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
Cold unvaried snow
now stretching mile after mile–
and no place to sit.
The sky appears broader now than it did. The day has opened its eyelids wider. The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring. February 19, 1852
Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts about the walls and fences, and, beneath the snow, the frozen ground, . . . but man remains and walks over the frozen snow-crust and over the stiffened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. February 19, 1852
There is no home for you now, in this freezing wind, but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer. You steer straight across the fields to that in season. February 19, 1852
I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer and gathered flowers and rested on the grass by the brook-side in the shade, now no grass nor flowers, no brook nor shade, but cold, unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit. February 19, 1852
The strains from my muse are as rare nowadays, or of late years, as the notes of birds in the winter, — the faintest occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the woodpecker kind or the harsh jay or crow. It never melts into a song. Only the day-day-day of an inquisitive titmouse. February 19, 1852
I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. February 19, 1854
The large moths apparently love the neighborhood of water, and are wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of the meadow and river, places more or less inaccessible, to men at least. February 19, 1854
The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully . . . are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on. February 19, 1854
The light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them so artfully . . . are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on. February 19, 1854
Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, — the maple, for instance, — there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this disguise. February 19, 1854
Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. February 19, 1854
Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world? February 19, 1854
Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. February 19, 1855
The water is about a foot deep on the Jimmy Miles road . . . The only way for Conant to come to town when the water is highest is by Tarbell’s and Wood’s on the stone bridge, about a mile and a half round. February 19, 1855
It is true when there is no snow we cannot so easily see the birds, nor they the weeds. February 19, 1855
Cloudy and somewhat rainy, the thermometer at last fallen to thirty-two and thirty-three degrees. February 19, 1857
Why do water and snow take just this form? February 19, 1857
Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather. February 19, 1857
At evening it begins to snow. February 19, 1857
Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30. February 19, 1858
The snow has been deeper since the 17th than before this winter. I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level. February 19, 1856
Snow maybe near a foot deep, and now drifting. February 19, 1860
A fine display of the northern lights after 10 p. m., flashing up from all parts of the horizon to the zenith . . . as if it were the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist which undulated in the wind in the upper atmosphere. February 19, 1852
February 19, 2023
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, To Know Nature's Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring
*****
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 19
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/HDT-19Feb
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