A Book of the Seasons: February 9 (Midminter, Luminous air, Spring note of the chickadee, New warmth of the sun, Braided ripples of melting snow, Listening for the bluebird )

 

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 9

Though days are longer

cold sets in ever stronger.

It is midwinter.

February 9, 1851

Such warm sunlit air

as we are wont to hear the

first bluebird's warble.

February 9, 1854

February 9, 2019

How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way. February 9, 1856

Is not January alone pure winter?  February 9, 1854

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. February 9, 1851

We had now forgotten summer and autumn, but had already begun to anticipate spring. February 9, 1851

Some of these thaws succeed suddenly to intensely cold weather, and the sky that was tense like a bow that is bent is now relaxed. February 9, 1854

Now we do not think of autumn when we look on this snow. That earth is effectually buried. It is midwinter. February 9, 1851 

Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever. The rivers and meadows are frozen.  February 9, 1851

This is our month of the crusted snow. February 9, 1852

Now I travel across the fields on the frozen crust. and can walk across the river in most places. February 9, 1851

It is easier to get about the country than at any other season. February 9, 1851

December belongs to the fall; is a wintry November: February, to the spring; it is a snowy March. February 9, 1854

February 9, 2018

It snows finely all day, making about twice as much as we have had on the ground before this winter. February 9, 1855

A very fine and dry snow, about a foot deep on a level.  February 9, 1855 

The snow is so light and dry that it rises like spray or foam before the legs of the horses.  February 9, 1855

Half an inch of snow fell this forenoon, but now it has cleared up. February 9, 1856

Begins to snow at noon, and about one inch falls, whitening the ground. February 9, 1858 

I see a few squirrel-tracks, but no mice-tracks, for no night has intervened since the snow. February 9, 1856

Thermometer 30°. This and yesterday comparatively warm weather. February 9, 1856

A hoar frost on the ground this morning . . . was quite a novel sight. I had noticed some vapor in the air late last evening. February 9, 1860

There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning.  February 9, 1854

February 9, 2019

The sun is reflected from a hundred rippling sluices of snow-water finding its level in the fields.  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

There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden.  February 9, 1854

The jays are more lively than usual.  February 9, 1854

The chickadees flew to me, as if glad to see me. They are a peculiarly honest and sociable little bird . . . I heard one wiry phe-be. February 9, 1854

I hear a phoebe note from a chickadee. February 9, 1856

Tree sparrows, two or three only at once, come into the yard, the first I have distinguished this winter.  February 9, 1855

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

The prospect is a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations. February 9, 1852

The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.
February 9, 1852

A man goes to the end of his garden, inverts his head, and does not know his own cottage. The novelty is in us, and it is also in nature.
February 9, 1852

The voices of the school-children sound like spring.  February 9, 1854

February 9, 2022

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring:

The Spring Note of the Chickadee

The New Warmth of the Sun 

A Change in the Air

 Braided ripples of melting snow

Listening for the Bluebird 

February 9, 2020

December 1, 1853 ("They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")
December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face.")
January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.")
January 13, 1859 ("A very remarkable sort of hoar frost, the crystallized fog, which is still increasing, an inch deep on many trees, and gets to be much more,. . . It is quite rare here, at least on this scale. ")

January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.")

January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late.")

January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”)

January 25, 1855 ("For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.) 
January 30, 1860 ("he 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 30, 1854 ("A little flock of chickadees flies to us, utters their lively day day day and follows us along a considerable distance ")
February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.")
February 5, 1852 ("The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night.”);

February 7, 1857 ("It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm.")
February 7, 1857 ("The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist or smoke, apparently owing to the color of the ice. ")

February 8, 1857 (".the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.")
February 8, 1852 ("In this winter often no apparent difference between rivers, ponds, and fields.")
February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike).")

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 ("There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season.")

February 10, 1855 ("I hear the faint metallic chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to time.")

February 10, 1860 ("No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice")

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, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”)

February 12, 1856 ("How different the sunlight over thawing snow from the same over dry, frozen snow! The former excites me strangely, and I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts.")

February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer.")
February 18, 1857 ("I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird”)
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, I feel the warmer sun of the season reflected from the withered grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hollow.")
February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.")
February 24, 1857 ("I think it is time to hear its phebe note, and that instant it pipes it forth.")
February 27, 1861 ("It occurs to me that I have just heard a bluebird")
March 1, 1854 (" I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood.")

March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.")

February 9, 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.

  April 7, 1853 

February 8 <<<<<<<<   February 9  >>>>>>>>  February 10

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 9

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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