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
This cold afternoon
I inhale the clear bright air –
the sky undimmed blue.
crowded thoughts under a clear blue sky
the spaceship cloud drifts by
unnoticed
February 16, 2019
This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. The sky is a much fairer and undimmed blue than usual. February 16, 1852
The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes. February 16, 1852
I see the steam-like snow-dust curling up and careering along over the fields. As I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west, lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind. February 16, 1852
For the last month the weather has been remarkably changeable; hardly three days together alike. February 16, 1854
By this time in the winter I do not look for those clear, sparkling mornings and delicate leaf frosts, which, methinks, occur earlier in the winter, as if the air of winter was somewhat tarnished and debauched, — had lost its virgin purity. February 16, 1854
Snows again this morning. February 16, 1854
That is an era not yet arrived, when the earth, being partially thawed, melts the slight snows which fall on it February 16, 1854
A thick fog without rain. February 16, 1855
The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond. February 16, 1855
Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. February 16, 1855
In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. February 16, 1855
Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak. February 16, 1855
It has been trying to snow for two days. About one inch fell last night, but it clears up at noon, and sun comes out very warm and bright. February 16, 1856
It is the warmest day at 12 M. since the 22d of December, when the thermometer stood at 50°. To-day it is at 44. February 16, 1856
I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. February 16, 1856
I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. February 16, 1856
The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance. February 16, 1856
A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58. February 16, 1857
A snow-storm, which began in the night, - and is now three or four inches deep. The ground, which was more than half bare before, is thus suddenly concealed, and the snow lodges on the trees and fences and sides of houses, and we have a perfect wintry scene again. February 16, 1860
I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. February 16, 1860
The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it. February 16, 1860
This snow, as I have often noticed before, is composed of stars and other crystals with a very fine cotton intermixed. It lodges and rests softly on the horizontal limbs of oaks and pines. . February 16, 1860
In fact, this crystalline snow lies up so light and downy that it evidently admits more light than usual, and the surface is more white and glowing for it. It is semitransparent. February 16, 1860
Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold. February 16, 1860
The ground is more than half bare, especially in open fields and level evergreen woods. February 16, 1855
It is pleasant to see there the bright evergreens of the forest floor, undimmed by the snow, — the Wintergreen, the great leaved pyrola, the shin-leaf, the rattlesnake-plantain, and the lycopodiums. February 16, 1855
It is pleasant to see elsewhere, in fields and on banks, so many green radical leaves only half killed by the winter. February 16, 1855
The drooping oak leaves show more red amid the pines this wet day, - agreeably so, — and I feel as if I stood a little nearer to the heart of nature. February 16, 1855
I see where probably rabbits have nibbled off the leaves of the Wintergreen. February 16, 1855
I find in the leavings of the partridges numerous ends of twigs. They are white with them, some half an inch long and stout in proportion.February 16, 1855
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| February 17, 2013. |
What a hardy bird, born amid the dry leaves, of the same color with them, that, grown up, lodges in the snow and lives on buds and twigs! February 16, 1855
From the entrance of the Mill road I look back through the sun, this soft afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny Dugan’s. February 16, 1859
Their flattish boughs rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth so far beneath. February 16, 1859
They are like a flaky crust of the earth, a more ethereal, terebinthine, evergreen earth. February 16, 1859
It occurs to me that my eyes rest on them with the same pleasure as do those of the hen-hawk which has been nestled in them. February 16, 1859
It occurs to me that my eyes rest on them with the same pleasure as do those of the hen-hawk which has been nestled in them. February 16, 1859
See two large hawks circling over the woods by Walden, hunting, — the first I have seen since December 15th.February 16, 1854
The hen-hawk and the pine are friends. February 16, 1859
The same thing which keeps the hen-hawk in the woods, away from the cities, keeps me here. February 16, 1859
That bird settles with confidence on a white pine top and not upon your weathercock. That bird will not be poultry of yours, lays no eggs for you, forever hides its nest. Though willed, or wild, it is not willful in its wildness. February 16, 1859
The unsympathizing man regards the wildness of some animals, their strangeness to him, as a sin; as if all their virtue consisted in their tamableness. He has always a charge in his gun ready for their extermination. February 16, 1859
What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own. February 16, 1859
The hen-hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly shelter and support of the pine. It will not consent to walk in the barn-yard, but it loves to soar above the clouds. February 16, 1859
It has its own way and is beautiful, when we would fain subject it to our will. February 16, 1859
So any surpassing work of art is strange and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. February 16, 1859
No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted or above persecution February 16, 1859
Genius has evanescent boundaries, February 16, 1857
February 16, 2021
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The eaves begin to run
February 16, 2021
*****
January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! ")
January 31, 1854 ("Many tracks of partridges there along the meadow-side in the maples, and their droppings where they appear to have spent the night about the roots and between the stems of trees. ")
February 3, 1855 (" . . .alive with flowing streams of snow, in form like the steam which curls along a river’s surface at sunrise.”)
February, 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.")
February 5, 1855 (“the fine snow, blowing over the meadow in parallel streams between which the darker ice was seen, looked just like the steam curling along the surface of a river.”)
February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm.")
February 8, 1860 ("A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical.")
February 8, 1860 (40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter.")
February 9, 1852; ("The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature. The mirage is constant . . . a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations.")
February 9, 1855 ("The snow is so light and dry that it rises like spray or foam before the legs of the horses.")
February 10, 1852 (“We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. . . .. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.”)
Minus ten degrees.
A blue atmosphere tinges
the distant pine woods.
February 11, 1855
February 11, 1856 (". I thought it would be a thawing day by the sound, the peculiar sound, of cock-crowing in the morning.")
February 12, 1855 ("The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance.")
February 12, 1854 ("To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed.")
February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”)
February 12, 1855 ("Last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out.")
February 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°")
February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds")
February 13, 1855 ("I see where many have dived into the snow. . .and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole.")
February 14, 1855 ("There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails. . . These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like.")
February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°.")
February 14, 1854(" The distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds. ")
February 15, 1859 ("The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish.")
February 17, 1856 ("At noon begins to snow again, as well as blow. Several more inches fall.")
February 17, 1852 ("Perhaps the peculiarity of those western vistas was partly owing to the shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life").
February 17, 1860 ("Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. . . . thermometer 14º")
February 18, 1852 ("I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard.")
February 23, 1854 (“The fine snow drives along over the field like steam curling from a roof, forming architectural drifts. ”)
February 23, 1856 ("There is a slight mist above the fields, through which the crowing of cocks sounds springlike.") February 23, 1860 ("We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December (which was remarkably warm).")
February 24, 1852 (" I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow.")
February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”)
February 24, 1857 ("I walk without a greatcoat.")
May 11, 1854 (“The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.”)
May 31, 1853 ("The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations.")
June 13, 1853 ("I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens. It was worth more to see them soar, especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs, but not to buy hen-hawks")
February 16, 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.
February 15 <<<<<<<< February 16 >>>>>>>> February 17
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 16
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
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