A Book of the Seasons: January 20 (the sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees, the river, the sky, the morning, the evening )

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 20

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

January 20, 1852

January 20, 2015

The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was. January 20, 1852

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. January 20, 1852

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper in a week, for I now take the weekly Tribune, and for a few days past, it seems to me, I have not dwelt in Concord; the sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. January 20, 1852

To read of things distant and sounding betrays us into slighting these which are then apparently near and small. January 20, 1852

We learn to look abroad for our mind and spirit's daily nutriment, and what is this dull town to me? what are these plain fields and the aspects of this earth and these skies ? January 20, 1852

All summer and far into the fall I unconsciously went by the newspapers and the news, and now I find it was because the morning and the evening were full of news to me. January 20, 1852

To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever, — so to relate ourselves, for our mind's and body's health, to a universal fact. January 20, 1852

My walks were full of incidents. January 20, 1852

• Walked down the Boston road. January 20, 1852 
• P. M. — To Walden. January 20, 1853
• A fine, clear day, not very cold. January 20, 1855
• P. M. — Up river to Hollowell place. January 20, 1856
• P. M. — Up river . . . A second remarkably pleasant day like the last. January 20, 1859
• 2 P. M. — 39°. Up Assabet. January 20, 1860

There is nothing hackneyed where a new snow can come and cover all the landscape. January 20, 1855

There probably is not more than twelve to fifteen inches of snow on a level, yet the drifts are very large. January 20, 1857

Neither milkman nor butcher got here yesterday, and to-day the milkman came with oxen, partly through the fields. January 20, 1857

Though the snow is nowhere deep in the middle of the main street, the drifts are very large, especially on the north side, so that, as you look down the street, it appears as uneven as a rolling prairie. January 20, 1857

The surface of the snow everywhere in the fields, where it is hard blown, has a fine grain with low shelves, like a slate stone that does not split well. January 20, 1855

We cross the fields behind Hubbard‘s and suddenly slump into dry ditches concealed by the snow, up to the middle, and flounder out again. January 20, 1855

The snow still adheres conspicuously to the north west sides of the stems of the trees quite up to their summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that direction, — It would be about as good as a compass to steer by in a cloudy day or by night .January 20, 1855

There was a high wind last night, which relieved the trees of their burden almost entirely, but I may still see the drifts. January 20, 1855

You see where yesterday’s snowy billows have broken at last in the sun or by their own weight, their curling edges fallen and crumbled on the snow beneath. January 20, 1855

The pines and oaks in the deepest hollows in the woods still support some snow, but especially the low swamps are half filled with snow to the height of ten feet, resting on the bent underwood, as if affording covert to wolves. January 20, 1855

I see a large white oak perfectly bare. January 20, 1859

I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow in the yard — and some are large and bushlike — for its seeds, their well-filled granary now. January 20, 1853

There are a few tracks reaching from weed to weed, where some have run, but under the larger plants the snow is entirely trodden and blackened, proving that a large flock has been there and flown. January 20, 1853

It was good to look off over the great unspotted fields of snow, the walls and fences almost buried in it and hardly a turf or stake left bare for the starving crows to light on. January 20, 1852

There is no track nor mark to mar its purity be yond the single sled track, except where, once in half a mile, some traveller has stepped aside for a sleigh to pass. January 20, 1852

A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet. January 20, 1856

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. January 20, 1860

What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! January 20, 1860

No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. January 20, 1860

I see in various places on the ice and snow, this very warm and pleasant afternoon, a kind of mosquito perhaps, a feeble flyer, commonly resting on the ice. January 20, 1859

At R.W.E.'s red oak I see a gray squirrel, which has been looking after acorns there, run across the river. January 20, 1860

The half-inch snow of yesterday morning shows its tracks plainly. January 20, 1860

They are much larger and more like a rabbit's than I expected. January 20, 1860

The squirrel runs in an undulating manner, though it is a succession of low leaps of from two and a half to three feet. January 20, 1860

I see that what is probably the track of the same squirrel near by is sometimes in the horseshoe form, i. e., when its feet are all brought close together: the open side still forward. I must have often mistaken this for a rabbit. But is not the bottom of the rabbit's foot so hairy that I should never see these distinct marks or protuberances? January 20, 1860

This squirrel ran up a maple till he got to where the stem was but little bigger than his body, and then, getting behind the gray-barked stem, which was almost exactly the color of its body, it clasped it with its fore feet and there hung motionless with the end of its tail blowing in the wind. January 20, 1860

As I moved, it steadily edged round so as to keep the maples always between me and it, and I only saw its tail, the sides of its body projecting, and its little paws clasping the tree. January 20, 1860

It remained otherwise perfectly still as long as I was thereabouts, or five or ten minutes. January 20, 1860

There was a leafy nest in the tree. January 20, 1860

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual, and perching close by boldly; then, descending to the snow and ice, I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them.January 20, 1860

Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell. January 20, 1860

The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter. January 20, 1860

The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. January 20, 1860

Seeds are still left on the birches, which, after each new snow, are sprinkled over its surface, apparently to keep the birds supplied with food. January 20, 1855

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed,—johnswort and coarse grasses, -—whose oat-like seed-scales or hulls they have scattered about. It is surprising they did not sink deeper in the light snow. January 20, 1855

Often the impression is so faint that they seem to have been supported by their wings. January 20, 1855

Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). January 20, 1857

Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago. January 20, 1857

That museum of animal and vegetable life, a meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it. January 20, 1856

In one place close to the river, where the forget-me-not grows, that springy place under the bank just above the railroad bridge, the snow is quite melted and the bare ground and flattened weeds exposed for four or five feet. January 20, 1856

No sooner has Walden frozen thick enough to bear than the fishermen have got out their reels and minnows, for he who fishes a pond first in the season expects to succeed best. January 20, 1853

Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the former Esox fasciatus? January 20, 1859

There is no marked difference when I look at them on their sides. January 20, 1859

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence. January 20, 1857

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st. January 20, 1857

It is now good walking on the river, for, though there has been no thaw since the snow came, a great part of it has been converted into snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. January 20, 1856

The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter, but even when the snow lies very deep in the fields. January 20, 1856

It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and unpleasant track in the highways, the only practicable route. January 20, 1856

The snow never lies so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside being blown out of the river valley. January 20, 1856

Neither is it drifted here. Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter. January 20, 1856

Nut Meadow Brook is open in the river meadow, but not into the river. January 20, 1856

It is remarkable that the short strip in the middle below the Island yesterday should be the only open place between Hunt’s Bridge and Hubbard’s, at least, -—-probably as far as Lee’s. January 20, 1856

The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. January 20, 1856

It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time. January 20, 1856

Ere long it wears its way up to the light, and its blue artery again appears here and there. 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 20, 1856

The pines — mostly white — have at this season a warm brown or yellowish tinge, and the oaks— chiefly young white ones — are comparatively red. The black oak I see is more yellowish. January 20, 1855

You have these colors of the evergreens and oaks in winter for warmth and contrast with the snow. January 20, 1855

The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. January 20, 1859

Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun? January 20, 1859

I go shaking the river from side to side at each step, as I see by its motion at the few holes. January 20, 1859

But what a different aspect the river’s brim now from what it wears in summer! I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower. January 20, 1856

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only, perchance, a faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. January 20, 1855

What a singular element is this water! January 20, 1859

Ah, our indescribable winter sky, pure and continent and clear, between emerald and amber, such as summer never sees! January 20, 1853

What more beautiful or soothing to the eye than those finely divided or minced clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton-batting, now reaching up from the west above my head! January 20, 1853

Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends are curved like spray or wisps, January 20, 1853

All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint. January 20, 1853

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky and also at the neighboring wood so suddenly relieved of its snowy burden. January 20, 1855

Very musical and even sweet now, like a horn, is the hounding of a foxhound heard now in some distant wood, while I stand listening in some far solitary and silent field. January 20, 1855

How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields now converted into a soft, white, fleecy snow ice, It is like the beginning of the world. January 20, 1855

January 20, 2015

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

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

 See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

*****

January 20, 2018

*****

Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ("[Mr. Putnam] exhibited specimens of the young and adult pickerel, to show that the "short-nosed pickerel " is specifically distinct from the "long-nosed " — the Esox reticulatus — and said that the " short-nosed " species is the Esox fasciatus of Dekay, which is not the young of the Esox reticulates”)

Special to The New York Times.FEB. 22, 1904,BOSTON HARBOR FROZEN OVER. For First Times Since 1855 Ice Extends Mile from Shore

*****

January 20, 2018

*****

March 4, 1852 ("Now I take that walk along the river highway and the meadow. The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings.”).
March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. ”)

March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years.”)

April 6, 1858 (“I asked him to let me see the fish he had caught. It was a little pickerel five inches long, and appeared to me strange, being transversely barred, and reminded me of the Wrentham pond pickerel; but I could not remember surely whether this was the rule or the exception; but when I got home I found that this was the one which Storer does not name nor describe, but only had heard of. Is it not the brook pickerel?”)
April 18, 1858 ("I saw in those ditches many small pickerel, landlocked, which appeared to be transversely barred!”)
May 11, 1858 ("Thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line.”)
May 27, 1858 ("De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th.”);

June 24, 1852 ("What could a man learn by watching the clouds?")
July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather.")
August 31, 1859 (" Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds.")
. October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.")
October 17, 1856 ("I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge.")
October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.")
November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note")
November 21, 1852("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”);
December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")
December 3, 1856 ("they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.")
December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances. . . .The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")
December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button- bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time.")
December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”)
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. Paddled across it")
December 28, 1858 ("I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think.")
December 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), . . .and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter.")
January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer.")
January 6. 1858 ("I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow")
January 6, 1853 (Walden apparently froze over last night. . . .. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking.")
January 7, 1856 (“Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”)

January 8, 1854(" Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead ! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields")

.January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind . . .serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.")

.January 18, 1860 ("Several chickadees, uttering their faint notes, come flitting near to me as usual. They are busily prying under the bark of the pitch pines,")

January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden")

January 19, 1856 ("The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock.”)

January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)
January 19, 1860 (“It is evident mere shallowness is not enough to prevent freezing, for that shallowest space of all, in middle of river at Barrett's Bar, has been frozen ever since the winter began. It is the swifter though deeper, but not deep, channels on each side that remain open.”)

The green of the ice

begins to be visible

just before sunset.

January 20, 1859

January 21, 1853 ("I wish to hear the silence of the night, . . . A night in which the silence was audible.")
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.")

January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late.")

January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”)

January 26, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.")

January 27, 1860 ("What hieroglyphics in the winter sky!")

January 30, 1854 ("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day, and follows us along a considerable distance, flitting by our side on the button-bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the only, sociable bird we have.")

February 2, 1854 ("I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps")
February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...”)

February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer.")

January 20, 2015

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 19 <<<<<<<<   January 20  >>>>>>>>  January 21

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 20

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/hdt20jan