An old-fashioned snow-storm.

December 23. 

December 23, 2021

Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm.

There is not much passing on railroads. The engineer says it is three feet deep above.

Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only.

There is no track on the Walden road. A traveller might cross it in the woods and not be sure it was a road.

As I pass the farmers' houses I observe the cop [sic] of the sled propped up with a stick to prevent its freezing into the snow.

The needles of the pines are drooping like cockerels' feathers after a rain, and frozen together by the sleety snow.

The pitch pines now bear their snowy fruit.

I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare. The depression caused by the feet or the wheels is more obvious; perhaps the light and shade betray it, but I think it is mainly because the grass and weeds rise above it on each side and leave it blank, and a blank space of snow contrasts more strongly with the woods or grass than bare or beaten ground.

Even the surface of the snow is wont to be in waves like billows of the ocean.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1850

Old-fashioned snow-storm.  The surface of the snow is wont to be in waves like billows of the ocean See December 23, 1851 ("A pure and trackless white napkin covers the ground,"); See also December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified.");  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"); 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"); February 10, 1855 ("Billows of snow succeed each other across the fields and roads, like an ocean waste.") and February 1, 1856 ("It has been what is called “an old-fashioned winter.”")

Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only. See  December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.")  See also December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon”) and December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over."); December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle")'; 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 22, 1858 (“The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th.”); 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 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, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.”);December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open.. . . the only pond hereabouts that is open.");   December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it.); 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, 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, 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.”)

The needles of the pines are drooping like cockerels' feathers after a rain, and frozen together by the sleety snow. See December 23, 1859 ("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.")

The pitch pines now bear their snowy fruit.  See  December 17, 1851 ("The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches.");. January 19, 1855 ("On some pitch pines it lay in fruit-like balls as big as one’s head, like cocoanuts."):January 30, 1841 ("The snow collects upon the plumes of the pitch pine in the form of a pineapple.")

I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare.  See   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."); December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first."); 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.”)

December 23.  See 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

tinyurl.com/hdt501223

As I go up the Walden road. Woodchuck!

September 16.

As I go up the Walden road, at Breed’s, Hubbard, driving his cows through the weed-field, scares a woodchuck, which comes running through the wall and down the road, quite gray, and does not see me in the road a rod off. 

He stops a rod off when I move in front of him. Short legs and body flat toward the ground, i.e. flattened out at sides.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1855

Short legs and body flat toward the ground . . . See May 15, 1856 ("At Heywood Spring I see a clumsy woodchuck, . . . It runs, or waddles, to its hole two or three rods off, and as usual pauses, listening, at its entrance till I start again, then dives in”)

Berrying along the Walden road. A new spring

July 14.

How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts.

See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.

Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, the latter sometimes equalling the former, and you can see where the first was checked whether by cold or drouth, and wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check, this blight. 

So is it with man; most have a spring growth only, and never get over this first check to their youthful hopes; but plants of hardier constitution, or perchance planted in a more genial soil, speedily recover themselves, and, though they bear the scar or knot in remembrance of their disappointment, they push forward again and have a vigorous fall growth which is equivalent to a new spring. 

These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1852

See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road. See July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road. “);July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.")


Two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first. See  May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”);August 19, 1853 ("In the case of a single tree there is the dark glossy green of the lower, older leaves, — the spring growth, — which hang down, fading on every side into the silvery hoariness of the younger and more downy leaves on the edges, — the fall growth, — whose under sides are seen, which stand up, and more perhaps at this hour."); May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”);  June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet");

Drifting snow, blue sky.

February 16 

This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. The sky is a much fairer and undimmed blue than usual. The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes. 

I see the steam-like snow-dust curling up and careering along over the fields. As I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west, lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind.

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.

Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1852

Clear, bright air, undimmed blue sky. See January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! "); February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds")

I see the steam-like snow-dust . . . like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind. See February 9, 1855 ("The snow is so light and dry that it rises like spray or foam before the legs of the horses.")

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants. Seee January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . ."); August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing."); February 18, 1860 ("As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.")

Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. Compare February 18, 1852 ("It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science."); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)  [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290)

This cold afternoon

I inhale the clear bright air --

the sky undimmed blue.

Snow lit by the sun

blows like the spray on a beach

in this northwest wind.

Walden road to pond, thence to Cliffs.

February 14.

This winter was remarkable for the long continuance of severe cold weather after it had once set in. Latterly, i.e. within a week, we have had crusted snow made by thaw and rain. Now we have the swollen river, and yellow water over the meadow ice.


The slight snow of last night, lodging on the limbs of the oaks, has given them the wintry and cobwebbed appearance that distinguishes them so plainly from the pines.  

The seeds or seed-vessels of wintergreen are conspicuous above the snow.


At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; icicles at once hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock. The melting ice and snow now drips from their points with a slight clinking and lapsing sound. Where the icicles have reached the ground they are like thick pillars or the legs of tables and bed-posts. The shadow of the water flowing and pulsating behind this transparent icy crust or these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1852

icicles . . .hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes . . . See January 11, 1854 ("Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes . . .”)

The present is an inexorable rider.

January 26. 

What are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us? 

 A tree seen against other trees is a mere dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, has symmetry and expression.

The thousand fine points and tops of the trees are the plumes and standards and bayonets of a host that march to victory over the earth. Trees are good for other things than boards and shingles.

It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now.

To-day I see a few snow-fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.

The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line, in Heywood's wood by the pond. When they are bright and expanded, is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain? The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.

The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life.

Let us trust the rider, that he knows the way. Obey the spur of the moment, else you cut off your fibrous roots.

Accumulated moments are the impetus of life. What other impulse do we wait for? Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.

Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1852

The lichens look rather bright to-day. See January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”)

Accumulated moments are the impetus of life. See  May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant");   August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); June 6, 1857 (“We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact”)

 

Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. See May 21, 1851 ("The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. ); June 22, 1851("My pulse must beat with Nature"); October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! “)

Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. See August 25, 1852 ("Methinks the truly weather-wise will know themselves and find the signs of rain in their own moods."); February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.")

Men have ever associated the verdure of hemlocks , firs , spruces , etc. with evergreen trees the moisture and coolness of mountains . Our word pine is from the Celtic " pin or pen , a rock or moun tain , " from which is derived the name of this genus in many languages . Hence the name " Apennines " ( Alpes pennines ) . 

A tree seen against other trees is a mere dark mass , but against the sky it has parts , has symmetry and ex pression . 

Whatever wit has been produced on the spur of the moment will bear to be reconsidered and reformed with phlegm . The arrow had best not be loosely shot . The most transient and passing remark must be reconsid ered by the writer , made sure and warranted , as if the earth had rested on its axle to back it , and all the nat ural forces lay behind it . 

The writer must direct his sentences as carefully and leisurely as the marksman his rifle, who shoots sitting and with a rest, with patent sights and conical balls beside. He must not merely seem to speak the truth. He must really speak it. If you foresee that a part of your essay will topple down after the lapse of time , throw it down now yourself.¹ 

The thousand fine points and tops of the trees delight me ; they are the plumes and standards and bayonets of a host that march to victory over the earth . The trees are handsome towards the heavens as well as up their boles ; they are good for other things than boards and shingles . 

Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that make the impulse and the impetus of the life of genius. These are the spongioles or rootlets by which its trunk is fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life is to be expected ? Let the spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. 

The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt spur. Are my sides calloused ? Let us trust the rider, that he knows the way, that he knows when speed and effort are required. What other impulse do we wait for? Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us? 

Was it not from sympathy with the present life of nature that we were born at this epoch rather than at another ? 

The truest account of heaven is the fairest, and I will accept none which disappoints expectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, than to enjoy a worse. 

My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring. Now, now, its catkins expand, its yellow bark shines, its sap flows; now or never must you make whistles of it. Get the day to back you; let it back you and the night.

 When the thermometer is down to 20°, the streams of thought tinkle underneath like the rivers under the ice. Thought like the ocean is nearly of one temperature. Ideas, — are they the fishes of thought ?

 Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it. 

Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. He whom the weather disappoints, disappoints himself.

Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ?Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ?
Let all things give way to the impulse of expression. It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.

The word is well naturalized or rooted that can be traced back to a Celtic original . It is like getting out stumps and fat pine roots . 

While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought bottomless.

In winter we will think brave and hardy and most native thoughts . Then the tender summer birds are flown . In few countries do they enjoy so fine a contrast of summer and winter . 

We really have four seasons , each incredible to the other . Winter cannot be mistaken for summer here.

 Though I see the boat turned up on the shore and half buried under snow , as I walk over the invisible river , summer is far away , with its rustling reeds . It only suggests the want of thrift , the carelessness , of its owner 

Nature never indulges in exclamation , never says Ah! or Alas! She is not of French descent. She is a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not add to her verbs, uses few adverbs, uses no expletives. I find that I use many words for the sake of emphasis which really add nothing to the force of my sentences, and they look relieved the moment I have cancelled these. Words by which I express my mood , my conviction , rather than the simple truth . 

Yesterday, though warm, it was clear enough for water and windows to sparkle.

 

 

Youth supplies us with colors, age with canvas.

How rare it must be that in age our life receives a new color ing ! The heavens were blue when I was young, and that is their color still.

Paint is costly.

Nevertheless  let thy report be colorless as it respects the hue of the reporter's mind; only let it have the colors of the thing reported.

I think the heavens have had but one coat of paint since I was a boy, and their blue is paled and dingy and worn off in many places.

I cannot afford to give them another coat.

Where is the man so rich that he can give the earth a second coat of green in his man hood, or the heavens a second coat of blue? Our paints are all mixed when we are young.

Methinks the skies need a new coat.

Have our eyes any blue to spare? To see some men's heavens you would not suspect they had ever been azure or celestial, but that their painter had cheated them, had taken up a handful of the dirt at their feet and painted them that color, more in har mony with their lives.

At least the color must have come out in a shower, in which they had the “ blues. ” I hear of one good thing Foster said in his sermon the other day, the subject being Nature : " 

Thank God, there is no doctrine of election with regard to Nature ! We are all admitted to her.

" To - day I see a few snow - fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.

It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now.

The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line in Heywood's wood by the pond.When they are bright and expanded, is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain? The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge ! I could study a single piece of bark for hours. How they flourish ! I sympathize with their growth.

 

 

The woodpeckers work in Emerson's wood on the Cliff-top, the trees being partly killed by the top, and the grubs having hatched under the bark.

The woodpeckers have stripped a whole side of some trees, and in a sound red oak they have dug out a mortise-hole with squarish shoulders, as if with a chisel.

I have often seen these holes.

From these cliffs at this moment, the clouds in the west have a singular brassy color, and they are arranged in an unusual manner.

A new disposition of the clouds will make the most familiar country appear foreign, like Tartary or Arabia Felix.

About 2 o'clock P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon, there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens, but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast.

The men on the freight-train, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and I think they take me for an "employé;" and am I not? 

 The flowing clay on the east side is still richer to day.

I know of nothing so purgative of winter fumes and indigestions.

And then there is heard the harp high overhead, a new Orpheus modulating, moulding the earth and making the sands to follow its strains.

Who is not young again? 

What more wonderful than that a simple string or wire stretched between two posts, on which the breezes play, can so excite the race of man with its vibrations, producing sounds kindred with the song of bards and the most admirable works of art? 

Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.

In these fresh designs there is more than the freedom of Grecian art, more than acanthus leaves.

It flows even over the snow.

The vibrations of that string will surely remind a man of all that is most glorious in his experience, will more than realize to him the stories of the Delphic Oracle, will take him captive, make him mad.

The distant is brought near to him through hearing.

He abides in the body still, his soul is not quite ravished away, but news from other spheres than he lives in reaches him.

It is evident that his life does not pass on that level.

 

 all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.

My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring . Now , now , its catkins expand , its yellow bark shines , its sap flows ; now or never must you make whistles of it . Get the day to back you ; let it back you and the night . 

When the thermometer is down to 20 ° , the streams of thought tinkle underneath like the rivers under the ice . Thought like the ocean is nearly of one tempera ture . Ideas , are they the fishes of thought ? 

Poetry implies the whole truth . Philosophy expresses a particle of it . 

Would you see your mind , look at the sky . Would you know your own moods , be weather - wise . He whom the weather disappoints , disappoints himself . 

Let all things give way to the impulse of expression . It is the bud unfolding , the perennial spring . As well stay the spring . Who shall resist the thaw ? 

What if all the ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ? If there were no physical deeps . I thank God that he made this pond deep and pure for a symbol.