The sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood.

November 1. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond over Cliffs.

Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus. 

Going over the high field west of the cut, my foot strikes a rattle-pod in the stubble, and it is betrayed. From that faint sound I knew it must be there, and went back and found it. I could have told it as well in the dark. How often I have found pennyroyal by the fragrance it emitted when bruised by my feet! 

The lowest and most succulent oak sprouts in exposed places are red or green longest. Large trees quite protected from sun and wind will be greener still. 

The larches are at the height of their change. 

I see much witch-hazel in the swamp by the south end of the Abiel Wheeler grape meadow. Some of it is quite fresh and bright. Its bark is alternate white and smooth reddish-brown, the small twigs looking as if gossamer had lodged on and draped them. What a lively spray it has, both in form and color! Truly it looks as if it would make divining-rods, – as if its twigs knew where the true gold was and could point to it. The gold is in their late blossoms. Let them alone and they never point down to earth. They impart to the whole hillside a speckled, parti-colored look. 

I see the common prinos berries partly eaten about the hole of a mouse under a stump. 

As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. 

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. 

Jersey tea has perhaps the most green leaves of any shrub at present.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1857


The larches are at the height of their change. See November 1, 1858 (Now you easily detect where larches grow ... They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill""); November 4, 1855 (“Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.”); October 27 1855 (“Larches are yellowing.”); October 24, 1852 (“The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. ”)

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”)

This dry crisp rustle – 

withered leaves on oak trees, a 

sharper susurrus. 

There is no secret but it is confided to some one.

January 18.

P. M. —To Walden to learn the temperature of the water. 

The snow is so deep at present in the streets that it is very difficult turning out, and there are cradle-holes between this and the post-office. The sidewalks being blotted out, the street, like a woodman’s path, looks like a hundred miles up country. 

I see where children have for some days come to school across the fields on the crust from Abiel Wheeler’s to the railroad crossing. I see their tracks in the slight snow upon the crust which fell the 14th. They save a great distance and enjoy the novelty.

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. The snow lies very level there, about ten inches deep, and for the most part bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can produce, with an amethystine hatchet in my hand. 

I am in raptures at my own shadow. What if the substance were of as ethereal a nature? 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. 

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, only the first four inches, perhaps, snow ice, the other three clear. The moment I reach the water, it gushes up and overflows the ice, driving me out this yard in the snow, where it stood at last two and a half inches deep above the ice. 

The thermometer indicates 331/2° at top and 342/3° when drawn up rapidly from thirty feet beneath. So, apparently, it is not much warmer beneath. 

Observe some of those little hard galls on the high blueberry, peeked or eaten into by some bird (or possibly mouse), for the little white grubs which lie curled up in them. What entomologists the birds are! Most men do not suspect that there are grubs in them, and how secure the latter seem under these thick dry shells! Yet there is no secret but it is confided to some one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1856

To Walden to learn the temperature of the water. See January 11, 1856 (" The temperature of the body of Walden may perhaps range from 85° . . . down to 32°")

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. See December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.’); February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”);  January 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. "); January 30, 1856 ("Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects.") Also see note to January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”)

What entomologists the birds are! Compare January 16, 1860 ("[T]here is no shrub nor weed which is not known to some bird.")

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 18

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

A good time to walk in swamps

December 29

Down railroad to Andromeda Ponds. 

I occasionally see a small snowflake in the air against the woods. It is quite cold, and a serious storm seems to be beginning. 

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. 

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. If quite cold, it will probably freeze to-night. [Not quite. Say the night of the 30th.]

I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing(?) suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice. I count twenty-one within fifteen rods of a centre, and have no doubt there are a hundred in that large swamp, for I only looked about the edge part way. 

It is remarkable that I do not remember to have seen flocks of these birds there. It is an admirable place for them, these swamps are so impassable and the andromeda so dense. It would seem that they steal away to breed here, are not noisy here as along the river. 

The nests are suspended very securely between eight or ten andromeda stems, about half way up them; made of more or less coarse grass or sedge without, then about half an inch of dense and fine, now frozen sphagnum, then fine wild grass or sedge very regularly, and sometimes another layer of sphagnum and of fine grass above these, the whole an inch thick, the bottom commonly rounded. The outside grasses are well twisted about whatever andromeda stems stand at or near the river. I saw the traces of mice in some of them.

I never knew, or rather do not remember, the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. I see the tracks of skaters on all the roads, and they seem hardly to prefer the ice. 

Above Abiel Wheeler’s, on the back road, the crust is not broken yet, though many sleds and sleighs have passed. The tracks of the skaters are as conspicuous as any there. But the snow is but trim or three inches deep. 

Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls; so that he cut off the trees in Jenny’s lot three feet from the ground, and cut again after the snow was melted. 

When two men, Billings and Prichard, were dividing the stock of my father and Hurd, the former acting for Father, P. was rather tight for Hurd. They came to a cracked bowl, at which P. hesitated and asked, “Well, what shall we do with this?” B. took it in haste and broke it, and, presenting him one piece, said, “There, that is your half and this is ours.” 

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. It is a good walk along the edge of the river, the wild side, amid the button-bushes and willows. The eupatorium stalks still stand there, with their brown hemispheres of little twigs, orreries. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1855

Eight or ten acres of Walden still open... See December 30, 1853 ("[Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.”).Also A Book of the Seasons: First Ice

I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice. See December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”)

I never knew . . .the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. See February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields . . ..")

Early spring on the Assabet. A low morning mist curls over the smooth water now in the sunlight.

April 8

— Up Assabet. A fine clear morning. The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look.

The frost covers the willows and alders and other trees on the sides of the river fifteen or twenty feet high. Quite a wintry sight.

                               April 8, 2022

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. I find some anthers effete and dark, and others still mealy with pollen. There are many in this condition. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday.

I find also at length a single catkin of the Alnus incana, with a few stamens near the peduncle discolored and shedding a little dust when shaken; so this must have begun yesterday, I think, but it is not so forward as the maple. Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before.

I see some long cobweb lines covered with frost, hanging from tree to tree, six feet in one case, like the ropes which extend from mast to mast of a vessel. Very thin dark ice-crystals over shallowest water, showing the flat pyramids.

Hear and see a pigeon woodpecker, something like week-up week-up. The robins now sing in full blast.

Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there. The tree sparrows have been very musical for several mornings, somewhat canary-like.

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season, and ground bare or not, meadows wet or dry, etc., etc., also on the variety of soils and localities within your reach. The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April.

The radical leaves of the buttercup now at Lee’s Cliff --a small flat dense circle -- are a very different color from those evergreen leaves seen when the snow first goes off. They are emphatically a green green, as if a sort of green fire were kindled under them in the sod.

The buds not only of lilacs, but white birches, etc., look swollen.

When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone, -- the spinal marrow.

Abiel Wheeler tried to plow in sandy soil yesterday, but could not go beyond a certain depth because of frost.

P. M. — Up Assabet to G. Barrett’s meadow.

This forenoon it was still and the water smooth. Now there is a strong cool wind from the east.

Am surprised to see a sound clam close to the shore at mouth of Dakin’s Brook, in one foot of water. A school of small minnows. Already a turtle’s track on sand close to water.

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. Afterward I see a small red one over the shore.

Though the river -- excepting Fair Haven Pond before the 6th -- has for a week been completely free of ice, and only a little thin crystalwise forms in the night in the shallowest parts, that thick ice of the winter (February) on the meadows, covered by pieces of meadow-crust, is in many places still nearly as thick as ever, now that ice is a rather rare sight and plowing is beginning. It is remarkable how long this frozen meadow-crust lying on it has preserved it. Where the piece of meadow is only three or four feet in diameter, its edges now project over the ice, so that the whole looks like a student’s four-cornered cap, -- or that which the President of Harvard wears. All that mass on B.’s meadow appears to have been taken from the upper part of the meadow near the road, about thirty rods off from where it now lies.

In the ditches near which it was taken up I see the coarse yellow, reddened, and sometimes already green-tipped pads of the yellow lily, partly unrolled at the bottom of the warm water, the most of a spring growth, perhaps, in the water; also two or three good-sized buds of a healthy green.

Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool.

See six muskrats’ bodies, just skinned, on the bank, ~ two large yellowish, fatty-looking masses of (I suppose) musk on each side the lower part of the abdomen. Every part of the animal now emits a very strong scent of musk. A foot which I brought home (together with a head) scented me all over. The fore feet are small and white on the palm, while the hind ones are black. All the skin being stripped off except on the nose and feet, the fore feet look like hands clothed in gauntlets of fur.

This evening, about 9 P.M., I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1855

At first I can hardly distinguish white maple stamens from the frost spiculae. The crimson female stigmas also peeping forth. It evidently began to shed pollen yesterday. See April 9, 1856 ("White maples also, the sunny sides of clusters and sunny sides of trees in favorable localities, shed pollen to-day. “)See also note to April 6, 1855 ("A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, White maple buds and flowers

As to which are the earliest flowers, it depends on the character of the season. See April 2, 1856 (“It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flover . . . It is evident that it depends on the character of the season whether this flower or that is the most forward”); .February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.");    ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.");  April 10, 1855 ("These few earliest flowers . . . are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow, and most have not begun to think of flowers yet.");April 17, 1855 ("So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower, as if he had slumbered all winter at the root of the plant. No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you.”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Earliest Flower

The great buff-edged butterfly flutters across the river. See April 9, 1853 ("You see the buff-edged . . . in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about.”); April 9, 1856 ("The great butterflies, black with buff-edged wings, are fluttering about”) See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Buff-edged Butterfly

I hear geese go over, now there in the south, now southeast, now east, now northeast, low over the village, but not seen. The first I have heard. April 9, 1855 ("Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard."); April 16, 1855 ("After dark, the sound of geese honking all together very low over the houses and apparently about to settle on the Lee meadow. "); April 17, 1855 (" Geese go over at noon, when warm and sunny. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

The columbine leaves in the clefts of Cliffs are one of the very earliest obvious growths. I noticed it the first of April. See April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft;") See also March 18, 1853 ("At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even, the former as conspicuously as any plant . . . Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced. Even if a fallen fragment of the rock is so placed as to reflect the heat upon it, it has the start of its neighbors. These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development. "); April 7, 1855 ("At Lee's Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage , columbine , and the tower mustard , etc. , much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits."); April 8, 1854 ("The columbine shows the most spring growth of any plant."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower

April 8. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 8

A low morning mist

curls over the smooth water

now in the sunlight.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A low morning mist 

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-18550408

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders

April 7

In my walk in the afternoon of to-day, I see from Conantum, say fifty rods distant, two sheldrakes, male and probably female, sailing on A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow. I see only the white of the male at first, but my glass reveals the female. The male is easily seen a great distance on the water, being a large white mark. But they will let you come only within some sixty rods ordinarily.

April 7, 2019

I observe that they are uneasy at sight of me and begin to sail away in different directions.

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies (but he appears all white above), and the reddish brown or sorrel of the neck of the female, and, when she lifts herself in the water, as it were preparatory to flight, her white breast and belly. She has a grayish look on the sides. 

Soon they approach each other again and seem to be conferring, and then they rise and go off, at first low, down-stream, soon up-stream a hundred feet over the pond, the female leading, the male following close behind, the black at the end of his curved wings very conspicuous. 

I suspect that about all the conspicuous white ducks I see are goosanders. 

I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. It is wonderful that a man, having undertaken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles! Who would expect to see a smooth feather again? This skin was very tender on the breast. I should have done better had I stuffed it at once or turned it back before the skin became stiff. Look out not to cut the ear and eye lid. But what a pot-bellied thing is a stuffed bird compared even with the fresh dead one I found! It looks no longer like an otter, like a swift diver, but a mere waddling duck. How perfectly the vent of a bird is covered! There is no mark externally. 

At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season. I suspect that the spathes do not push up in the spring. This is but three inches high. I see them as high and higher in the fall, and they seem only to acquire color now and gape open. I see but one out, and that sheds pollen abundantly. 

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. Then they alight on the ground to feed, along with F. hyemalis and fox-colored sparrows. 

They are merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle on the breast; black wings and tails, with white bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never saw them here so early before; or probably one or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard of other years were this. 

Clear, but a cold air. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Lee’s Cliff. A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow east of railroad, on the surface. Just like those seen in the rye-field some weeks ago, but this in lower ground has a distinct gallery running from it, and I think is the nest of the meadow mouse. 

The pool at Hubbard’s Close, which was full of ice, unbroken gray ice, the 27th of March, is now warm-looking water, with the slime-covered callitriche standing a foot high in it; and already a narrow grass, the lake grass, has sprung up and lies bent nine or ten inches flat on the water. This is very early as well as sudden. 

In ten days there has been this change. How much had that grass grown under the ice? I see many small skaters  in it. 

See a trout as long as my finger, in the ditch dug from Brister’s Spring, which, having no hole or overhanging bank where it could hide, plunged into the mud like a frog and was concealed. 

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. 

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., much eaten apparently by partridges and perhaps rabbits. They must have their greens in the spring, and earlier than we. 

Below the rocks, the most obviously forward radical leaves are the columbine, tower mustard (lanceolate and petioled and remotely toothed), and catnep, and mullein. Early crowfoot, the butter cup (bulbosa), is a peculiarly sappy, dark pickle-green, decided spring, and none of your sapless evergreens. The little thyme-leaved arenaria, I believe it is, which is evergreen, and some other minute leaves, also, already green the ground. 

The saxifrage on the rocks will apparently open in two days; it shows some white. 

The grass is now conspicuously green about open springs, in dense tufts. The frozen sod, partly thawed in low grounds, sinks under me as I walk.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1855

I plainly see the vermilion bill of the male and his orange legs when he flies . . .I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it to-day. See April 6, 1855 ("It is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermilion bill (color of red sealing wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon)”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

See thirty or forty goldfinches in a dashing flock, in all respects (notes and all) like lesser redpolls, on the trees by Wood’s Causeway and on the railroad bank. There is a general twittering and an occasional mew. See   March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring, flitting along the cause way-bank. They have not yet the bright plumage they will have, but in some lights might be mistaken for sparrows. There is considerable difference in color between one and another, but the flaps of their coats are black, and their heads and shoulders more or less yellow . . .  Wilson says, "In the month of April they begin to change their winter dress, and, before the middle of May, appear in brilliant yellow.”"); April 15, 1859 ("Hear a goldfinch, after a loud mewing on an apple tree, sing in a rich and varied way, as if imitating some other bird."); April 19, 1858 (Along the wall under the Middle Conantum Cliff, I saw many goldfinches, male and female, the males singing in a very sprightly and varied manner, sitting still on bare trees. Also uttered their watery twitter and their peculiar mewing.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

The female flowers of the hazel are just beginning to peep out. See note to April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet.") See also   March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. . . .It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, though so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it. It is the highest and richest colored yet, - ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the buds which are at the ends and along the sides of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a light, some a dark crimson. The high color of this minute, unobserved flower, at this cold, leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a beautiful greeting of the spring, ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Hazel

A mouse-nest of grass, in Stow’s meadow . . . the nest of the meadow mouse. See  March 15, 1855 ("Mr. Rice tells me that . . . he heard a squeaking and found that he was digging near the nest of what he called a " field mouse," – by his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and, while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself.  "); March 22, 1855 ("A (probably meadow) mouse nest in the low meadow by stone bridge, where it must have been covered with water a month ago; probably made in fall. Low in the grass, a little dome four inches in diameter, with no sign of entrance . . .Made of fine meadow-grass.");  August 25, 1858 ("I see . . . evidently the short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. Generally above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath. Tail but little more than one inch long. Its legs must be very short, for I can hardly glimpse them. Its nose is not sharp.") See also  See Thompson (Meadow mouse nests are sometimes constructed in their burrows, and are also found at the season of hay harvest, in great numbers, among the vegetation upon the surface of the ground. They are built of coarse straw, lined with fine soft leaves, somewhat in the manner of a bird's nest, with this difference, that they are covered at the top, and the passage into them is from beneath.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse. Thoreau's e meadow mouse or "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta, is now known as Microtus pennsylvanicus, meadow Vole.

At Lee’s Cliff I find the radical leaves of the early saxifrage, columbine, and the tower mustard, etc., See  April 1, 1855 ("At the first Conantum Cliff I am surprised to see how much the columbine leaves have grown in a sheltered cleft; also the cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, sorrel, saxifrage, etc., etc. They seem to improve the least warmer ray to advance themselves, and they hold all they get.")

April 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, April 7

Sheldrakes sail away

in different directions

uneasy of me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, all the conspicuous white ducks 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdy-550407

The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

December 31, 2014

December 31.

On river to Fair Haven Pond. 

A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. 

The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color. 

I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river at its widest part just before me; a fine sight. 

On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. 

How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1854

A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. See December 20, 1854 ("The shadows of the Clamshell Hills are beautifully blue as I look back half a mile at them, and, in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge."); January 1, 1855 ("We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue.")

I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. See December 31, 1855 ("I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night.") See also November 29, 1858 ("I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks, and crows sit silent on a bare oak-top."); December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge . . . and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. "); December 22, 1852 ("The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. ")

I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. See December 31, 1853 ("Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along . . . This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.");  See also December 6, 1856 (“Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter . . .The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks.”);  January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along.”); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”);  February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”); February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”); March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. "); March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!"); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); January 21, 1853 ("Otter are very rare here now.”); and the Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night "); See also  December 9, 1856 ("A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape.”); December 20, 1851 ("Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape."); January 2, 1854 ("I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape."); January 24, 1852 ("The oaks are made thus to retain their leaves, that they may play over the snow-crust and add variety to the winter landscape.")

How glorious the

perfect stillness and peace of

the winter landscape.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541231

A winter's ecstasy

December 31.

Down railroad to Walden and circle round to right, through Wheeler's woods out to railroad again.  

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. 

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.

I wade about in the woods through the snow, which certainly averages considerably more than two feet deep where I go. It is a remarkable sight, this snow-clad landscape, with the fences and bushes half buried and the warm sun on it.  

The town and country are now so still, there being no rattle of wagons nor even jingle of sleigh-bells, every tread being as with woolen feet, I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. 

I hear it, and I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. I get the value of the earth's extent and the sky's depth. It, as it were, takes me out of my body and gives me the freedom of all bodies and all nature. I leave my body in a trance and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance.

He that hath ears, let him hear.  Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear.  The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. 

Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along. It was nearly as obvious as a man's track. It was made before last night's snow fell. The creature from time to time went beneath the snow for a few feet, to the leaves. This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.

The birds I saw were a partridge, perched on an evergreen, apparently on account of the deep snow, heard a jay, and heard and saw together white-bellied nuthatches and chickadees, the former uttering a faint quank quank and making a loud tapping, and the latter its usual lisping note.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1853

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

Walden froze completely over last night. See 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 26, 1853 ("Walden still open.. . . the only pond hereabouts that is open.”); December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.“) See also
December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

The whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. See August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); May 1, 1857 ("The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind.");   March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad. "); November 21, 1857 ("Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction.. . . the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

I realize and see clearly what at other times I only dimly remember. . . I leave my body in a trance . . .The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy. See March 3, 1841 ("Nature always possesses a certain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the morning, and the barking of dogs in the nigh, which indicates her sound state. God's voice is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonderful health, a cordial, in sound.")  September 12, 1851 ("I heard the telegraph-wire vibrating . . .. It told me by the faintest imaginable strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear can hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that there were higher, infinitely higher, planes of life which it behooved me never to forget."); March 17, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.”); May 23, 1854 ("Think of going abroad out of one's self to hear music . . .There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music."); January 12, 1855 (" What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.”); February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other. . . . I see that one could not be completely described without describing the other. “);  April 15, 1859 ("We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them. . . . Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work. ")

Saw probably an otter's track. See December 31, 1854 ("I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

Hearing the whistle

of the locomotive takes

me out of body.

I see clearly what

at other times I only

dimly remember.

The earth's extent

the freedom of all nature

and the sky's depth.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A winter's ecstasy

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531231