After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.

January 8. 

Began to rain last evening, and rained some in the night. To-day it is very warm and pleasant. 

2 p. m. — Walk to Walden. Thermometer 48 at 2 p.m. 

We are suddenly surrounded by a warm air from some other part of the globe. What a change! Yesterday morning we walked on dry and squeaking snow, but before night, without any rain, merely by the influence of that warm air which had migrated to us, softening and melting the snow, we began to slump in it.

Now, since the rain of last night, the softest portions of the snow are dissolved in the street, revealing and leaving the filth which has accumulated there upon the firmer foundation, and we walk with open coats, charmed with the trickling of ephemeral rills. 

After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. 

How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! When I get to the railroad I listen from time to time to hear some sound out of the distance which will express this mood of Nature. The cock and the hen, that pheasant which we have domesticated, are perhaps the most sensitive to atmospheric changes of any domestic animals. You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind, or the drawling note of the hen dreaming of eggs that are to be. 

These are the sounds that fill the air, and no hum of insects. They are affected like voyagers on approaching the land. 

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. 

I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. 

Walden, which was covered with snow, is now covered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. 

We see no fresh tracks. The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. Those of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. 

Indeed, I see far across the pond, half a mile distant, what looks like a perfectly straight row of white stones, — some fence or other work of art, — stretching twenty rods along the bare shore. There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated owing to the looming, and are referred to the dark background against which they are seen. When I know that they are on the ice, they look like white stepping-stones. 

I hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.] 

We have a fine moonlight evening after, and as by day I have noticed that the sunlight reflected from this moist snow had more glitter and dazzle to it than when the snow was dry, so now I am struck by the brighter sheen from the snow in the moonlight. All the impurities in the road are lost sight of, and the melting snow shines like frostwork. 

When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly conforming to the outline of Wachusett, — which it concealed, — as if on that mountain only the universal moisture was at that moment condensed.

The commonest difference between a public speaker who has not enjoyed the advantage of the highest  education in the popular sense, at school and college, and one who has, is that the former will pronounce a few words, and use a few more, in a manner in which the scholars have agreed not to, and the latter will occasionally quote a few Latin and even Greek words with more confidence, and, if the subject is the derivation of words, will maintain a wise silence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1860

You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season. See January 8, 1855 ("It is now a clear warm and sunny day. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing."); January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs."); January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather_continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . . The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, like white stepping-stones. See January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,");January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

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

The fringed gentians are now in prime.

October 1. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close. 

Clintonia Maple Swamp is very fair now, especially a quarter of a mile off, where you get the effect of the light colors without detecting the imperfections of the leaves. Look now at such a swamp, of maples mixed with the evergreen pines, at the base of a pine-clad hill, and see their yellow and scarlet and crimson fires of all tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some maples are yet green, only yellow-tipped on the edges of their flakes, as the edges of a hazelnut bur. Some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every way. Others, of more regular form, seem to rest heavily, flake on flake, like yellow or scarlet snow-drifts. 

The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds. 

The fringed gentians are now in prime. These are closed in the afternoon [No. Vide forward.], but I saw them open at 12 M. a day or two ago, and they were exceedingly beautiful, especially when there was a single one on a stem. They who see them closed, or in the afternoon only, do not suspect their beauty. 

Viola lanceolata again. 

See larks in small flocks. 

Was overtaken by a sudden gust and rain from the west. It broke off some limbs and brought down many leaves. Took refuge in Minott’s house at last. 

He told me his last duck-shooting exploit for the fifth or sixth time.

Says that Jake Potter, who died over eighty some dozen years since, told him that when he was a boy and used to drive his father Ephraim’s cows to pasture in the meadows near Fair Haven, after they were mown in the fall, returning with them at evening, he used to hear the wildcats yell in the Fair Haven woods. 

Minott tells of a great rise of the river once in August, when a great many “marsh-birds,” as peeps, killdees, yellow-legs, etc., came inland, and he saw a flock of them reaching from Flint’s Bridge a mile down-stream over the meadows, and making a great noise. 

Says the “killdees” used to be common here, and the yellow legs, called “humilities,” used commonly to breed here on the tussocks in the meadows. He has often found their nests. 

Let a full-grown but young cock stand near you. How full of life he is, from the tip of his bill through his trembling wattles and comb and his bright eye to the extremity of his clean toes! How alert and restless, listening to every sound and watching every motion! How various his notes, from the finest and shrillest alarum as a hawk sails over, surpassing the most accomplished violinist on the short strings, to a hoarse and terrene voice or cluck! He has a word for every occasion; for the dog that rushes past, and partlet cackling in the barn. And then how, elevating himself and flapping his wings, he gathers ear-piercing strain! not a vulgar note of defiance, but the mere effervescence of life, like the bursting of a bubble in a wine-cup. Is any gem so bright as his eye? 

The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them. The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. 

The cat sleeps on her head! What does this portend? It is more alarming than a dozen comets. 

How long prejudice survives! The big-bodied fisherman asks me doubtingly about the comet seen these nights in the northwest, — if there is any danger to be apprehended from that side! I would fain suggest that only he is dangerous to himself.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1858

The fringed gentians are now in prime. See October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively.”); ;October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered. “); October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack. . . .The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime, and also along the north edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows”); October 18, 1857 (“The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.”)

See larks in small flocks. See October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring."); November 1, 1853 ("I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler's meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly ...")

I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them. See October 9, 1857 ("The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself, and we might expect to find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last.")

The comet seen these nights in the northwest. See September 23 , 1858 (Saw the comet very bright in the northwest. "); October 5, 1858 ("The comet makes a great show these nights.");  November 1, 1858 ("Here are all the friends I ever had or shall have . . .They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. ")