A warm reddish color revealed by the snow / blueness of the air.

January 14

About an inch more snow fell this morning. An average snow-storm is from six to eight inches deep on a level. 

The snow having ceased falling this forenoon, I go to Holden Wood, Conantum, to look for tracks. It is too soon. I see none at all but those of a hound, and also where a partridge waded through the light snow, apparently while it was falling, making a deep gutter. 

Yesterday there was a broad field of bare ice on each side of the river, i. e. on the meadows, and now, though it is covered with snow an inch deep, as I stand on the river or even on Fair Haven Hill a quarter to half a mile off, I can see where the ice is through the snow, plainly, trace its whole outline, it being quite dark compared with where the snow has fallen on snow. In this case a mantle of light snow even an inch thick is not sufficient to conceal the darkness of the ice beneath it, where it is contrasted with snow on snow. 

Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.

It is a mild day, and I notice, what I have not observed for some time, that blueness of the air only to be perceived in a mild day. I see it between me and woods half a mile distant. The softening of the air amounts to this. The mountains are quite invisible. You come forth to see this great blue presence lurking about the woods and the horizon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1860

Too soon to look for tracks. See January 14, 1853 ("It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.")

I see where a partridge waded through the light snow, apparently while it was falling, making a deep gutter.  See January 26, 1855 ("This morning it snows again. . .I see where a partridge has waddled through the snow still falling, making a continuous track. I look in the direction to which it points, and see the bird just skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off.")

A warm reddish color revealed by the snow. See November 14, 1858 ("Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare). "); November 17, 1858 ("Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner"); November 26, 1858 ("A good many leaves of the sweet-fern, though withered now, still hold on; so that this shrub may be put with the oaks in this respect. So far as I remember, it is peculiar among shrubs in this.");December 7, 1857 ("I observe that the recent shoots of the sweet-fern — which, like many larger bushes and trees, have a few leaves in a tuft still at their extremities – toward the sun are densely covered with a bright, warm, silvery down, which looks like frost, so thick and white . . .I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s."); January 19, 1859 ("The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

January 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 14

Wild and jagged leaf

alternately serrated

revealed by the snow.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt18600114

Pay for your victuals with poetry.

February 27

P. M. — To Cliffs.

Though it was a dry, powdery snow-storm yesterday, the sun is now so high that the snow is soft and sticky this afternoon. The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. 

Health makes the poet, or sympathy with nature, a good appetite for his food, which is constantly renewing him, whetting his senses. Pay for your victuals, then, with poetry; give back life for life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1859

Though it was a dry, powdery snow-storm yesterday, the sun is now so high. See February 13, 1859 ("The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. ")

The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. See February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light."); March 10, 1853 ("Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air.") and note to March 2, 1854 ("What produces the peculiar softness of the air?")

Snow sugars the ground to reveal a cow-path in the distant landscape.

November 24

November 24, 2018

November 24, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. On grass ground there is much the less, and that is barely perceptible, while plowed ground is quite white, and I can thus distinguish such fields even to the horizon. It is dark, drizzling still from time to time, sprinkling or snowing a little. I see more snow in the north and north west horizon. 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. It is pleasant to see thus revealed as a feature, even in the distant landscape, a cow-path leading from far inland down to the river. 

The young oaks on the plain under the Cliffs are of a more uniform color than a fortnight ago, — a reddish brown. 

Fair Haven Pond is closed still.

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling. The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks, — strange that there should be none on the pines close by, —and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light. That side of the trunk on which the lichens are thickest is the side on which the snow lodges in long ridges. 

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. 

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. 

Saw a scarlet oak some sixteen inches in diameter at three feet from ground blown down evidently in that southeast wind some months ago. It stood on the southerly edge of Wheeler’s wood, and had fallen north-north west, breaking off a white oak nine inches in diameter and a small white pine in its fall. It was a perfectly sound oak. I was surprised to see how little root it had. Very few roots reached deeper than two feet, — the thickness of the crust of earth turned up by its fall,— and those that did were not bigger than one’s finger; and there was not a root bigger than your finger at four feet from the centre on any side of the more than semi circle exposed. No wonder it was uprooted! 

Here is an author who contrasts love for “the beauties of the person” with that for “excellences of the mind,” as if these were the alternatives. I must say that it is for neither of these that I should feel the strongest afiection. I love that one with whom I sympathize, be she “beautiful” or otherwise, of excellent mind or not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1858

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight . . . it had lodged on every twig See November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

Plowed ground is quite white. See November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”) See also  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.") December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”);

Even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long. See 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.”)

It is lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”);January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”); 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”)  January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .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.”);


Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. See January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); December 26, 1853 ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig”); December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”); March 2, 1858 (“ the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad. See September 23, 1855 (" I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.”) August 14, 1854 (“I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods.”); June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”); June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

A time to see the osprey.

April 28. 

Blustering northwest wind and wintry aspect. 

April 28, 2018

A. M. — Down river to look at willows. 

The common S. cordata apparently not yet within two days at least. This salix is not always conspicuously double-scaled, nor is the scale carried up on the catkin. It is not always even on that of the S. Torreyana. 

I see the fish hawk again . . . As it flies low, directly over my head, I see that its body is white beneath, and the white on the forward side of the wings beneath, if extended across the breast, would form a regular crescent. Its wings do not form a regular curve in front, but an abrupt angle. They are loose and broad at tips. This bird goes fishing slowly down one side of the river and up again on the other, forty to sixty feet high, continually poising itself almost or quite stationary, with its head to the northwest wind and looking down, flapping its wings enough to keep its place, some times stationary for about a minute. It is not shy. This boisterous weather is the time to see it. 

I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly. Thus are the earliest seen each spring in some warm and calm place by the waterside, when it is cool and blustering elsewhere. 

The barn swallows and a martin are already skimming low over that small area of smooth water within a few feet of me, never leaving that spot, and I do not observe them thus playing elsewhere. Incessantly stooping back and forth there. 

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. 

Strawberries are abundantly out there; how long?

Some Salix tristis, bank near baeomyces. Did I not put it too early in last year's list of willows? Probably earlier elsewhere? 

The snow was generally gone about 10 A.M., except in circular patches in the shadow of the still leafless trees.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1858

This boisterous weather is the time to see it. See April 28, 1860 ("Sitting on Mt. Misery, I see a very large bird of the hawk family, blackish with a partly white head but no white tail, - probably a fish hawk; sail quite near, looking very large. "); April 14, 1852 (“The streams break up; the ice goes to the sea. Then sails the fish hawk overhead, looking for his prey.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

Thus are the earliest seen each spring in some warm and calm place by the waterside, when it is cool and blustering elsewhere. See April 28, 1855 ("In a cold and windy day like this you can find more birds than in a serene one, because they are collected under the wooded hillsides in the sun.”)

At Clamshell Ditch, one Equisetum sylvaticum will apparently open to-morrow. Strawberries are abundantly out. See May 6, 1856 (“Equisetum sylvaticum a day or two on the ditch bank there.”); May 10, 1857 (“This side Clamshell, strawberries and cinquefoil are abundant. Equisetum sylvaticum.”)

Circular patches

of snow in the shadow of

the still leafless trees.

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past.

January 7

January 7, 2019

The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings when a vapor is seen hanging in the air between the village and the woods. Though the snow is only some six inches deep, the yards appear full of those beautiful crystals (star or wheel shaped flakes), lying light, as a measure is full of grain. 

9 A. M. — To Hill. 

It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown. The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences. The surface of the snow in the woods is thickly marked by the snow which has fallen from the trees on to it. The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. 

By 10.30 A.M. it begins to blow hard, the snow comes down from the trees in fine showers, finer far than ever falls direct from the sky, completely obscuring the view through the aisles of the wood, and in open fields it is rapidly drifting. It is too light to make good sleighing. 

By 10 o'clock I notice a very long level stratum of cloud not very high in the southeastern sky, — all the rest being clear, — which I suspect to be the vapor from the sea. This lasts for several hours. 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past. There is no lingering of yesterday's fogs, only such a mist as might have adorned the first morning. 

P. M. – I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside. One occasionally hops or flies toward another, and the latter suddenly jerks away from him. They are reaching or hopping up to the fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the snow. At length the whole ten have collected within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, being alarmed, they utter a different and less musical chirp and flit away into an apple tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1858

The storm is over and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings.

I feel spirits rise.

The life, the joy that is in

blue sky after storm!

January 7, 1851

See January 7, 1853 ("This is one of those pleasant winter mornings when you find the . . . air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise.") 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days. See December 31, 1855 (“It is one of the mornings of creation.”); January 20, 1855 (“The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation.”); January 23, 1860 ("Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.”); January 26, 1853 (“There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew,”);  and A Week, Wednesday ("Day would not dawn if it were not for the inward morning.")

The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences.  See January 7, 1857 ("Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it.”); January 7, 1860 (“I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him.”) See also January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. ”); February 2, 1860 (“And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island , we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river . He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button - bushes and willows , smelling in the snow . Not appearing to regard us much , he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus , half - way round it ; at Pleasant Meadow , evidently looking for mice ( or moles ? ) in the grass of the bank , smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble , often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

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

 These poetic days

 true mornings of creation

 not repetitions.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  These are true mornings of creation

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-580107

Walking before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light.

December 24. 

December  24, 2016

More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches. 

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little. 

Turn off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl, Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. 

It is very handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood; also on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, resting on them just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out  above. 

We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests on the trees much. 

Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast. 

There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down, so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. 

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. 

Return across the pond and go across to Baker Farm. 

Notice, at east end of westernmost Andromeda Pond, the slender spikes of lycopus with half a dozen distant little spherical dark-brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like, or even like flagroot (?), when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them. 

It is very pleasant walking thus before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. 

Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path. 

I do not take snuff. In my winter walks, I stoop and bruise between my thumb and finger the dry whorls of the lycopus, or water horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping them off, and smell that. That is as near as I come to the Spice Islands. That is my smelling-bottle, my ointment.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1856

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. See December 26, 1853  ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. The sight . . . would tempt us to begin life again.”); January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.") 

Foxes . . . one of whom I have a glimpse of . . . See February 10, 1856 ("I saw a fox on the railroad. . . He coursed, or glided, along easily, appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over obstacles, with his tail extended straight behind. He leaped over the ridge of snow . . . between the tracks, very easily and gracefully.”)

The stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow.

November 30.

Sunday. P. M.— To Cliffs via Hubbard's Grove. 

Several inches of snow, but a rather soft and mild air still. Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust. 

(The very cat was full of spirits this morning, rushing about and frisking on the snow-crust, which bore her alone. When I came home from New Jersey the other day, was struck with the sudden growth and stateliness of our cat Min, — his cheeks puffed out like a regular grimalkin. I suspect it is a new coat of fur against the winter chiefly. The cat is a third bigger than a month ago, like a patriarch wrapped in furs; and a mouse a day, I hear, is nothing to him now.) 

This as I go through the Depot Field, where the stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow. I find half a dozen russets, touched and discolored within by frost, still hanging on Wheeler's tree by the wall. 

I see the fine, thin, yellowish stipule of the pine leaves now, on the snow by Hubbard's Grove and where some creature has eaten the resinous terminal pitch pine buds. 

In Hubbard's bank wall field, beyond the brook, see the tracks of many sparrows that have run from weed to weed, as if a chain had dropped there. 

Not an apple is left in the orchard on Fair Haven Hill; not a track there of walker. 

Now all plants are withered and blanched, except perhaps some Vaccinium vacillans red leaves which sprang up in the burning last spring. 

Here and there a squirrel or a rabbit has hastily crossed the path. 

Minott told me on Friday of an oldish man and woman who had brought to a muster here once a great leg of bacon boiled, to turn a penny with. The skin, as thick as sole-leather, was flayed and turned back, displaying the tempting flesh. A tall, raw-boned, omnivorous heron of a Yankee came along and bargained with the woman, who was awaiting a customer, for as much of that as he could eat. He ate and ate and ate, making a surprising hole, greatly to the amusement of the lookers-on, till the woman in her despair, unfaithful to her engagement, appealed to the police to drive him off. 

Sophia, describing the first slight whitening of snow a few weeks ago, said that when she awoke she noticed a certain bluish-white reflection on the wall and, looking out, saw the ground whitened with snow. 

My first sight of snow this year I got as I was surveying about the 5th of November in a great wooded gully making up from the Raritan River, in Perth Amboy, N. J. It was a few fine flakes in the chilly air, which very few who were out noticed at all.

That country was remarkable for its gullies, commonly well wooded, with a stream at the bottom. One was called Souman's [?] Gully, the only good name for any feature of the landscape thereabouts, yet the inhabitants objected especially to this word "gully." 

That is a great place for oysters, and the inhabitants of Amboy are said to be very generally 'well off in con sequence. All are allowed to gather oysters on the flats at low tide, and at such times I saw thirty or forty wading about with baskets and picking them up, the indigenous ones. Off the mouth of the Raritan, I saw about seventy-five boats one morning busily taking up the oysters which they had laid down, — their usual morning's work. 

I used to get my clothes covered with beggar-ticks in the fields there, and burs, small and large. 

Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1856

Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust. See November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “)

Depot Field, where the stub ends of corn-stalks rise above the snow. See November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “)

Minot Pratt tells me the fringed gentian lasted till the first week in November. See November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. “); October 27, 1855 (“There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road.”); October 19, 1852 (“It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare . . .”) See also A Book of the Seasons, the Fringed Gentian.

Measuring snow.

January 16. 

8 A. M. — Down railroad, measuring snow, having had one bright day since the last flake fell; but, as there was a crust which would bear yesterday (as to-day), it cannot have settled much. 

The last storms have been easterly and northeasterly. Why so much (five and one half inches) more now in the woods than on the 12th, as compared with open fields? Was the driving snow caught in a small wood, or did it settle less in the rain there, or since the snow on account of bushes? 

I hear flying over (and see) a snow bunting, -- a clear loud tcheep or tcheop, sometimes rapidly trilled or quavered, -- calling its mates. 

With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. 

I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. 

The snow is much deeper in yards, roads, and all small inclosures than in broad fields.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1856

I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. See January 12, 1856 ("Though the snow is only ten inches deep on a level, farmers affirm that it is two feet deep"); January 29, 1856 ("Measure the snow in the same places measured the 16th and 23d, . . . the snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter. . . . Since the 13th there has been at no time less than one foot on a level in open fields."); February 12, 1856 ("From January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”) Compare December 30, 1853 ("I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday in Abiel Wheeler's wood by the railroad, near the pond. In going a quarter of a mile it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches. Then went to Potter's wood,. . .and paced straight through a level wood where there was no drift perceptible, measuring at every ten paces for two hundred paces, and the average was twenty and one half inches.")

January 16  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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 © 2009-2022

Birch scales (bird-like) on the snow.

January 7.

At breakfast time the thermometer stood at -12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning. 

The latches are white with frost at noon. They say there was yet more snow at Boston, two feet even. 

P. M. — Up river. 

The snow is much deeper on the river than it was, —on an average, eight or nine-inches. 

The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses. 

I noticed yesterday, from three to six feet behind or northwest of a small elm, a curve in a drift answering to the tree, showing how large an eddy it had produced. The whole surface of the snow on fields and river is composed now of flat, rough little drifts, like the surface of some rough slaty rocks. 

Hardly anywhere is the ice visible now. 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, this surrounded by a broad border of yellowish spew. The water has oozed out from the thinnest part of the black ice, and I see a vapor curling up from it. 

There is also much vapor in the air, looking toward the woods. I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests. 

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. 

I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1856

Ice looks green as I go from the sun. See February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green..."); January 20, 1859 (“The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?”); February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.”). See also January 27, 1854 ("Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance.”)

I go along the edge of the Hubbard Meadow woods, the north side, where the snow is gathered, light and up to my middle, shaking down birds’ nests. 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 see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch.  See January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

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

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

My shadow is very blue.

February 10 

A fine, clear day. There is a glare of light from the fresh surface of the snow, so that it pains the eyes to travel toward the sun. 

February 10, 2022

I go across Walden. My shadow is very blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be something divine, something celestial, in me. 

In many places the edges of drifts are sharp and curving, almost a complete circle, reflecting a blue color from within like blue-tinted shells. 

I hear the faint metallic chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to time, or perchance the mew of a linaria. It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. It would be a pity to have these weeds burned in the fall. Of the former I see in the winter but three or four commonly at a time; of the latter, large flocks. This in and after considerable snow-storms.

Since this deeper snow, the landscape is more wintry than before; the rivers and roads are more concealed than they have been, and billows of snow succeed each other across the fields and roads, like an ocean waste.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 10, 1855

My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. See February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue."); January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the 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 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow") Also see note to January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”)

It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. January 2, 1856 ("I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed.”); January 19, 1855 (“At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pigweed in the garden.”); February 9, 1855 ("I was so sure this storm would bring snowbirds into the yard that I went to the window at ten to look for them, and there they were.“);  February 13, 1853 ("I am called to window to see a dense flock of snowbirds on and under the pigweed in the garden .")  Compare  March 25, 1856  ("I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas.  They probably went further south."); April 17, 1854 ("Did not see a linaria the past winter, though they were the prevailing bird the winter before.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Since this deeper snow, the landscape is more wintry than before; the rivers and roads are more concealed. See February 1, 1855 ("[The river] is now one uninterrupted level white blanket of snow quite to the shore on every side.").

Billows of snow succeed each other across the fields and roads, like an ocean waste. See December 23, 1850 ("The surface of the snow is wont to be in waves like billows of the ocean")

February 10. See A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, February 10

My shadow is blue.

Bright sunlight on pure white snow –

celestial me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, My shadow is very blue

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-550210

Skating through snow.

February 3

This will deserve to be called the winter of skating. 

P. M. — Skating through snow. Skate up the river with Tappan in spite of the snow and wind. It has cleared up, but the snow is on a level strong three quarters of an inch deep (seemingly an inch), but for the most part blown into drifts three to ten feet wide and much deeper (with bare intervals) under a strong northwesterly wind. 

February 3

It is a novel experience, this skating through snow, sometimes a mile without a bare spot, this blustering day. 

On the whole the snow is but a slight obstruction. We skate with much more facility than I had anticipated; I would not have missed the experience for a good deal. 

We go up the Pantry Meadow above the old William Wheeler house, and come down this meadow again with the wind and snow dust, spreading our coat-tails, like birds, though somewhat at the risk of our necks if we strike a foul place. I find that I can sail on a tack pretty well, trimming with my skirts. Sometimes we have to jump suddenly over some obstacle which the snow has concealed, to save our necks. 

It is worth the while for one to look back against the sun and wind and see the other sixty rods off coming, floating down like a graceful demon in the midst of the broad meadow all covered and lit with the curling snow-steam.

Looking toward the sun and wind, you see a broad river half a mile or more in width, its whole surface lit and alive with flowing streams of snow, in form like the steam which curls along a river’s surface at sunrise, and in midst of this moving world sails down the skater, majestically, as if on the surface of water while the steam curls as high as his knees.

                           ***

I still recur in my mind to that skate of the 3lst. I was thus enabled to get a bird’s-eye view of the river, -— to survey its length and breadth within a few hours, connect one part (one shore) with another in my mind, and realize what was going on upon it from end to end, —to know the whole as I ordinarily knew a few miles of it only.

It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, —or thirty in all, —by some twenty low wooden bridges, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long, shallow lakes divided into reaches. 

These long causeways all under water and ice now, only the bridges peeping out from time to time like a dry eyelid. You must look close to find them in many cases. Mere islands are they to the traveller, in the waste of water and ice. Only two villages lying near the river, Concord and Wayland, and one at each end of this thirty miles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1855

I still recur in my mind to that skate of the 31st. See January 31, 1855 (“An unprecedented expanse of ice. At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been.”)  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A bird’s-eye view of the river . . . It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—. . . long, shallow lakes divided into reaches. See April 7, 1853 ("The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows."); April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought."); July 30, 1859 ("It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill.")

February 3. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

This skating through snow

a mile without a bare spot

this blustering day. 

The skater sails midst

a moving world of snow-steam

as high as his knees.

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Skating through snow.

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-550203