the thermometer at zero. January 18, 1857

To-day, an average winter day, I notice no vapor over the open part of the river below the Island, as I did the very cold afternoon of the 10th. The air and water are probably now too nearly of the same temperature. That, then, in the winter, is a phenomenon of very cold weather. January 18, 1859

Thermometer 46; sky mostly overcast. January 18, 1860,

While the snow is falling, the telegraph harp is resounding across the fields. January 18, 1852

The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue. January 18, 1852

When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue. January 18, 1859

Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue. January 18, 1852

To-day, again, I see some of the blue in the crevices of the snow. It is snowing, but not a moist snow. January 18, 1852

There is no blue to be seen overhead, as if it has taken refuge in the chinks and crevices in the snow. January 18, 1852

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden . . . I am in raptures at my own shadow. January 18, 1856. 

Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue. This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low. January 18, 1856

What is like the peep or whistle of a bird in the midst of a winter storm? January 18, 1852

What entomologists the birds are! January 18, 1856

The F. hyemalis about. January 18, 1858

Standing under Lee's Cliff, several chickadees, uttering their faint notes, come flitting near to me as usual. January 18, 1860

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 18, 1859

I clear a little space in the snow, which is nine to ten inches deep over the deepest part of the pond, and cut through the ice, which is about seven inches thick. January 18, 1856

The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality, and also darker-blue, and the clouds are blacker and the purple more distinct. January 18, 1860

*****

January 18, 2024

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

January 18, 2024

*****

 April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of.")
April 24, 1859 ("The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.”)
May 9, 1852 ("Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons.") 

August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.")

September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.")

September 24, 1859 ("I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods”)
October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. ... My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.”)

November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");

November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist.")

December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable")

December 27, 1851 .("The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.")

December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here."); 

December 29, 1856 ("Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter?")

January 3, 1856 ("The snow turned to a fine mist or mizzling, through which I see a little blue in the snow, lurking in the ruts."). 

January 3, 1860 ("[Melvin] speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow."); 

January 3, 1858 ("I see a flock of F. hyemalis this afternoon, the weather is hitherto so warm.").
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 5, 1854 ("There is also some blueness now in the snow. The blueness is more distinct after sunset")

January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”)

January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. . . . and the chickadees are oftener heard.");

 January 7, 1855 ("Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company,. . . restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note.")

January 7, 1856 ("At breakfast time the thermometer stood at - 12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning.");

January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue.")

January 9, 1853 ("I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.”)

 January 9, 1856 ("Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M. . . . When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°.")

January 11, 1855 ("Air so thick with snowflakes that . . .single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon.") 

January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.")

January 14, 1852 ("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 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold.")
January 16, 1860 ("There is no shrub nor weed which is not known to some bird.")

January 19, 1855 ("I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M.”)

January 19, 1859 ("Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening.")
January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast”)

January 21, 1855 ("Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black, and the latter form commonly a reddish-brown ground out of which the former rise. These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other. ")

January 22, 1860 ("This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow.")

January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather_continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th . . . There has been but little use for gloves this winter, though I have been surveying a great deal for three months. The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")
January 23, 1858 (“To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one”).
January 23, 1858 (“It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.”)

January 23, 1857 ("Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°. . .)");

January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")
January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”)

 January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden . . . The ice is eight inches thick.")
January 30, 1856 ("Crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!")
January 30, 1854 ("A little flock of chickadees flies to us, utters their lively day day day and follows us along a considerable distance ")
January 30, 1856 ("By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach.")

February 3, 1853 ("The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches")

February 6, 1852 ("Mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing.")

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 6, 1856 ("Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden, Within three rods of where I cut on the 18th of January. . . .On the 18th of January the ice had been about seven inches thick here,. . . It was now 19 inches thick. ")

February 8, 1858 ("The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker.")

February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

February 9, 1856 ("I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee");

February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)

February 11, 1855 ("Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.")

February 16, 1856 ("Where I measured the ice in the middle of Walden on the 6th I now measure again, or close by it, though without cutting out the cake. I find about 11 1/4; (probably about same as the 6th, when called 11 1/2) of snow ice and 21 in all, leaving 10 1/4 clear ice, which would make the ice to have increased beneath through all this thickness and in spite of the thaws 2 3/4 inches. ")

February 18, 1858 (“I find Walden ice to be nine and a half plus inches thick, having gained three and a half inches since the 8th”)

February 28, 1857 ("I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow.")

 March 1, 1854 (" I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee")

March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.")

March 11, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick. . .. The clear ice has therefore gained 2 1/2 inches beneath since the 16th of February.")

March 19, 1856 ("In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now.")

March 25, 1856 ("The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches.")

March 30, 1856 (" It is just twenty-four inches thick in the middle.")

January 18, 2016

No blue overhead–

it has taken refuge in

the chinks in the snow.

 January 18, 1852

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 17 <<<<<<<<   January 18  >>>>>>>>  January 19

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 18

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

tinyurl.com/hdt18jan