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
Snow on the mountains
now a silver rim to this
basin of the world.
Chickadee passes
the news through all the forest –
spring is approaching.
 |
| FEBRUARY 21, 2020 |
The snow has just ceased falling — about two inches deep, in the woods, upon the old and on bare ground. February 21, 1854
There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness. February 21, 1854
The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green. February 21, 1854
We now notice the snow on the mountains, because on the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness contrasts with the russet and darker hues of our bare fields. February 21, 1855
I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them . . . A silver edging to this basin of the world. February 21, 1855
Thermometer forty-six and snow rapidly melting. It melts first and fastest where the snow is so thin that it feels the heat reflected from the ground beneath. February 21, 1860
I see now, in the ruts in sand on hills in the road, those interesting ripples which I only notice to advantage in very shallow running water, a phenomenon almost, as it were, confined to melted snow running in ruts in the road in a thaw, especially in the spring. February 21, 1860
When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. February 21, 1860
When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these . . .
When I perceive this dryness under my feet . . .
I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. February 21, 1855
It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. February 21, 1855
The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along. February 21, 1855
I see now, in the ruts in sand on hills in the road, those interesting ripples which I only notice to advantage in very shallow running water, a phenomenon almost, as it were, confined to melted snow running in ruts in the road in a thaw, especially in the spring. February 21, 1860
When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. February 21, 1860
When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these . . .
When I perceive this dryness under my feet . . .
I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that her halls are being swept and prepared for a new occupant. February 21, 1855
It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. February 21, 1855
The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along. February 21, 1855
I see the peculiar softened blue sky of spring over the tops of the pines, and, when I am sheltered from the wind, February 21, 1855
I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow. February 21, 1855
Can it be true, as is said, that geese have gone over Boston, probably yesterday? It is in the newspapers. February 21, 1855
Am surprised to see this afternoon a boy collecting red maple sap from some trees behind George Hubbard's. February 21, 1857
The river for some days has been open and its sap visibly flowing, like the maple. February 21, 1857
A week or two ago I brought home a handsome pitch pine cone which had freshly fallen and was closed perfectly tight. It was put into a table drawer. To-day I am agreeably surprised to find that it has there dried and opened with perfect regularity, filling the drawer, and from a solid, narrow, and sharp cone, has become a broad, rounded, open one, -- has, in fact, expanded with the regularity of a flower's petals into a conical flower of rigid scales, and has shed a remarkable quantity of delicate-winged seeds. Each scale, which is very elaborately and perfectly constructed, is armed with a short spine, pointing downward, as if to protect its seed from squirrels and birds. That hard closed cone, which defied all violent attempts to open it has thus yielded to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. February 27, 1853
The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season. February 27, 1853
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring
*****
December 21, 1852 ("You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.")
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.”)
February 16, 1856 ("I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts.")
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.”)
February 16, 1856 ("I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts.")
February 17, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats, and even boats.")
February 18, 1857 ("I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night.")
February 19, 1852 ("The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring. ")February 18, 1857 ("I hear that geese went over Cambridge last night.")
February 20, 1855 ("I see from my window the bright blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow.")
February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring. . . .. I have seen the clear sap trickling from the red maple.")
February 27, 1852 ("If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope ?"
March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes .")
March 8, 1853 ("The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike.")
March 9, 1859 ("A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too.")
February 27, 1852 ("If rivers come out of their icy prison thus bright and immortal, shall not I too resume my spring life with joy and hope ?"
March 3, 1857 ("The red maple sap, which I first noticed the 21st of February, is now frozen up in the auger-holes .")
March 8, 1853 ("The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike.")
March 9, 1859 ("A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too.")
April 4, 1852 ("I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, . . .probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea.")
April 4, 1855 ("In the northwestern horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.")
April 4, 1855 ("In the northwestern horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun.")
February 21, 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.
February 20 <<<<< February 21 >>>>> February 22
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 21
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
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