A Book of the Seasons: February 6 (thaw and cold, mist and glaze, tracks, measuring ice, blue shadows)

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

February 6

A mistiness makes

the woods look denser darker

and more imposing.

February 6, 1852

February 6, 2014

The weather has been very changeable for some weeks. First it is warm and thawing, sloshy weather; then the thermometer goes down to 19 ° below zero, and our shoes squeak on the snow. February 6, 1854

It is still thawy. February 6, 1852

The coldest morning this winter. February 6, 1855

At 4 P.M. the thermometer is at -10°; at six it is at -14°. February 6, 1855

At 9 o’clock P.M., thermometer at -16°. They say it did not rise above -6° to-day. February 6, 1855

It has been a very mild as well as open winter up to this. February 6, 1855

A rainy day. February 6, 1860

A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing. February 6, 1852

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly. February 6, 1852

There are no loiterers in the street, and the wheels of wood wagons squeak as they have not for a long time, —actually shriek. February 6, 1855

Frostwork keeps its place on the window within three feet of the stove all day in my chamber. February 6, 1855

The setting sun no sooner leaves our west windows than a solid but beautiful crystallization coats them. A solid sparkling field in the midst of each pane, with broad, flowing sheaves surrounding it. February 6, 1855

I was walking at five, and found it stinging cold. It stung the face. February 6, 1855

From the Cliff Hill the landscape looks very bleak. February 6, 1854

A cold, drifting wind sweeps from the north; the surface of the snow is imbricated on a great scale, being very regularly blown into waves, alike over the high road and the railroad, concealing the tracks and the meadow and the river and the pond. February 6, 1854

It is all one great wintry-looking snow-field, whose surface consists of great wave-like drifts, maybe twenty feet wide with an abrupt edge on the south. February 6, 1854

I see great shadows on the northeast sides of the mountains, forty miles off, the sun being in the southwest. February 6, 1854

I see the track of a rabbit about the Cliff; there are hollows in the snow on the tops of the rocks, shaped like a milk-pan and as large, where he has squatted or whirled round. February 6, 1854 

I also see the tracks of a few mice or moles. February 6, 1854

The squirrel, too, has been out. February 6, 1854

[Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. February 6, 1856

I saw a clamshell opened, and they say minks do not open them(?). February 6, 1856

Goodwin says that he has caught two crows this winter in his traps set in water for mink, and baited with fish. February 6, 1856

The crows, probably put to it for food and looking along the very few open brooks, attracted by this bait, got their feet into the traps. February 6, 1856

Rice tells me that there was a lark on his place in Sudbury about the 1st of January. February 6, 1857

One who has seen them tells me that a covey of thirteen quails daily visits Hayden's yard and barn, where he feeds them and can almost put his hands on them. February 6, 1857

Observed some buds on a young apple tree, partially unfolded at the extremity and apparently swollen. Probably blossom-buds. February 6, 1853

The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. February 6, 1856

Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black. February 6, 1854

Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden, Within three rods of where I cut on the 18th of January. February 6, 1856

The snow was about an inch deep only, so fast has it been converted into snow ice. February 6, 1856

I was obliged to make a hole about four feet, square in order to get out a cake, and with great care to approach the water evenly on all sides, so that I might have the less chopping to do after the water began to rush in, which would wet me through. February 6, 1856

It was surprising with what violence the water rushed in as soon as a hole was made, under the pressure of that body of ice. February 6, 1856

On the 18th of January the ice had been about seven inches thick here, about four being snow ice and, about three water ice. February 6, 1856

It was now 19 inches thick, 11 1/2 being snow ice and 7 1/2+ water ice. February 6, 1856

Supposing it an inch thick only here when the snow began to fall on it (for it began to fall almost immediately), it had increased since that time 6 1/2+ inches downward and 11 1/2— upward. February 6, 1856

Since the 18th of January, when there was ten inches of snow on it, it had increased about 4 1/2 downward and about 7 1/2 upward. February 6, 1856

I was not prepared to find that any ice had formed on the under side since the 18th. February 6, 1856

The water ice was very crystalline. February 6, 1856

This ice was thicker than the snow has been in open fields any time this winter, yet this winter has been remarkable for the abundance of snow. February 6, 1856

I was not prepared to find it thickest in the middle. Earlier in the winter, or on the 18th January, it was thickest near the shore. February 6, 1856

Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.   February 6, 1857

It is about a fifth or a sixth of an inch thick on the northeast sides of twigs, etc., not transparent, but of an opaque white, granular character.   February 6, 1857

The woods, especially wooded hillsides half a mile or more distant, have a rich, hoary, frosted look, still and stiff, yet it is not so thick but that the green of the pines and the yellow of the willow bark and the leather-color of oak leaves show through it. These colors are pleasantly toned down.   February 6, 1857

The pines transmit a subdued green, — some pitch pines a livelier grass green, — deepest in the recesses, and a delicate buff (?) tinge is seen through the frosty veil of the willow.   February 6, 1857

The birches, owing to the color of their trunks, are the most completely hoary.   February 6, 1857

The elms, perhaps, are the most distinctly frosted, revealing their whole outlines like ghosts of trees, even a mile off, when seen against a dark hillside.   February 6, 1857

The ground is encased in a thin black glaze (where it chances to be bare) and the iron rails and the telegraph wire.   February 6, 1857

Insignificant weeds and stubble along the railroad causeway and elsewhere are now made very conspicuous, both by their increased size and bristling stiffness and their whiteness.   February 6, 1857

Each wiry grass stem is become a stiff wand. The wind that begins to rise does not stir them you only hear a fine crackling sound when it blows hardest.  February 6, 1857

Behind each withered vegetable plant stands a stout ice plant, overlapping and concealing it. Stem answers to stem, and fruit to fruit.   February 6, 1857

The heads of tansy are converted into confectionery somewhat like sugared almonds and regularly roughened (like orange-peel), and those of evening-primrose, and mullein, and hardhack, and lespedeza bear a still coarser kind.   February 6, 1857

The wild carrot's bird's-nest umbel, now contracted above, is converted into almost a perfect hollow sphere, composed of contiguous thickened meridional ribs, which remind me of the fingers of a starfish (or five-finger).   February 6, 1857

Each plant preserves its character, though exaggerated.   February 6, 1857

Pigweed and Roman wormwood are ragged as ever on a larger scale, and the butterweed as stiffly upright.   February 6, 1857

Tall goldenrod still more recurved. You naturally avoid running against the plant which you did not notice before.   February 6, 1857

Standing on the southeast side, I see the fine dark cores which the stems make. On the opposite side, only the pure white ice plant is seen.   February 6, 1857

When I reach the woods I am surprised to find that the twigs, etc., are bristling with fine spicule, which stand on a thin glaze.  February 6, 1857

I do not remember to have seen them previous winters.   February 6, 1857

They are from one quarter to five eighths of an inch long by one twenty-fifth to one fiftieth of an inch wide at base and quite sharp, commonly on the storm side of the twig only and pointing in all directions horizontally and even vertically within an arc of 90°, but sometimes on opposite sides of the twig.   February 6, 1857

They answer exactly to prickles or spines, especially to those of the locust.   February 6, 1857

I observe them on the locust itself by chance, an icy spine at right angles on a vegetable one, making such a branch as is seen on some species.   February 6, 1857

There are often ten or twelve within an inch along the twigs, but they are most like thorns when fewer. All the twigs and weeds and leaves, even the pine-needles, are armed with them.   February 6, 1857

The pine-needles especially, beside their hoary glaze, are bristling with countless fine spiculae, which appear to point in almost all directions.   February 6, 1857

It is also interesting to meet with them by accident on the edges of oak leaves, answering exactly to the vegetable spines there (though they are commonly at right angles with the plane of the leaf and often almost as thick as a comb), and on pine cones, suggesting that there should be something in that soil especially favorable to promote the growth of spines.   February 6, 1857

As far as I observed, these spines were chiefly confined to the woods, — at least I had not noticed them on the causeway, — as if a fog might have collected in the former place but not in the last.
February 6, 1857

They were, then, built in the mist, by a more delicate accretion.  

February 6, 1857

Thus it seems that not leaves only but other forms of vegetation are imitated by frost.   February 6, 1857

Already the white pine plumes were drooping, but the pitch pines stood stiffly erect.  February 6, 1857

I was again struck by the deep open cup at the extremity of the latter, formed by the needles standing out very regularly around the red-brown buds at the bottom. February 6, 1857

It is very warm, and by ten o'clock this ice is rapidly falling from the trees and covering the ground like hail; and before noon all that jewelry was dissolved. February 6, 1857

Thermometer at noon 52°. February 6, 1857

Hear the old owl at 4:30 P. M. February 6, 1854

February 6, 2020

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

*****

April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of.")
May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.")

August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.")
September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day");

September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.")

November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.")
November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist.")

December 5, 1858 ("The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.")
December 5, 1858 ("The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms.")
December 6. 1856 ("I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy,")

December 6, 1858 ("Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze.")

December 12, 1852 ("The buds of the aspen are large and show wool in the fall.")
December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable.")

December 24, 1854 ("A slight glaze, the first of the winter. This gives the woods a hoary aspect and increases the stillness")

December 26, 1855 ("We have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had.")

December 26, 1855 ("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are")
December 27, 1859 ("Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.")

December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.")

January 3, 1869 ("Quails are very rare here")

January 2, 1856 ("Probably the coldest morning yet, our thermometer 6° below zero at 8 A.M.")

January 2, 1860 ("8 a.m. -15° below . . . the coldest thus far.");
January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever. . . . He speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow.")

January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.") 

January 5, 1860 ("I see where the quails have run along the roadside, and can count the number of the bevy better than if I saw them.")

January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day.")

January 10, 1854 ("The sportsmen chose the late thaw to go after quails . They come out at such times to pick the horse-dung in the roads, and can be traced thence to their haunts.")
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 11, 1855 ("The air so thick with snowflakes . . . Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon")

January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.") 

January 15, 1856 ("A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. ");

January 16, 1860 (" the hills eight or ten miles west are white, but the mountains thirty miles off are blue, though both may be equally white at the same distance")

January 17, 1856 ("Henry Shattuck tells me that the quails come almost every day and get some saba beans within two or three rods of his house,. . .Probably the deep snow drives them to it")

January 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue. This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low.")

January 18, 1856 ("I clear a little space in the snow, which is nine to ten inches deep over the deepest part of the pond, and cut through the ice, which is about seven inches thick.")

January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track . . .similar to a muskrat's only much larger.")

January 23, 1857 ("I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day”)

January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")
January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter")
January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . . it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”)

 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.")

February 2, 1855 (" In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl")

February 2, 1854 ("Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. ")

February 3, 1853 ("The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches.")

Floundering through snow,

up to my middle, my owl

sounds hoo hoo, ho-O.  

February 3, 1852

February 3, 1858 ("I do not see this year, and I do not know that I ever have seen, any unseasonable swelling of the buds of indigenous plants in mild winters. I think that herbaceous plants show less greenness than usual this winter, having been more exposed for want of a snowy covering")

February 4, 1854 ("See the tracks of a mink, in the shallow snow along the edge of the river, looking for a hole in the ice.")
February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

My shadow is a 

delicate or transparent 

blue rather than black.

February 6, 1854

February 7, 1855  ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")

February 7, 1856 ("Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees. This the first thawing, though slight, since the 25th of December.")

February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black.")

February 7, 1857 ("It seems in severe winters the quails venture out of the woods and join the poultry of the farmer's yard")

February 7, 1859 ("Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture ')

February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.”)
February 8, 1857 ("My diffuse and vaporous life becomes as the frost leaves and spiculae radiant as gems on the weeds and stubble in a winter morning. ")

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, 1861 ("Coldest day yet; –22 ° at least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day.")

February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy. The swift streams were open, and the muskrats were seen swimming and diving and bringing up clams, leaving their shells on the ice. We had now forgotten summer and autumn, but had already begun to anticipate spring.")
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. It suggests that there may be some thing divine, something celestial, in me.")

February 11, 1855 (“The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods.”

February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”)

February 11, 1858 ("11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter.")

February 16, 1856 ("Where I measured the ice in the middle of Walden on the 6th I now measure again, or close by it, though without cutting out the cake. I find about 11 1/4; (probably about same as the 6th, when called 11 1/2) of snow ice and 21 in all, leaving 10 1/4 clear ice, which would make the ice to have increased beneath through all this thickness and in spite of the thaws 2 3/4 inches.")

February 19, 1858 ("Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30.")

February 20, 1852 ("The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter.")

February 21, 1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. . . . I see what looks like a large lake of misty bluish water on the side of the further Peterboro mountain, its edges or shore very distinctly defined. This I conclude was the shadow of another part of the mountain.")

February 26, 1852 ("The "greenish straw-colored" Parmelia conspersa, a very handsome and memorable lichen.")

February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins.")

February 28, 1857 (“I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?). . . with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow. . . . (Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail?”)

March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.")
March 10, 1856 ("The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever.")

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, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick. . .. The clear ice has therefore gained 2 1/2 inches beneath since the 16th of February.")

March 12, 1856 ("The crow has been a common bird in our street and about our house the past winter.")

March 18, 1852 ("There is more rain than snow now falling, and the lichens, especially the Parmelia conspersa, appear to be full of fresh fruit, though they are nearly buried in snow.")

March 19, 1856 ( "In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now")

March 20, 1856 ("Perhaps these [Paludina decisa] make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs"); 

March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?")

March 25, 1856 ("The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches.")

March 28, 1856 ("Many crows have been caught in mink-traps the past winter, they have been compelled to visit the few openings in brooks for food.") 

March 30, 1856 ("It is just twenty-four inches thick in the middle.")

March 30, 1856 ("There are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw.")

February 6, 2017

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.

  April 7, 1853 

February 5 <<<<<<<<   February 6  >>>>>>>>  February 7

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 6 

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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A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky