A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom like the rose.

February 7. 

Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days? 

Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes. 

That’s the true use of the study of lichens. 

I expect that the lichenist will have the keenest relish for Nature in her every-day mood and dress. He will have the appetite of the worm that never dies, of the grub. To study lichens is to get a taste of earth and health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This product of the bark is the essence of all times.

The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very crust of the earth. A taste for this study is an evidence of titanic health, a sane earthiness. It makes not so much blood as soil of life. It fits a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest experience. 

A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom like the rose. 

As some strong animal appetites, not satisfied with starch and muscle and fat, are fain to eat that which eats and digests, — the contents of the crop and the stomach and entrails themselves, — so the lichenist loves the tripe of the rock, — that which eats and digests the rocks. He eats the eater. 

“Eat-all” may be his name. 

A lichenist fats where others starve. His provender never fails. 

What is the barrenest waste to him, the barest rocks? A rail is the sleekest and fattest of coursers for him. He picks anew the bones which have been picked a generation since, for when their marrow is gone they are clothed with new flesh for him. What diet drink can be compared with a tea or soup made of the very crust of the earth? There is no such collyrium or salve for sore eyes as these brightening lichens in a moist day. 

Go and bathe and screen your eyes with them in the softened light of the woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 7, 1859

Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture. See February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly")

Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days? See  note to February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish."); see also February 2, 1854; ("The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue."); February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue .");  February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow."); February 11, 1855 (“The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods.”);  January 3, 1856 ("The snow turned to a fine mist or mizzling, through which I see a little blue in the snow, lurking in the ruts.") 

They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes. See November 24, 1858 ("It is lichen day."); 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.”); January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”); 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.”); 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”); February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”); 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.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk").

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 consequence. 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.

I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice.

January 24

the sun just peeping 

o’er the ridge in the south–east 

while it snows lightly

January 24. 2025

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, but what I am and aspire to become. 

I knew that a crow had that day plucked the cedar berries and barberries by Flint’s Pond and then flapped silently through the trackless air to Walden, where it dined on fisherman’s bait, though there was no living creature to tell me. 

P. M. -- Up Assabet. 

Even the patches of shining snow-crust between those of dry white surface snow are slightly blue, like ice and water. 

You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again, and there is only six feet of water there now. I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice, not fearing that I shall break through. 

I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats. 

I see squirrel-tracks about the hemlocks. They are much like rabbits, only the toes , are very distinct. From this they pass into a semicircular figure sometimes. Some of the first are six inches from outside to outside lengthwise with one to two feet of interval. Are these the gray or red? 

A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill. 

Higher up, against the Wheeler Swamp, I see where many squirrels —perhaps red, for the tracks appear smaller—have fed on the alder cones on the twigs which are low or frozen into the ice, stripping them to the core just as they do the pine cones. 

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart. I see where the bird alighted, descending with an impetus and breaking through the slight crust, planting its feet side by side.

How different this partridge-track, with its slight hind toe, open and wide-spread toes on each side, both feet forming one straight line.  The middle toe alternately curved to the right and to the left, and what is apparently the outer toe in each case shorter than the inner one. 

I see under a great many trees, black willow and swamp white oak, the bark scattered over the snow, some pieces six inches long, and above see the hole which a woodpecker has bored. 

The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. I can hardly believe them the same. They have only an ice egg in them now. 

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter. What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! So we soar. 

I do not find a foot of open water, even, on this North Branch, as far as I go, i.e. to J. Hosmer’s lot. The river has been frozen unusually long and solidly. 

They have been sledding wood along the river for a quarter of a mile in front of Merriam’s and past the mouth of Sam Barrett’s Brook, where it is bare of snow, — hard, glare ice on which there is scarcely a trace of the sled or oxen. They have sledded home a large oak which was cut down on the bank. Yet this is one of the rockiest and swiftest parts of the stream. Where I have so often stemmed the swift current, dodging the rocks, with my paddle, there the heavy, slow paced oxen, with their ponderous squeaking load, have plodded, while the teamster walked musing beside it. 

That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species. 

There is much of the water milkweed on the little island just above Dove Rock. It rises above the deep snow there. 

It is remarkable how much the river has been tracked by dogs the week past, not accompanied by their masters. They hunt, perchance, in the night more than is supposed, for I very rarely see one alone by day. 

The river is pretty low and has fallen within a month, for there has been no thaw. The ice has broken and settled around the rocks, which look as if they had burst up through it. Some maple limbs which were early frozen in have been broken and stripped down by this irresistible weight. 

You see where the big dogs have slipped on one or two feet in their haste, sinking to the ice, but, having two more feet, it did not delay them. 

I walk along the sides of the stream, admiring the rich mulberry catkins of the alders, which look almost edible. They attract us because they have so much of spring in them. The clear red osiers, too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side. 

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



Things well done or said. See March 11, 1859 "There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression,the admirable deed are only partly ours."_)

You may walk anywhere on the river now. See February 5, 1856 ("I have walked much on the river this winter")

I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats. See  January 31, 1856  ("See also the tracks, probably of a muskrat, for a few feet leading from hole to hole just under the bank");  February 6, 1856 ("He [Goodwin] thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather.  I saw a clamshell opened, and they say minks do not open them (?)"); February 28, 1857 (" I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail. . . It is interesting to see how every little rill like this will be haunted by muskrats or minks. Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail?"); January 3, 1860 (“Melvin . . . speaks of the mark of the [muskrat] tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow, — as if made by a case-knife.”)

 A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill. SeeDecember 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees, and the wind has blown them south east, — scales, seeds, and cones, — and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also."); January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels.") January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank."); February 3, 1856 ("See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank"); March 6, 1853 ("The hemlock cones have shed their seeds, but there are some closed yet on the ground."); April 13, 1860 ("Crossbills – male and female. They are very busily eating the seeds of the hemlock, whose cones are strewn on the ground.")

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow,

the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably . . .The inner toe a little the nearest to the middle one."); February 1, 1856 ("The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer . . .They have only an ice egg in them now. See December 24, 1851 (Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.“); 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”);  February 16, 1860 ("Also all the birds' nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.")

When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! See February 8, 1852 ("I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new.")

The rich mulberry catkins of the alders, which look almost edible . . . attract us because they have so much of spring in them. See  January 10, 1859 ("The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

The clear red osiers, too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side.  See January 3, 1856 ("Now, when all the fields and meadows are covered deep with snow, the warm-colored shoots of osiers, red and yellow, rising above it, remind me of flames") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring

Many hemlock cones 

have fallen on the snow 

and rolled down the hill.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom

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

It is now good walking on the river.

January 20.

P. M. — Up river to Hollowell place. 

I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast. 

It is now good walking on the river, for, though there has been no thaw since the snow came, a great part of it has been converted into snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. 

The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter, but even when the snow lies very deep in the fields. It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and unpleasant track in the highways, the only practicable route. 

The snow never lies so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside being blown out of the river valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.

January 20, 2015

But what a different aspect the river’s brim now from what it wears in summer! I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower. That museum of animal and vegetable life, a meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it. 

Nut Meadow Brook is open in the river meadow, but not into the river. It is remarkable that the short strip in the middle below the Island yesterday should be the only open place between Hunt’s Bridge and Hubbard’s, at least, -—-probably as far as Lee’s. 

The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time. Ere long it wears its way up to the light, and its blue artery again appears here and there. 

In one place close to the river, where the forget-me-not grows, that springy place under the bank just above the railroad bridge, the snow is quite melted and the bare ground and flattened weeds exposed for four or five feet. 

A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, January 20, 1856

It is now good walking on the river... See December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button- bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time."); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. “); March 4, 1852 ("Now I take that walk along the river highway and the meadow. The river is frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for openings.”). See also July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); July 11, 1852 ("Now is the time for meadow walking")

In one place close to the river, where the forget-me-not grows, that springy place under the bank just above the railroad bridge, the snow is quite melted See January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”); January 24, 1856 (“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again”); January 26, 1856 (“ [The river is not open], excepting the small space against Merrick’s below the Rock (now closed), since January 7th, when it closed at the Hubbard Bath, or nearly three weeks, —a long time, methinks, for it to be frozen so solidly”); February 3, 1856 (River still tight at Merrick’s); February 22, 1856 ([T]he river is still perfectly closed (as it has been for many weeks), both against Merrick’s and in the Assabet . . . I am surprised that the warm weather within ten days has not caused the river to open at Merrick’s, but it was too thick to be melted); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream …That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places. "); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); March 19, 1856 ("I noticed on the 18th that springy spot on the shore just above the railroad bridge, by the ash, which for a month has been bare for two or three feet, now enlarged to eight or ten feet in diameter.") See also January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed."); December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere."); January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st."); December 26, 1858 ("I walk over the meadow above railroad bridge, where the withered grass rises above the ice, the river being low. I notice that water has oozed out over the edge of this ice or next the meadow’s edge on the west, not having come from the river but evidently from springs in the bank")   See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet. See January 8, 1854 ("Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead !"): February 2, 1854 ("I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

All the fields and meadows covered deep with snow

January 3

Snows again. About two inches have fallen in the night, but it turns to a fine mist. It was a damp snow.

P. M. —To Hill.

The snow turned to a fine mist or mizzling, through which I see a little blue in the snow, lurking in the ruts.

January 5, 1856 ("The hardhack above the snow has this form")

In the river meadows and on the (perhaps moist) sides of the hill, how common and conspicuous the brown spear-heads of the hardhack, above the snow, and looking black by contrast with it!

Just beyond the Assabet Spring I see where a squirrel, gray or red, dug through the snow last night in search of acorns. I know it was last night, for it was while the last snow was falling, and the tracks are partly filled by it.

This squirrel has burrowed to the ground in many places within a few yards, probing the leaves for acorns in various directions, making a short burrow under the snow, sometimes passing under the snow a yard and coming out at another place; for, though it is somewhat hardened on the surface by the nightly freezing and the hail, it is still quite soft and light beneath next the earth, and a squirrel or mouse can burrow very fast indeed there. I am surprised to find how easily I can pass my hand through it there. In many places it has dropped the leaves, etc., about the mouth of the hole. (The whole snow about ten inches deep.)

I see where it sat in a young oak and ate an acorn, dropping the shells on the snow beneath, for there is no track to the shells, but only to the base of the oak. How independently they live, not alarmed, though the snow be two feet deep!

Now, when all the fields and meadows are covered deep with snow, the warm-colored shoots of osiers, red and yellow, rising above it, remind me of flames.

It is astonishing how far a merely well-dressed and good-looking man may go without being challenged by any sentinel. What is called good society will bid high for such. The man whom the State has raised to high office, like that of governor, for instance, from some, it may be, honest but less respected calling, cannot return to his former humble but profitable pursuits, his old customers will be so shy of him. His ex-honorableness-ship stands seriously in his way, whether he is a lawyer or a shopkeeper. He can’t get ex-honorated. So he becomes a sort of State pauper, an object of charity on its hands, which the State is bound in honor to see through and provide still with offices of similar respectability, that he may not come to want.

A man who has been President becomes the Ex-President, and can’t travel or stay at home anywhere but men will persist in paying respect to his ex-ship. It is cruel as to remember his deeds so long. When his time is out, why can’t they let the poor fellow go?

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 3, 1856

The snow turned to a fine mist or mizzling, through which I see a little blue in the snow, lurking in the ruts. See January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snowbanks.”);  January 5, 1854 ("The blueness is more distinct after sunset.");  January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); 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 19, 1855 ("I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M.”); January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast”); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days?")

How common and conspicuous the brown spear-heads of the hardhack, above the snow and looking black by contrast with it! See December 6, 1856 ("Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); January 14, 1852 ("When I see the dead stems of the tansy, goldenrod, johnswort, asters, hardhack, etc., etc., rising above the snow by the roadside, sometimes in dense masses, which carry me back in imagination to their green summer life, I put faintly a question which I do not yet hear answered, Why stand they there?")  See also January 16, 1860 ("There is no shrub nor weed which is not known to some bird."); March 14, 1855 (“This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, - that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds.”); December 17, 1859 ("I see on the pure white snow what looks like dust for half a dozen inches under a twig. Looking closely, I find that the twig is hardhack and the dust its slender, light-brown, chaffy looking seed, which falls still in copious showers, dusting the snow, when I jar it; and here are the tracks of a sparrow which has jarred the twig and picked the minute seeds")

The warm-colored shoots of osiers, red and yellow . . . remind me of flames. See January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth . . . aas bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red."); January 26, 1859 ("The osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

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

Osiers rising

above the snow-covered fields

remind me of flames.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, All the fields and meadows covered deep with 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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560103

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. See 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, Pigweed; 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

A driving snow-storm

January 19.

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M., as I was coming down the railroad. I did not have to make a hole in it, but I saw it some rods off in the deep, narrow ravines of the drifts and under their edges or eaves, like the serenest blue of heaven, though the sky was, of course, wholly concealed by the driving snow-storm; suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. 

At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous.

 P. M. — The damp snow still drives from the northwest nearly horizontally over the fields. We go through the Spring Woods, over the Cliff, by the wood-path at its base to Walden, and thence by the path to Brister’s Hill, and by road home. There is not a single fresh track on the back road, and the aspect of the road and trees and houses is very wintry.

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung, and you have only to shake them with your hand or foot, when they rise up and make way for you. We go winding between and stooping or creeping under them, fearing to touch them, lest they should relieve themselves of their burden and let fall an avalanche or shower of snow on to us.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1855

I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning . . . suggesting that in darkest storms we may still have the hue of heaven in us. Compare January 5, 1854  ("There is also some blueness now in the snow, the heavens being now (toward night) overcast. The blueness is more distinct after sunset"); See January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 18, 1852  ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”);  January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast"); January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”)

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. See February 10, 1855 ("It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. "); December 11, 1855 ("The snow will be three feet deep, the ice will be two feet thick, and last night, perchance, the mercury sank to thirty degrees below zero. . . .. But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow!. . . I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The trees are everywhere bent into the path like bows tautly strung.  See December 26, 1853 ("The pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side.")

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

I never saw blue

in snow so bright as this damp

dark stormy morning.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A driving snow-storm

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