A Book of the Seasons: January 9 (Perfect winter days, cold clear and bright, dreaming of summery hours, walking ins swamps, western horizon and sunset sky)

 

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

January 9

As I climb the Cliff

I pause in the sun and sit

on a rock dreaming.

I sit dreaming of

summery hours – times tinged

with eternity.

The colors in the

reflection differ from those

in the sunset sky.

January 9, 1853

January 9, 2021

I call that ice marbled when shallow puddles of melted snow and rain, with perhaps some slosh in them, resting on old ice, are frozen, showing a slightly internal marbling, or alternation of light and dark spots or streaks. January 9, 1860

The sky shut out by snow-clouds. It spits a little snow and then holds up.  January 9, 1852

A cloudy day, threatening snow; wet under foot. January 9, 1855

Clear, cold morning. Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M.  3 P. M. —To Beck Stow’s.  The thermometer at + 2°. When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°. Probably it has been below zero far the greater part of the day.  January 9, 1856

It has not been so cold throughout the day, before, this winter. I hear the boots of passing travellers squeak. January 9, 1856

Snows again . . .  The wind is southwest, and the snow is very moist, with large flakes. January 9, 1858

Looking toward Trillium Wood, the nearer flakes appear to move quite swiftly, often making the impression of a continuous white line. They are also seen to move directly and nearly horizontally, but the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the air, as if uncertain how they will approach the earth, or even to cross the course of the former, and are always seen as simple and distinct flakes. January 9, 1858

Another fine warm day, — 48° at 2 p. m. January 9, 1860

After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring.  January 9, 1860

Where a path has been shovelled through drifts in the road, and the cakes of snow piled up, I see little azures, little heavens, in the crannies and crevices. January 9, 1852

The deeper they are, and the larger masses they are surrounded by, the darker-blue they are. Some are a very light blue with a tinge of green. Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue. It has strained the air, and only the blue rays have passed through the sieve. January 9, 1852

Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water? January 9, 1852

I see the heaven hiding in nooks and crevices in the snow. Into every track which the teamster makes, this elysian, empyrean atmosphere rushes. January 9, 1852

I am interested by a clump of young canoe birches on the hillside shore of the pond. There is an interesting variety in the colors of their bark, passing from bronze at the earth, through ruddy and copper colors to white higher up, with shreds of different color from that beneath peeling off. January 9, 1860 

Going close to them,  find that at first, or till ten feet high, they are a dark bronze brown, a wholly different-looking shrub from what they afterward become. . . .  It may be, then, half a dozen years old before it assumes the white toga which is its distinctive dress.  January 9, 1860

It is as if the tree unbuttoned a thin waistcoat and suffered it to blow aside, revealing its bosom or inner garment. January 9, 1860

This moist snow has affected the yellow sulphur parmelias and others. They have all got a green hue, and the fruit of the smallest lichen looks fresh and fair. And the wet willow bark is a brighter yellow. January 9, 1858

Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow. January 9, 1854

Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him. January 9, 1858

As I climb the Cliff, I pause in the sun and sit on a dry rock, dreaming. I think of those summery hours when time is tinged with eternity. January 9, 1853 

This winter I hear the axe in almost every wood of any consequence left standing in the township.   January 9, 1855

To Beck Stow’s . . . I wade through the swamp, where the snow lies light eighteen inches deep on a level, a few leaves of andromedas, etc., peeping out. (I am a-birds’-nesting.) The mice have been out and run over it.  January 9, 1856 

The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp. Go now anywhere in the swamp and fear no water. January 9, 1856 

Walk up on the river a piece above the Holden Swamp, though there are very few places where I can get on to it, it has so melted along the shore and on the meadows. January 9, 1855 

The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots. January 9, 1855 

I see one large bush of winter-berries still quite showy, though somewhat discolored by the cold. January 9, 1856 

How pretty the evergreen radical shoots of the St. John’s-wort now exposed, partly red or lake, various species of it.. . .A little wreath of green and red lying along on the muddy ground amid the melting snows. January 9, 1855 

 

I am attracted at this season by the fine bright-red buds of the privet andromeda, sleeping couchant along the slender light-brown twigs. They look brightest against a dark ground. January 9, 1855 

Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp,  I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia. January 9, 1855 

On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface. I dig one up with a stick, and, pulling it to pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom-bud, about half is big as the head of a pin, perfectly white. There it patiently sits, or slumbers, how full of faith, informed of a spring which the world has never seen. January 9, 1853

How innocent are Nature's purposes! January 9, 1853

Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the form and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. January 9, 1859

Looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon, we see to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot. Is the winter then such a twilight? This is about an hour and a half before sunset. January 9, 1854

I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.  January 9, 1853 

The sun has been set some minutes, and as I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing. January 9, 1859

It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky. January 9, 1859

I am inclined to measure the angle at which pine bough meets the stem. January 9, 1859

That soft, still, cream-colored sky seems the scene, the stage or field, for some rare drama to be acted on. January 9, 1859

C. says the winter is the sabbath of the year. The perfect Winter days are cold, but clear and bright. January 9, 1859

After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring. January 9, 1860

(Sometimes a lost man will be so beside himself that he will not have sense enough to trace back his own tracks in the snow.) January 9, 1855

January 9, 2022

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Crowfoot (Ranunculus fascicularis)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   the spring note of the chickadee

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter

January 21, 2021

September 7, 1854 ("The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.")

December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky. ")

December 20, 1851 ("The pines impress me as human.  A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains")

December 20, 1855 ("How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! ")

 

The icy water

reflecting the warm colors

of the sunset sky. 

December 20, 1855

December 20, 1851(Slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree")

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 . . . I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

December 28, 1852 ("A clump of birches raying out from one centre make a more agreeable object than a single tree.")

January 4, 1853 ("Sometimes I was in doubt about a birch whose vest was buttoned smooth and dark, till I came nearer and saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a button was off.");

January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”)

Rainbow-tinted clouds 

forming and dispersing  

this clear cold afternoon.

Clear cold afternoon –

to our surprise see a star

about half past three.

January 9, 1854

January 10, 1855 ("To Beck Stow’s . . . Then there is the Andromeda calyculata, its leaves appressed to the twigs, pale-brown beneath, reddish above, with minute whitish dots. As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.  ")

The translucent leaves –

andromeda lit up like

cathedral windows.

January 10, 1855

.

January 10, 1856  ("I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now.") 

January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun")   

January 10, 1859 ("These gleaming birch and alder and other twigs are a phenomenon still perfect, — that gossamer or cobweb-like reflection."). 

January 11, 1855 (" the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon.")

January 11, 1855 ("This air, thick with snowflakes, making a background, enables me to detect a very picturesque clump of trees on an islet at Pole Brook,—a red oak in midst, with birches on each side")

January 19, 1859 ("Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.")

January 14, 1852 ("When I see the dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow by the roadside, sometimes in dense masses, which carry me back in imagination to their green summer life, I put faintly a question which I do not yet hear answered, Why stand they there?")

January 19, 1859 ("It occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon."); 

January 24, 1858 ("The sprouts of the canoe birch are not reddish like the white, but a yellowish brown. The small white begin to cast off their red cuticle the third or fourth year and reveal a whitish one. "); 

January 31, 1859 ("Now we have quite another kind of ice. It has rained hard, converting into a very thin liquid the snow which had fallen on the old ice, and this, having frozen, has made a perfectly smooth but white snow ice. It is white like polished marble (I call it marble ice).")

February 4, 1858 ("Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda calyculata, Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc.")

February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open.")

March 4, 1854 ("In the dry pasture under the Cliff Hill, the radical leaves of the johnswort are now revealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on the ground, with leaves recurved, reddish above, green beneath, and covered with dewy drops. ")

Western sky full of

soft pure light after sunset,

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

To look over pines

so rich and distinct into

the soft western sky.

January 9, 1859

Night comes on early.  

Pine tree tops outlined against

the cold western sky,

December 12, 1859

January 9, 202

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 

January 8 <<<<<<<<  January 9 >>>>>>>  January 10

January 9, 2018

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2024