What hieroglyphics in the winter sky!

January 27

2 p. m. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond, and return by Walden. 

Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. They are pretty twigs which are beaded with cones, and swing and teeter there while they perseveringly peck at them, trying now this one, now that, and sometimes appearing to pick out and swallow them quite fast. I notice no redness or carmine at first, but when the top of one's head comes between me and the sun it unexpectedly glows. 

Fair and hardly a cloud to be seen. Thermometer 28. (But it is overcast from the northwest before sun set.) 

After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears, — if not too deep. 

Now I see, as I am on the ice by Hubbard's meadow, some wisps of vapor in the west and southwest advancing. They are of a fine, white, thready grain, curved like skates at the end. Have we not more finely divided clouds in winter than in summer? flame-shaped, asbestos-like? I doubt if the clouds show as fine a grain in warm weather. They are wrung dry now. They are not expanded but contracted, like spicule? What hieroglyphics in the winter sky! 

Those wisps in the west advanced and increased like white flames with curving tongues, — like an aurora by day. Now I see a few hard and distinct ripple-marks at right angles with them, or parallel with the horizon, the lines indicating the ridges of the ripple-marks. These are like the abdominal plates of a snake. This occupies only a very small space in the sky. 

Looking right up overhead, I see some gauzy cloud-stuff there, so thin as to be grayish, — brain-like, finely reticulated; so thin yet so firmly drawn, membranous. These, methinks, are always seen overhead only. 

Now, underneath the flamy asbestos part, I detect an almost imperceptible rippling in a thin lower vapor, — an incipient mackerel-ling (in form). Now, nearly to the zenith, I see, not a mackerel sky, but blue and thin, blue-white, finely mixed, like fleece finely picked and even strewn over a blue ground. The white is in small roundish flocks. In a mackerel sky there is a parallelism of oblongish scales. This is so remote as to appear stationary, while a lower vapor is rapidly moving eastward. 

Such clouds as the above are the very thin advance-guard of the cloud behind. It soon comes on more densely from the northwest, and darkens all. 

No bright sunset to-night. What fine and pure reds we see in the sunset sky! Yet earth is not ransacked for dye-stuffs. It is all accomplished by the sunlight on vapor at the right angle, and the sunset sky is constant if you are at the right angle. The sunset sky is sometimes more northerly, sometimes more southerly. 

I saw one the other day occupying only the south horizon, but very fine, and reaching more than half-way to the zenith from west to east. This may either be for want of clouds or from excess of them on certain sides. 

As I go along the edge of Hubbard's Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun — and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy! 

How many memorable localities in a river walk ! Here is the warm wood-side; next, the good fishing bay; and next, where the old settler was drowned when crossing on the ice a hundred years ago. It is all storied. 

I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore. 

These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. 

When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1860

Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's. See January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. See October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides, as that under the pitch pines by Walden shore, where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.”); November 11, 1858 ("Now seek sunny and sheltered places as in early spring, the south side the island, for example. Certain localities are thus distinguished. And they retain this peculiarity permanently, unless it depends on a wood which may be cut. Thousands of years hence this may still be the warmest and sunniest spot in the spring and fall.")

These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead. See January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?)."); January 8, 1860 ("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? ]"); January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")

When you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, [your walk ] is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open. See January 27, 1858  ("You can not go home yet; you stay and sit in the rain."); See also May 23, 1853 ("When the chaste and pensive eve draws on...a certain lateness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. I have said to myself, that way is not homeward; I will wander further from what I have called my home — to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me."); June 14, 1853 ("This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are in that favorable frame of mind . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home"); June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all."); April 16, 1855 ('We are glad that we stayed out so late and feel no need to go home now in a hurry");  January 7, 1857 ("But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,. . . I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine")

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

When you can't persuade 

yourself not to return – then 

your moment arrives.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, What hieroglyphics in the winter 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 © 2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-600127

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

February 3.

To Fitchburg to lecture.

Observed that the Nashua at the bridge beyond Groton Junction was open for twenty rods, as the Concord is not anywhere in Concord. This must be owing to the greater swiftness of the former.

Though the snow was not deep, I noticed that an unbroken snow-crust stretched around Fitchburg, and its several thousand inhabitants had been confined so long to the narrow streets, some of them a track only six feet wide. Hardly one individual had anywhere departed from this narrow walk and struck out into the surrounding fields and hills.

If I had had my cowhide boots, I should not have confined myself to those narrow limits, but have climbed some of the hills. It is surprising to go into a New England town in midwinter and find its five thousand inhabitants all living thus on the limits, confined at most to their narrow moose-yard in the snow. Scarcely here and there has a citizen stepped aside one foot to let a sled pass.

And almost as circumscribed is their summer life, going only from house to shop and back to house again. If, Indian-like, one examined the dew or bended grass, he would be surprised to discover how little trodden or frequented the surrounding fields were, to discover perhaps large tracts wholly untrodden, which await, as it were, for some caravan to assemble before any will traverse them.

It is as if some vigilance committee had given notice that if any should transgress those narrow limits he should be outlawed and his blood should be upon his own head. You don't see where the inhabitants get sufficient exercise, unless they swing dumb-bells down cellar.

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

I was pleased to see several loads entirely of beech wood in the street at Fitchburg. It had a peculiarly green, solid, sappy look, coasting down the hills into Fitchburg.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1857

To Fitchburg to lecture. See December 18, 1856 ("Lectured [at Amherst, N. H.] in basement (vestry) of the orthodox church, and I trust helped to undermine it.") Thoreau presented "Walking or the
Wild" at Fitchburg February 3rd and at Worcester February 13, 1857. See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden. 283-89

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

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 sleighing lasts till April.

April 1

P. M. — Down railroad, measuring snow, and to Fair Haven Hill.

How rapidly the snow has melted on the east side of the railroad causeway.  The east side of railroad is a peculiarly sheltered place and hence bare, while the earth generally is covered. It has melted at about the same rate west of railroad and in Trillium Woods since the 19th. 

We have had none since March 20th, and that was very moist and soon melted.

It is a question whether it is better sleighing or wheeling now, taking all our roads together. At any rate we may say the sleighing lasted till April. 

In some places it still fills the roads level with the walls, and bears me up still in the middle of the day. It grows more and more solid, apparently freezing at night quite through.

William Wheeler (of the Corner road) tells me that he was surprised to find that it would bear his oxen where three or four feet deep behind his house. 

On some roads you walk in a path recently shovelled out, with upright walls of snow three or four feet high on each side and a foot of snow beneath you. 

The drifts on the east side of the depot, which have lain there a great part of the winter, still reach up to the top of the first pane of glass.

But, generally speaking, we slump so much, especially in the woods, except in the morning, and the snow is so deep, that we are confined to the roads or the river still. Choppers cannot work in the woods yet, and teams cannot get in for wood yet.

This old snow is solid and icy and wastes very slowly. It seems to be gradually turning to ice. I observe that, while the snow has melted unevenly in waves and ridges, there is a transparent icy glaze about one sixteenth of an inch thick but as full of holes as a riddle, spread like gauze level over all, resting on the prominent parts of the snow, leaving hollows beneath from one inch to six or more inches in depth. I often see the spiders running underneath this. 

This is the surface, which has melted and formed an icy crust, and, being transparent, it has transmitted the heat to the snow beneath and has outlasted that. This crashes and rattles under your feet.

The bare places now are the steep south and west, or southwest, sides of hills and cliffs, and also next to woods and houses on the same sides, the bridges and brows of hills and slighter ridges and prominences in the fields, low open ground protected from the northwest wind, under trees, etc.

Going by the path to the Springs, I find great beds of oak leaves, sometimes a foot thick, very dry and crisp and filling the path, or one side of it, in the woods for a quarter of a mile, inviting one to lie down. 

They have absorbed the heat and settled, like the single one seen yesterday, in mass a foot or more, making a path to that depth. Yet when they are unusually thick they preserve the snow beneath and are found to cover an almost icy mound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 1, 1856

On some roads you walk . . . with upright walls of snow three or four feet high on each side and a foot of snow beneath you.  See  February 6, 1856 ("This winter has been remarkable for the abundance of snow."); March 27, 1856 ("People do not remember when there was so much old snow on the ground at this date."); see also Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56 ("The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s.")

The snow is so deep 

we are confined to the roads 

or the river still. 

Cold after thaw: A crust on which I go in any direction

February 13

Grew cold again last night, with high wind. The wind began about midday. I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M. is at zero. (At 1 P. M., 8°+.) 

February 13, 2022

This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences; yet there is some slosh at the bottom of the snow, above, the icy foundation. 

Now, no doubt, many sportsmen are out with their dogs, who have been imprisoned by the depth of the snow. In the woods where there are bushes beneath, you still slump more or less. 

The crust is quite green with the needles of pitch pines, sometimes whole plumes which have recently fallen. Are these chiefly last year’s needles brought down by the glaze, or those of the previous year which had not fallen before? I suspect they are chiefly the former, but maybe some of the latter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1856

I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter. See January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”)

This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday.  See  February 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°")

A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences. See  January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried.”); February 28, 1856 ("I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks."); March 10, 1856 ("I may say that I have not had to climb a fence this winter, but have stepped over them on the snow.“); See also February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer."); December 29, 1855 ("Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls."); January 27, 1860 ("After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears, — if not too deep."); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on. It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 17, 1854 ("In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences.")

The crust is quite green with the needles of pitch pines . . . Are these chiefly last year’s needles . . . or those of the previous year? See February 14, 1856 (" I find that a great many pine-needles, both white and pitch, of ’54 still hold on . . .Those that strew the snow now are of both kinds .") See also December 26, 1855 ("After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze . . .The crust is already strewn with bits of the green needles which have been broken ofl.")

Step over fences,

go in any direction –

this firm and thick crust.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A crust on which I go in any direction

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-560213

The snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads.

January 30

8 A. M. -- It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot.  Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.

As I walked above the old stone bridge on the 27th, I saw where the river had recently been open under the wooded bank on the west side; and recent sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory, and also the ends of saplings and limbs of trees which had been bent down by the ice, were frozen in. In some places some water stood above the ice, and as I stood there, I saw and heard it gurgle up through a crevice and spread over the ice. This was the influence of Loring’s Brook, far above.

P. M. -- Measure to see what difference there is in the depth of the snow . . .

. . .  The Andromeda calyculata is now quite covered, and I walk on the crust over an almost uninterrupted plain there; only a few blueberries and last, I break through. It is so light beneath that the crust breaks there in great cakes under my feet, and immediately falls about a foot, making a great hole, so that once pushing my way through — for regularly stepping is out of the question in the weak places —makes a pretty good path. 

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. It repeatedly hops to a bunch of berries, takes one, and, hopping to a more horizontal twig, places it under one foot and hammers at it with its bill. The snow is strewn with the berries under its foot, but I can see no shells of the fruit. Perhaps it clears off the crimson only. Some of the bunches are very large and quite upright there still. 

Again, I suspect that on meadows the snow is not so deep and has a firmer crust. In an ordinary storm the depth of the snow will be affected by a wood twenty or more rods distant, or as far as the wood is a fence.

There is a strong wind this afternoon from northwest, and the snow of the 28th is driving like steam over the fields, drifting into the roads. On the railroad causeway it lies in perfectly straight and regular ridges a few feet apart, northwest and southeast. It is dry and scaly, like coarse bran. Now that there is so much snow, it slopes up to the tops of the walls on both sides. 

What a difference between life in the city and in the country at present, — between walking in Washington Street, threading your way between countless sledges and travellers, over the discolored snow, and crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!

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

It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything. See December 14, 1859 (" . . . Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it.")
 
sawdust and shavings from the pail-factory. . . .   See “Pail-stuff"

By the railroad against Walden I hear the lisping of a chickadee, and see it on a sumach. See Janaury 30, 1854("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day,.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter 

What a solemn silence reigns here! See January 21, 1853 ("The silence rings; it is musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible."); August 11, 1853 ("What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection  . . . The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence."); August 2, 1854 ("As I go up the hill, surrounded by its shadow, while the sun is setting, I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening . . . It is the first silence I have heard for a month")

January 30.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

Crossing Walden Pond –

spotless snow, blue shadows and

a solemn silence.

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

A good time to walk in swamps

December 29

Down railroad to Andromeda Ponds. 

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

Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible).

It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male. 

Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly. If quite cold, it will probably freeze to-night. [Not quite. Say the night of the 30th.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. It is a good walk along the edge of the river, the wild side, amid the button-bushes and willows. 

The eupatorium stalks still stand there, with their brown hemispheres of little twigs, orreries. 

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

A  shrike . . . rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm. See  December 30, 1859 ("I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree . . . square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit of the bird before. . . . It flew toward a young elm, whose higher twigs were much more slender. . . to my surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon the very top of one of the highest of all, and looked around as before. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Northern Shrike

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

A great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion . . . each now filled with ice. See May 16, 1854 ("Red-wing blackbirds' nests which are now being built,. . . are generally hung between two twigs."); May 20, 1853 ("Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes.")  See also  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”)

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

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. See December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca."); December 22, 1850 ("In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds . . . I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere."); February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer."); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer.") See also December 13, 1856 ("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.");  August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go. There is, no doubt, a particular season of the year when each place may be visited with most profit and pleasure, and it may be worth the while to consider what that season is in each case.")

A good time to walk 

in swamps there being ice but 

no snow to speak of.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A good time to walk in swamps

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-551229

Midwinter travel; missing lives and landmarks

February 19.

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. Sam Potter’s father, moving into town, turned off into the fields with a four-horse team as soon as he had crossed Wood’s Bridge and went directly across to Deacon Hubbard’s.

When Wood’s Bridge was carried off up stream, it was landed against Hubbard’s land. Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice from town, just below the bridge since built.

The water is about a foot deep on the Jimmy Miles road. E. Conant thinks that the Joe Miles causeway is rather worse than Hubbard’s in respect to water. Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing, and a mulberry tree whose stump remains, were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by. 

The only way for Conant to come to town when the water is highest is by Tarbell’s and Wood’s on the stone bridge, about a mile and a half round. 

It is true when there is no snow we cannot so easily see the birds, nor they the weeds.

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. “Can’t understand them.” “Would you have us return to the savage state?” etc., etc. A criticism true enough, it may be, from their point of view. 

But the fact is, the earnest lecturer can speak only to his like, and the adapting of himself to his audience is a mere compliment which he pays them. 

If you wish to know how I think, you must endeavor to put yourself in my place. If you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is another affair. 

I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. 

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

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. See December 29, 1855 ("Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls.")

Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice. See February 12, 1860 ("Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow.")

I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust.")

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. See February 13, 1860 ("Read to them a lecture on "Education," naming that subject, and they will think that they have heard some thing important, but call it "Transcendentalism," and they will think it moonshine.")

Follow a fox track to its den under a rock – sat here many times.

January 27

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust and some water beneath in many places.  The crust bears where the snow is very shallow, but lets you through to water in many places on the meadow.

January 27, 2025

I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. It was made last night, after the sleet and probably the rain was over, before it froze; it must have been at midnight or after. The tracks are commonly ten or twelve inches apart and each one and three quarters or two inches wide. Some times there is a longer interval and two feet fell nearer together, as if in a canter. Their tracks are larger than you would expect, as large as those of a much heavier dog, I should think.

 It doubles directly on its track in one place for a rod or two, then goes up the north end of the Cliff where it is low and went along southward just on its edge, ascending gradually. In one place it made water like a dog, and I perceive the peculiar rank fox odor without stooping. 

It did not wind round the prominent rocks, but leaped upon them as if to reconnoitre. Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occasionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end.

Looking closely I find the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock which seems to lie loose on the top of the ledge and about two feet from the nearest track. By stooping it had probably squeezed under this and passed into its den beneath. I can find no track leading from it. 

What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning! With what relish they must relate their midnight adventures to one another there in their dens by day, if they have society! I had never associated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time.

I come upon the track of a woodchopper, who had gone to his work early this morning across Fair Haven Pond. It suggested his hard work and little pecuniary gain, but simple life and health and contentment. As I take the back track on his trail, comparing his foot and stride with mine, I am startled to detect a slight aberration, as it were sliding in his tread, or as if he had occasionally stopped and made a fresh impress not exactly coincident with the first. 

In short, I discover ere long that he had a companion; per chance they were two thieves trying to pass for one, thought I; but the truth was the second, to save his strength in this long walk to his work through the crusty snow, had stepped with more or less precision in the tracks of his predecessor. The snow is three or four inches deep. 

I afterwards use the track of a horse in like manner to my advantage; so that my successor might have thought that a sleigh had gone along drawn by a man.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1855

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust . See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

I come upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and follow it. See February 5, 1854 ("I followed on this trail so long that my thoughts grew foxy; though I was on the back track, I drew nearer and nearer to the fox each step.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

Follow a fox track

to its den under a rock –

sat here many times.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Follow a fox track

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-550127

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

December 8

P. M. —Up river and meadow on ice to Hubbard Bridge and thence to Walden.

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing. This is the life most lead in respect to Nature. How different from my habitual one! It is hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. The other is leisurely, fine, and glorious, like a flower. In the first case you are merely getting your living; in the second you live as you go along. You travel only on roads of the proper grade without jar or running off the track, and sweep round the hills by beautiful curves.

Here is the river frozen over in many places, I am not sure whether the fourth night or later, but the skating is hobbly or all hobbled like a coat of mail or thickly bossed shield, apparently sleet frozen in water. Very little smooth ice.

December 8, 2024

How black the water where the river is open when I look from the light, by contrast with the surrounding white, the ice and snow! A black artery here and there concealed under a pellicle of ice.

Go over the fields on the crust to Walden, over side of Bear Garden. Already foxes have left their tracks. 

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm even like a pigeon’s neck. 

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1854

Up river and on ice to Hubbard Bridge. 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.”)

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing . . . hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture . . . After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself."); December 12, 1851("I have been surveying for twenty or thirty days, living coarsely, - indeed, leading a quite trivial life ");  December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.") See also December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine . . . I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow . . . It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it.")

Already foxes have left their tracks. Compare December 8, 1855 ("Saturday. Still no snow, nor ice noticeable . . .Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); See  December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, we see . . . now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice."); December 13, 1859  ("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."); December 14, 1855 ("Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Clear sunset sky, soft and delicate.  See December 8, 1853 ("Now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky . . . while the sky is yellowish in the horizon and a dusky blue above "); See also December 5, 1856 ("It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky . . . The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky."); December 9, 1859 ("Methinks it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer." ); December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! See December 8, 1850 ("This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields? See November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another . . . to him who has."); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth,  . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger."); September 27, 1852 ("From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them."); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

To travel only

on roads of the proper grade

and sweep round the curves.

How black the water 

 when I look from the light – how  

 white the ice and snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

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-541208