Sunday, January 23, 2022

A Book of the Seasons: January 23 (the coldest day, the increased length of the days. the new moon and the evening star)

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 23

How vain to write on 
the seasons unless you have
the seasons in you.

Walking on the ice
by the side of the river
I recommence life.

January 23, 2015
Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°)
January 23, 1857

The coldest day that I remember recording . . . I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day .January 23, 1857

What is a winter unless you have risen and gone abroad frequently before sunrise and by starlight? January 23, 1854

The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village. One is now walking about and pecking the dung in the street in front of Frank Monroe's. January 23, 1852

There is a cold northwest wind, and I notice that the snow-fleas which were so abundant on this water yesterday have hopped to some lee, i. e., are collected like powder under the southeast side of posts or trees or sticks or ridges in the ice. January 23, 1859

You are surprised to see that they manage to get out of the wind. January 23, 1859

On the southeast side of every such barrier along the shore there is a dark line or heap of them. January 23, 1859

Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I see many minnows. January 23, 1860.

Each pleasant morning like this all creatures recommence life with new resolutions, — even these minnows, methinks. January 23, 1860

The pickerel of Walden!. . .I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were a fabulous fish, . . . handsome as flowers and gems, golden and emerald, — a transcendent and dazzling beauty. . . they have, if possible, to my eye, yet rarer colors, like precious stone
s. January 23, 1853

It is surprising that . . . in this deep and capacious spring, . . . this great gold and emerald fish swims. January 23, 1853

Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side,. . . like the cracking of crockery. January 23, 1858

It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. . . . as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. January 23, 1858

I go near enough to Flint's Pond, about 4 P. M., to hear it thundering. In summer I should not have suspected its presence an eighth of a mile off through the woods, but in such a winter day as this it speaks and betrays itself. January 23, 1858

There was a white birch scale yesterday on the snowed-up hole which I made in the very middle of Walden. I have no doubt they blow across the widest part of the pond. Journal, January 23, 1856

I see where the squirrels have torn the pine cones in pieces to come at their seeds. January 23, 1852

And in some cases the mice have nibbled the buds of the pitch pines, where the plumes have been bent down by the snow. January 23, 1852

What a smothered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the bark of the fox! January 23, 1858

I see the terminal shield fern very fresh, as an evergreen, at Saw Mill Brook, and (I think it is) the marginal fern and Lycopodium lucidulum. January 23, 1858

Going over the Hosmer pasture this side Clamshell southwestward, I. . . was surprised to find that it was the light reflected from the withered grass stems . . .a remarkable instance of the November, or rather winter, light reflected from twigs and stubble. January 23, 1859

Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on the south side, I see several small water-bugs (Gyrinus) swimming about, as in the spring. January 23, 1858

I see one of those glow-worm like creatures frozen in, sticking up perpendicular, half above the ice. January 23, 1859

A fine afternoon. 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

Rain, carrying off the snow and making slosh of the lower half of it. It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have., January 23, 1853

When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe January 23, 1860

The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather continues. . . . I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time. January 23, 1858

The freshet is now frozen over, but not thick enough to bear without cracking, January 23, 1859

I go up [Saw Mill] brook, walking on it most of the way, surprised to find that it will bear me January 23, 1858

It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have. January 23, 1853

I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for Nature. If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify? January 23, 1858

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you. ~ January 23, 1858

To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one. January 23, 1858

I do not quite like to see so much bare ground in midwinter. January 23, 1855

The earth being generally bare, I notice on the ice where it slopes up eastward a little, a distinct rosy light (or pink) reflected from it generally, half an hour before sunset. January 23, 1859

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

And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene. January 23, 1852

January 23, 2017


*****
During the coldest month of the 19th century, January, 1857, the 23rd ranks as the coldest day. The temperature in Burlington was minus 30 to start the morning, and reached a high of minus 17. (Weather Journal by Mark Breen)
*****
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
*****

Walden (" Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.")
Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should . . . The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.”)
April 8, 1861 ("The pitch pines have been much gnawed or barked this snowy winter. . . .It is probably the white-footed mouse.")
April 23, 1857 ("All nature is my bride.")
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.”)
May 20, 1858 ("I heard the old fox bark, a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound.")
May 23, 1853 ("Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.“)
June 22, 1851 (“My pulse must beat with Nature”)
July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”)
July 1845 ("There are scores of pitch pines in my field, from one to three inches in diameter, girdled by the mice last winter. A Norwegian winter it was for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they had to mix much pine meal with their usual diet.")
August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood.”)
August 8, 1851 ("The moon has not yet quite filled her horns. . . . One star, too, — is it Venus ? — I see in the west.")
August 23, 1853 ("For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.”)
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.”)
October 28, 1852 ("That star which accompanies the moon will not be her companion tomorrow.” )
November 2, 1857 ("It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections.")
November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.")
November 18, 1857 (“Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.") 
December 1, 1856 ("I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow . . . I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.”)
December 4, 1854 (" Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.")
December 16, 1853 (" Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature.”)
December 18, 1852 (". The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds. ")
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. ")
December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . .and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.")
December 25, 1853 ("About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun.")
December 26, 1853 ("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 27, 1853 ("The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food. I saw them yesterday")
December 27, 1851 ("Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight")
December 28, 1859 ("Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather.")
December 28, 1858 ("The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is")
December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.")
January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer.")
January 4, 1858 ("It is surprising how much sunny light a little straw that survives the winter will reflect. ")
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 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 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the tree")
January 7, 1856 (" I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it")
January 8, 1860 ("You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season.")
January 8,1855 ("It is now a clear warm and sunny day. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing.")
January 8, 1860 ("There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated . . .they look like white stepping-stones");
January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day.")
January 10, 1856 ("The weather has considerably moderated; - 2° at breakfast time (it was — 8° at seven last evening); but this has been the coldest night probably.")
January 10, 1859 ("Cold weather at last; -8° this forenoon. This is much the coldest afternoon to bear as yet, . . .-— four or five below at 3 P. M")
January 10, 1859 (" Standing thus on one side of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. This gradually deepens to purple and violet in some places, and the pink is very distinct, . . . This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.")
January 11, 1859 ("At 6 A. M. -22° and how much more I know not, ours having gone into the bulb")
January 12, 1854 (“hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”);
January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")
January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer . . . It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs.")
January 14, 1856 ("The crows are flitting about the houses and alight upon the elms")
January 17, 1860 ("In the spring-hole ditches of the Close I see many little water-bugs (Gyrinus) gyrating")
January 19, 1859 ("I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening.")
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 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.")
January 21, 1859 ('It is the worst or wettest of walking.")
January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”)
January 22, 1860 (" Crows come about houses and streets in very cold weather and deep snows, and they are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow.")
January 22, 1856 ("At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead. I count the cores of thirty-four cones on the snow there, and that is not all.")
January 22, 1859 ("It is about half an inch long by one eleventh of an inch wide, dusky reddish brown above, lighter beneath, with a small black flattish head and about four short antennae, six legs under the forward part of the body, which last consists of twelve ring-like segments. There is one row of minute light-colored dots down the middle of the back,")



January 24, 1852 ("And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night")
January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”)
January 24, 1858 ("The river is broadly open, as usual this winter. . . . What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude?")
January 25, 1855 ("For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.)
January 25, 1857 ("I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,")
January 25, 1853("I noticed on a small pitch pine, in the axils close to the main stem, little spherical bunches of buds,")
January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves")
January 25, 1856 ("The hardest day to bear that we have had, for, beside being 5° at noon and at 4 P. M., there is a strong northwest wind. It is worse than when the thermometer was at zero all day. ")/
January 26, 1857 ("Another cold morning. None looked early, but about eight it was -14°")
January 26, 1853 ("There are from time to time mornings. . .when especially the world seems to begin anew,")
January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed. . .and the sun-sparkles where the river is open are very cheerful to behold.")
January 29, 1853 ("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon")
January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”)
January 31, 1854 ("We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression.”)
January 31, 1859 ("The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . .Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky.")
February 1, 1856 ("The crows have been remarkably bold, coming to eat the scraps cast out behind the houses. They alight in our yard.")
February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west. Venus is now like a little moon in the west,")
February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.")
February 7, 1857 ("Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before")February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the low snow-patches.")
February 12, 1854 (" I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. . . . I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens")
March 1, 1858 ("We have just had a winter with absolutely no sleighing")
March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")
March 10, 1856 ("The pinched crows are feeding in the road to-day in front of the house and alighting on the elms, and blue jays also, as in the middle of the hardest winter, for such is this weather")
March 11, 1861 ("C. observes where mice (?) have gnawed the pitch pines the past winter. Is not this a phenomenon of a winter of deep snow only? as that when I lived at Walden, a hard winter for them. I do not commonly observe it on a large scale.")
March 12, 1856 ("The crow has been a common bird in our street and about our house the past winter.")

January 23, 2020

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.

January 22  <<<<<<<<      January 23  >>>>>>>>  January 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 23 
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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT23Jan


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