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
What measureless joy
to know nothing about the
day that is to dawn!
This day yesterday --
incredible as any
other miracle.
Sunrise, December 29, 2022
What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle. December 29, 1851
It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring.
December 29, 1851 The snow is softened yet more, and it thaws somewhat. The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring. December 29, 1856
We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. December 29, 1856
One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work. December 29, 1841.
Nantucket to Concord at 7.30 A. M. Still in mist. The fog was so thick that we were lost on the water; stopped and sounded many times . . . Whistled and listened for the locomotive’s answer, but probably heard only the echo of our own whistle at first, but at last the locomotive’s whistle and the life-boat bell. December 29, 1854
A very cold morning, — about -15° at 8 a. m. at our door. December 29, 1859
I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon . . . To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. December 29, 1859
I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon . . . To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. December 29, 1859
From the smooth open place behind Cheney's a great deal of vapor was rising to the height of a dozen feet or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is a phenomenon of quite cold weather . . . Just as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e. warm, moist air over, the river. December 29, 1859
The melted snow has formed large puddles and ponds, and is running in the sluices. At the turnpike bridge, water stands a foot or two deep over the ice. Water spiders have come out and are skating against the stream. January thaw! It feels as warm as in summer. You sit on any fence-rail and vegetate in the sun, and realize that the earth may produce peas again. December 29, 1851
To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. December 29, 1859
All day a driving snow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads . . . The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way, it is so thick . . . An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in each pocket of my greatcoat. December 29, 1853
It is the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember.
Yet in spite, or on account, of all, 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. I could hardly see them, the air is so full of driving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night? December 29, 1853
I cannot see a house fifty rods off from my window through it; yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices under doors and side of windows. December 29, 1853
Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible). It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male. December 29, 1855
Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter? December 29, 1856
Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly. December 29, 1855
By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground. December 29, 1856
Just above south entrance to Farrar Cut, a large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river. December 29, 1858
To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. December 29, 1859
The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. They looked like the skeletons and backbones of celestial sloths, being pointed at each end, or even like porcupine quills or ivory darts sharp at each end. So long and slender, but pronounced, with a manifest backbone and marrow. It looked as if invisible giants were darting them from all parts of the sky at the setting sun. These were long darts indeed.
Well underneath was an almost invisible rippled vapor whose grain was exactly at right angles with the former, all over the sky, yet it was so delicate that it did not prevent your seeing the former at all. Its filmy arrows all pointed athwart the others. I know that in fact those slender white cloud sloths were nearly parallel across the sky, but how much handsomer are the clouds because the sky is made to appear concave to us! How much more beautiful an arrangement of the clouds than parallel lines! December 29, 1859
At length those white arrows and bows, slender and sharp as they were, gathering toward a point in the west horizon, looked like flames even, forked and darting flames of ivory-white, and low in the west there was a piece of rainbow but little longer than it was broad. December 29, 1859
When I return by Clamshell Hill, the sun has set, and the cloudy sky is reflected in a short and narrow open reach at the bend there. The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky. December 29, 1856
When I went to walk it was about 10° above zero, and when I returned, 1°. I did not notice any vapor rising from the open places, as I did in the morning, when it was -16° and also -6°. Therefore the cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places. December 29, 1859
It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. December 29, 1859
On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes, which nearly cover its surface and make it white as with snow. December 29, 1859
The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees. Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. December 29, 1853
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Northern Shrike
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature
*****
September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day")November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.")
December 14, 1851 ("I notice that hornets' nests are hardly deserted by the insects than they look as if a truant boy had fired a charge of shot through them, -- all ragged and full of holes.")
December 14, 1851 ("I notice that hornets' nests are hardly deserted by the insects than they look as if a truant boy had fired a charge of shot through them, -- all ragged and full of holes.")
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 melodious hooting of the owl, heard at the same time with the yet more distant whistle of a locomotive. ")
December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset ")
December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday")
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, not the slate-colored.")
December 24, 1858 ("See another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter! It looks much smaller than a jay.")
December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”)
December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”)
December 27 1851 ("There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though the snow covers the earth . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter . . . The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter.")
December 27, 1859 ("Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.")
December 28, 1852 ("The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me.")
December 28, 1853 ("I hear and see tree sparrows about the weeds in the garden. They seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow; or is it that they are more obvious against the white ground? By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. ")
December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here")
December 30, 1855 (“Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green”)
December 30, 1855 ("I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest.")
December 30, 1859 ("I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree ")
December 31, 1851 ("Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones ")
December 31, 1857 ("I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground.")
January 1, 1856 ("By the side of the Deep Cut are the tracks of probably tree sparrows about the weeds, and of partridges.")
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 3, 1858 (" I see a flock of F. hyemalis this afternoon, the weather is hitherto so warm.")
January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter")
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 10, 1859 ("Four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below,")
January 18, 1860 ("The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality.”)
January 19, 1857 ("A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.")
February 2, 1860 (" Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. ")
February 9, 1851 ("We have forgotten summer and autumn. Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever.")
Sunset, December 29, 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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 29
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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