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
The storm is over.
Trackless snow covers the fields
and the air is still.
A narrow white line
of snow on the storm side of
every exposed tree.
December 22, 2017
December 23, 2016
The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day. December 23, 1859
Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm. December 23, 1850
This morning, when I woke, I found it snowing, the snow fine and driving almost horizontally, as if it had set in for a long storm, but a little after noon it ceased snowing and began to clear up, and I set forth for a walk. December 23, 1851
The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon. December 23, 1845
Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only. December 23, 1850
The Great Meadows are more than half covered with ice, and now I see that there was a very slight fall of snow last night. It is only betrayed here, having covered the ice about an eighth of an inch thick, except where there are cracks running quite across the meadow, where the water has oozed a foot or two each way and dissolved the snow, making conspicuous dark lines. December 23, 1859
In this slight snow I am surprised to see countless tracks of small birds, which have run over it in every direction from one end to the other of this great meadow since morning.December 23, 1859
By the length of the hind toe I know them to be snow buntings. December 23, 1859
Indeed, soon after I see them running still on one side of the meadow. December 23, 1859
The birds have run here chiefly, visiting each little collection or tuft of stubble, and found their food chiefly in and about this thin stubble. December 23, 1859
I examined such places a long time and very carefully, but I could not find there the seed of any plant whatever.. . . All that I could find was pretty often (in some places very often) a little black, or else a brown, spider (sometimes quite a large one) motionless on the snow or ice.December 23, 1859
If they are so common at the extreme north, where there is so little vegetation but perhaps a great many spiders, is it not likely that they feed on these insects? December 23, 1859
It is interesting to see how busy this flock is, exploring this great meadow to-day. December 23, 1859
If it were not for this slight snow, revealing their tracks but hardly at all concealing the stubble, I should not suspect it, though I might see them at their work. December 23, 1859
Now I see them running briskly over the ice, most commonly near the shore, where there is most stubble (though very little); and they explore the ground so fast that they are continually changing their ground, and if I do not keep my eye on them I lose the direction. December 23, 1859
Then here they come, with a stiff rip of their wings as they suddenly wheel, and those peculiar rippling notes, flying low quite across the meadow, half a mile even, to explore the other side, though that too is already tracked by them. Not the fisher nor skater range the meadow a thousandth part so much in a week as these birds in a day. They hardly notice me as they come on. Indeed, the flock, flying about as high as my head, divides, and half passes on each side of me. Thus they sport over these broad meadows of ice this pleasant winter day. The spiders lie torpid and plain to see on the snow, and if it is they that they are after they never know what kills them. December 23, 1859
You notice the long and slender light-brown or grayish downy racemes of the clethra seeds about the edges of ponds and pond-holes. The pods contain many very minute chaffy-looking seeds. December 23, 1859
You find in the cluster of the sweet-fern fruit now one or two rather large flattish conical hard-shelled seeds with a small meat. December 23, 1859
The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds. They are hard and abundant. December 23, 1859
That large juncus (paradoxus-like ?) of the river meadows — long white-tailed seed — just rising above the ice is full of seed now, glossy, pale-brown, white-tailed, chaffy to look at. December 23, 1859
The wool-grass wool is at least half gone, and its minute almost white [ ? ] seed or achenium in it; but a little is left, not more than the thirtieth of an inch long. It looks too minute and involved in the wool for a snow bunting to eat. The above plants are all now more or less recurved, bent by the cold and the blasts of autumn. December 23, 1859
The now bare or empty heads of the liatris look somewhat like dusky daisies surmounted by a little button instead of a disk. The last, a stiff, round, parchment-like skin, the base on which its flowerets stood, is pierced by many little round holes just like the end of a thimble, where the cavities are worn through, and it is convex like that. It readily scales off and you can look through it. December 23, 1859
There is not much passing on railroads. The engineer says it is three feet deep above. December 23, 1850
There is no track on the Walden road. A traveller might cross it in the woods and not be sure it was a road. December 23, 1850
At a distance the oak woods look very venerable. December 23, 1851
I noticed on the 18th that the plumes of the pine which had been covered with snow and glaze and were then thawed and wet with the mist and rain were very much contracted or narrowed, — and this gave a peculiar and more open character to the tree. December 23, 1859
A fine, hale, wintry aspect things wear, and the pines, all snowed up, even suggest comfort. December 23, 1851
Where boughs cross each other much snow is caught, which now in all woods is gradually tumbling down. December 23, 1851
The needles of the pines are drooping like cockerels' feathers after a rain, and frozen together by the sleety snow. December 23, 1850
The pitch pines now bear their snowy fruit. December 23, 1850
I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare. December 23, 1850
Even the surface of the snow is wont to be in waves like billows of the ocean. December 23, 1850
The snow which we have had for the last week or ten days has been remarkably light and dry. December 23, 1851
It is pleasant walking in the woods now, when the sun is just coming out and shining on the woods freshly covered with snow. December 23, 1851
By half past three the sun is fairly out. December 23, 1851
From a low arch the clear sky has rapidly spread eastward over the whole heavens, and the sun shines serenely, and the air is still, and the spotless snow covers the fields. December 23, 1851
The snow-storm is over, the clouds have departed, the sun shines serenely, the air is still, a pure and trackless white napkin covers the ground, and a fair evening is coming to conclude all. December 23, 1851
I go to the Cliffs. There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree. December 23, 1851
I have loitered so long on the meadow that before I get to Ball's Hill those patches of bare ice (where water has oozed out and frozen) already reflect a green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour. December 23, 1859
Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy light, the sun having reached the grosser atmosphere of the earth. December 23, 1859
These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. December 23, 1859
You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. December 23, 1859
Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home; or perhaps he leaves them to freeze in. December 23, 1859
In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light. December 23, 1859
I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it. December 23, 1851
Already a few clouds are glowing like a golden sierra just above the horizon. December 23, 1851
Already a few clouds are glowing like a golden sierra just above the horizon. December 23, 1851
Gradually the sun sinks, the air grows more dusky, and I perceive that if it were not for the light reflected from the snow it would be quite dark. December 23, 1851
The woodchopper has started for home. December 23, 1851
I can no longer distinguish the color of the red oak leaves against the snow, but they appear black. The partridges have come forth to bud on the apple trees. December 23, 1851
Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. December 23, 1851
Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. December 23, 1851
I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon. December 23, 1851
December 23, 2021
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spiders on Ice
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified
*****
December 23, 2016
December 23, 2021
June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.")
June 15, 1852 ("The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. ")
July 27, 1852 ("All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle. The solemnity of the evening sky! Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered.”)
August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon, — to behold and commune with something grander than man.”)
November 24, 1858 ("I can not only distinguish plowed fields — regular white squares in the midst of russet — but even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long, as I look across to Conantum.")
November 29, 1859 (" Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly.")
December 9, 1856 ("I hear only the strokes of a lingering woodchopper at a distance, and the melodious hooting of an owl, which is as common and marked a sound as the axe or the locomotive whistle.")
December 10, 1854 ("See a large flock of snow buntings (quite white against woods) ")
December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over.")
December 12, 1858 (" Crossing the fields . . .I see an immense flock of snow buntings.")
.December 12, 1859 ("There is a certain Irish woodchopper who, when I come across him at his work in the woods in the winter, never fails to ask me what time it is, as if he were in haste to take his dinner-pail and go home. This is not as it should be")
December 12, 1859 ("As I talked with the woodchopper who had just cleared the top of Emerson's I got a new view of the mountains over his pile of wood in the foreground")
December 12, 1859 ("Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his.")
December 14, 1852 ("Ah, what isles those western clouds! in what a sea! Just after sunset there is a broad pillar of light for many minutes in the west.")
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”)\
December 15, 1856 (“the last strokes of the woodchopper, who presently bends his steps homeward; ”)
December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.")
December 17, 1851 ("The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches.")
December 18, 1853 ("The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky.")
December 19, 1851 ("In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper's axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year, men having come out for fuel to the forests, as if men had stolen forth in the arctic night to get fuel to keep their fires a-going.")
December 20, 1854 ("The woodchoppers are making haste to their work far off, walking fast to keep warm, before the sun has risen, their ears and hands well covered, the dry, cold snow squeaking under their feet")
December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass.")
December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle")
December 20, 1859 ("A very lodging, moist, and large-flaked snow, turning to rain . . . This wets the woodchopper about as much as rain.")
.December 21, 1854 "Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,— probably the night of the 18th")
December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”)
December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday.")
December 21, 1859 ("Also a large flock of snow buntings . . . Their whiteness, like the snow, is their most remarkable peculiarity.")December 23, 1859 ("You notice the long and slender light-brown or grayish downy racemes of the clethra seeds about the edges of ponds and pond-holes. The pods contain many very minute chaffy-looking seeds")
December 22, 1853 ( "The woodchopper, even hereabouts, cuts down several kinds of trees without knowing what they are.")
December 22, 1853 ("Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds.”)
December 22, 1858 (“The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th.”)
December 24, 1851 ("Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic")
December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”);
December 24, 1859 ("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week")
December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!")
December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”)
December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open.”)
December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour")
December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”)
December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over.")
December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open.. . . the only pond hereabouts that is open.")
December 26, 1855 (“The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs”)
December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it.)
December 27, 1853 (“There is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night.”)
December 27, 1853 ("The snow blows like spray, fifteen feet high, across the fields, while the wind roars in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is altogether like the ocean in a storm.")
December 27, 1853 (“There is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night.”)
December 27, 1853 ("It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun")
December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.")
December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night")
December 28, 1858 (“The ice is about six inches thick.”)
December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night.")
December 29, 1853 ("Wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you.”)
December 29, 1853 ("I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note. . . . These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs.")
December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open,. . .It must be owing to the wind partly.")
December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. ");
December 30, 1855 ("There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined")
December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.")
December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”)
January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.")
January 2, 1854 ("The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and ethereal than in the coldest winter days.")
January 4, 1859 ("A north snow-storm, very hard to face. It snows very hard, driving along almost horizontally.”)
January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow . . . and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”);
January 5, 1853 ("There was a fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon, in which a single tree-top showed finely")
January 7, 1856 (“It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”)
January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.")
January 9, 1859 ("The surface of the snow is in great waves whose ridges run from east to west, about a rod apart\ or generally less, — say ten feet, — low and gentle swells")
January 10, 1859 ("About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6°), I observe all the sheets of ice (and they abound everywhere now in the fields), when I look from one side about at right angles with the sun’s rays, reflect a green light. This is the case even when they are in the shade")
January 14, 1856 ("I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.“)
January 19, 1855 ("On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts.")
January 19, 1857 ("A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. . . .A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.")
January 19, 1859 ("To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all.")
January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?")
January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”)
January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”)
January 30, 1841 ("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple.")
January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky.")
February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")
February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west. Venus is now like a little moon in the west,")
February 10, 1855 ("Billows of snow succeed each other across the fields and roads, like an ocean waste.")
February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the low snow-patches . . . surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. I thus find myself returning over a smooth green sea, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower.")
February 13, 1860 ("I suspect that the green and rose (or purple) are not noticed on ice and snow unless it is pretty cold, and perhaps there is less greenness of the ice now than in December, when the days were shorter.")
February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”)
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.”)
March 2, 1858 ("Their track is much like a small crow’s track, showing a long heel and furrowing the snow between with their toes")
 |
| December 23, 2018 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, December 23 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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