The year is but 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
Sometimes I heard the foxes
as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights,
in search of a partridge or other game.
~ Walden
The scream of the jay
wholly without sentiment
a true winter sound.
The fox seems to get
his living by industry
and perseverance.
In the meanwhile
we hear the distant note
of a hooting owl.
February 2, 2016
The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter. February 2, 1854
6° below at about 8 a. m. Clock has stopped. February 2, 1860
The ice is about eighteen inches thick on Fair Haven. Saw some pickerel just caught there, with a fine lustre to them. February 2, 1854
It was a very arctic scene this cold day. February 2, 1860
With February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. February 2, 1860
Indeed, no part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now, though the snow was only some three inches deep on a level. February 2, 1860
It is cold and perfectly still, and you walk over a level snowy tract. February 2, 1860
I frequently see where oak leaves, absorbing the heat of the sun, have sunk into the ice an inch in depth and afterward been blown out, leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole and lobes sharply cut, with perfectly upright sides, so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it. February 2, 1860
Sometimes these moulds have been evenly filled with snow while the ice is dark, and you have the figure of the leaf in white. February 2, 1860
Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring. February 2, 1854
Another warm, melting day, like yesterday. You can see some softening and relenting in the sky. February 2, 1854
Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. We begin to say that the day is springlike. February 2, 1854
Still rains, after a rainy night with a little snow, forming slosh. February 2, 1858
The Cliff Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you hear the rush of melted snow down its side in one place. February 2, 1854
The snow-crust on all hills and knolls is now marked by the streams of water that have flowed down it . . . in alternate ridges and furrows from the tops of the hills to the bottoms. February 2, 1857
We stop awhile under Bittern Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm. February 2, 1854
There are a few greenish radical leaves to be seen, — primrose and johnswort, strawberry, etc., and spleenwort still green in the clefts. February 2, 1854
The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. February 2, 1853
The winter gnat is seen in the warm air. February 2, 1854
Snows again last night, perhaps an inch, erasing the old tracks and giving us a blank page again, restoring the purity of nature. February 2, 1856
The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue. February 2, 1854
About 3 p. m. I noticed a distinct fragment of rainbow, about as long as wide, on each side of the sun, one north and the other south and at the same height above the horizon with the sun, all in a line parallel with the horizon; and, as I thought, there was a slight appearance of a bow.
We walk, as usual, on the fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. February 2, 1860
He runs smelling for miles along the most favorable routes, especially the edge of rivers and ponds, until he smells the track of a mouse beneath the snow. February 2, 1854
Probably he has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. February 2, 1854
I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. February 2, 1854
And as we kindle a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we see the fox himself at the inlet of the river. February 2, 1860
He had a blackish tail and blackish feet. Looked lean and stood high. February 2, 1860
The fox seems to get his living by industry and perseverance. February 2, 1854
He was eagerly searching for food, intent on finding some mouse to help fill his empty stomach. February 2, 1860
I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years. February 2, 1854
I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. February 2, 1854
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 2, 1854
As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain. February 2, 1858
As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney's ground, and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drabbled and solitary in the rain. February 2, 1858
The water falling, the ice on the meadow occasionally settles with a crack under our weight. February 2, 1855
It is pleasant to feel these swells and valleys occasioned by the subsidence of the water, in some cases pretty abrupt. February 2, 1855
Also to hear the hollow, rumbling sound in such rolling places on the meadow where there is an empty chamber beneath, the water being entirely run out. February 2, 1855
Snowed again half an inch more in the evening, after which, at ten o'clock, the moon still obscured, I skate on the river and meadows. February 2, 1855
Our skates make but little sound in this coating of snow about an inch thick, as if we had on woolen skates, and we can easily see our tracks in the night. February 2, 1855
We seem thus to go faster than by day, not only because we do not see (but feel and imagine) our rapidity, but because of the impression which the mysterious muffled sound of our feet makes. February 2, 1855
Now and then we skate into some chippy, crackling white ice, where a superficial puddle had run dry before freezing hard, and get a tumble. February 2, 1855
Our skates make but little sound in this coating of snow about an inch thick, as if we had on woolen skates, and we can easily see our tracks in the night. February 2, 1855
We seem thus to go faster than by day, not only because we do not see (but feel and imagine) our rapidity, but because of the impression which the mysterious muffled sound of our feet makes. February 2, 1855
Now and then we skate into some chippy, crackling white ice, where a superficial puddle had run dry before freezing hard, and get a tumble. February 2, 1855
In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl. February 2, 1855
February 2, 2022
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker
.A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring
*****
November 8, 1853 ("The Stellaria media still blooms in Cheney’s garden,")
November 25, 1857 ("Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst")
December 24, 1856 ("Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes, one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path")
December 24, 1856 ("Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes, one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path")
January 7, 1854 (" I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, — a voice which we call the owl, — and yet so rarely see the bird. . . . It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.")
.January 8, 1860 ("After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike")
January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.”)
January 22, 1857 ("Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter.")
January 23, 1853 ("Rain, carrying off the snow and making slosh of the lower half of it. It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.")
January 28, 1857 (“Am again surprised to see a song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile in the yard, in the midst of snow in the yard.”)
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")
January 30, 1859 ("How peculiar the hooting of an owl! It is not shrill and sharp like the scream of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, waking the echoes of the wood.")
January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. . . .It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. .");
January 31, 1856 ("These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album.")
January 31, 1856 ("The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly.")
February 1, 1855 ("The river falling all day, no water has burst out through the ice next the shore, and it is now one uninterrupted level white blanket of snow quite to the shore on every side.")
February 1, 1856 ("The eaves have scarcely run at all. It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.")
February 3, 1852 (" The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. . . . The scenery is wholly arctic. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now. ")
February 3, 1852 (" I hear my old acquaintance, the owl, from the Causeway. . .Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle, my owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O")
February 3, 1856 ("Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest")
February 5, 1854 ("The tracks were about two inches long, or a little less, by one and a half wide, shaped thus where the snow was only half an inch deep on ice")
February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue .")
February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days?")
February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")
February 8, 1860 ("I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould.")
February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days?")
February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")
February 8, 1860 ("I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould.")
February 8, 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.")
February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike).")
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. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard")
February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. ")
February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike).")
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. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard")
February 8, 1860 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. ")
February 9, 1854 ("Is not January alone pure winter? February belongs to the spring; it is a snowy March")
February 9, 1854 ("The jays are more lively than usual")
February 9, 1854 ("There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. ")
February 9, 1854 ("And the brightness of the morning is increased tenfold by the sun reflected from broad sheets of rain and melted snow water. ")
February 9, 1854 ("The sun is reflected from a hundred rippling sluices of snow-water finding its level in the fields")
February 9, 1854 ("The voices of the school-children sound like spring.")
February 9, 1854 ("There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden.")
February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.")
February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods.")
February 9, 1854 ("The jays are more lively than usual")
February 9, 1854 ("There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. ")
February 9, 1854 ("And the brightness of the morning is increased tenfold by the sun reflected from broad sheets of rain and melted snow water. ")
February 9, 1854 ("The sun is reflected from a hundred rippling sluices of snow-water finding its level in the fields")
February 9, 1854 ("The voices of the school-children sound like spring.")
February 9, 1854 ("There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden.")
February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.")
February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods.")
February 11, 1854 ("Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip")
February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.”)
February 18, 1857 ("The air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles. Any sound uttered now would take that form, not of the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, but a softer, flowing, curling warble, like a purling stream or the lobes of flowing sand and clay. Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird.")
February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.")
February 26, 1851 ("See five red-wings and a song sparrow(?) this afternoon.”);
March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air")
February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.”)
February 18, 1857 ("The air over these fields is a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles. Any sound uttered now would take that form, not of the harsh, vibrating, rending scream of the jay, but a softer, flowing, curling warble, like a purling stream or the lobes of flowing sand and clay. Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird.")
February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.")
February 26, 1851 ("See five red-wings and a song sparrow(?) this afternoon.”);
March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the air")
March 2, 1859 (“We thus commonly antedate the spring more than any other season, for we look forward to it with more longing. We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet”)
March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock.")
March 3, 1860 ("The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.")
March 3, 1860 ("The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.")
March 5, 1860 ("Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.")
March 22, 1860 ("Stellaria media and shepherd's-purse bloom;")
March 22, 1860 ("Stellaria media and shepherd's-purse bloom;")
April 26, 1852 ("Chickweed (Stellaria media), naturalized, shows its humble star-like white flowers now")
February 2, 2022
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 1 <<<<<<<< February 2 >>>>>>>> February 3
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 2
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
tinyurl.com/HDT02fEB
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