A Book of the Seasons: December 29 (unexpected thaw, the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember, winter birds, winter sunsets )

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

December 29

What measureless joy

to know nothing about the

day that is to dawn!

This day yesterday --

incredible as any

other miracle.

December 29, 1851

To-night I notice

the rose-color in the snow

and green in the ice.

 December 29, 1859

Sunrise, December 29, 2022

What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle. December 29, 1851 

It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring. 

December 29, 1851 

The snow is softened yet more, and it thaws somewhat. The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring.  December 29, 1856

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.  December 29, 1856

One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.  December 29, 1841.

Nantucket to Concord at 7.30 A. M. Still in mist. The fog was so thick that we were lost on the water; stopped and sounded many times . . . Whistled and listened for the locomotive’s answer, but probably heard only the echo of our own whistle at first, but at last the locomotive’s whistle and the life-boat bell. December 29, 1854

A very cold morning, — about -15° at 8 a. m. at our door.  December 29, 1859

I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon . . . To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. December 29, 1859

From the smooth open place behind Cheney's a great deal of vapor was rising to the height of a dozen feet or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is a phenomenon of quite cold weather . . . Just as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e. warm, moist air over, the river. December 29, 1859

The melted snow has formed large puddles and ponds, and is running in the sluices. At the turnpike bridge, water stands a foot or two deep over the ice. Water spiders have come out and are skating against the stream. January thaw!  It feels as warm as in summer. You sit on any fence-rail and vegetate in the sun, and realize that the earth may produce peas again.  December 29, 1851

To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. December 29, 1859

 All day a driving snow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads . . . The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way, it is so thick . . . An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in each pocket of my greatcoat. December 29, 1853

It is the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember. 
 

 Yet in spite, or on account, of all, I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note . . . These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. I could hardly see them, the air is so full of driving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night? December 29, 1853

I cannot see a house fifty rods off from my window through it; yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices under doors and side of windows. December 29, 1853

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.  December 29, 1855

 Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter? December 29, 1856

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. December 29, 1855

By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground. December 29, 1856

Just above south entrance to Farrar Cut, a large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river. December 29, 1858 

To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.  December 29, 1859

The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. They looked like the skeletons and backbones of celestial sloths, being pointed at each end, or even like porcupine quills or ivory darts sharp at each end. So long and slender, but pronounced, with a manifest backbone and marrow. It looked as if invisible giants were darting them from all parts of the sky at the setting sun. These were long darts indeed. 

Well underneath was an almost invisible rippled vapor whose grain was exactly at right angles with the former, all over the sky, yet it was so delicate that it did not prevent your seeing the former at all. Its filmy arrows all pointed athwart the others. I know that in fact those slender white cloud sloths were nearly parallel across the sky, but how much handsomer are the clouds because the sky is made to appear concave to us! How much more beautiful an arrangement of the clouds than parallel lines! December 29, 1859

At length those white arrows and bows, slender and sharp as they were, gathering toward a point in the west horizon, looked like flames even, forked and darting flames of ivory-white, and low in the west there was a piece of rainbow but little longer than it was broad. December 29, 1859

When I return by Clamshell Hill, the sun has set, and the cloudy sky is reflected in a short and narrow open reach at the bend there. The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky.  December 29, 1856

When I went to walk it was about 10° above zero, and when I returned, 1°. I did not notice any vapor rising from the open places, as I did in the morning, when it was -16° and also  -6°. Therefore the cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places. December 29, 1859

It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. December 29, 1859

On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes, which nearly cover its surface and make it white as with snow. December 29, 1859

The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.  Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. December 29, 1853

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Northern Shrike

A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

*****

September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day")

November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.")
December 14, 1851 ("I notice that hornets' nests are hardly deserted by the insects than they look as if a truant boy had fired a charge of shot through them, -- all ragged and full of holes.")

December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face")

December 15, 1856 ("The melodious hooting of the owl, heard at the same time with the yet more distant whistle of a locomotive. ") 

December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset ")

December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday")

December 24, 1851 ("Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored.")

December 24, 1858 ("See another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter! It looks much smaller than a jay.")

December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”)

December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”)

December 27 1851 ("There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though the snow covers the earth . The sky is always ready to answer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter . . . The heavens present, perhaps, pretty much the same aspect summer and winter.")

December 27, 1859 ("Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.")

December 28, 1852 ("The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me.")

December 28, 1853 ("I hear and see tree sparrows about the weeds in the garden. They seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow; or is it that they are more obvious against the white ground? By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. ")

December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here")

December 30, 1855 (“Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green”)

December 30, 1855 ("I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest.")

December 30, 1859  ("I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree ")

December 31, 1851 ("Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones ") 

December 31, 1857 ("I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground.")

January 1, 1856 ("By the side of the Deep Cut are the tracks of probably tree sparrows about the weeds, and of partridges.")

January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.")

January 3, 1858 (" I see a flock of F. hyemalis this afternoon, the weather is hitherto so warm.")

January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter") 

January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.")

January 10, 1859 ("Four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below,")

January 18, 1860 ("The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality.”)

January 19, 1857 ("A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.")

February 2, 1860 (" Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. ")

February 9, 1851 ("We have forgotten summer and autumn. Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever.")

Sunset, December 29, 2022

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

December 28 <<<<<<<<December 29  >>>>>>>> December 30

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 29

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

lichenous thoughts

December 29.

Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla
The cars are nowhere.
True winter birds, these winged snowballs.
Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1853

Below zero. ice forming/ Open places on the river.between Carlisle Bridge and Nut Meadow Brook

December 29

A very cold morning, — about -15° at 8 a. m. at our door. 

I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon. 

From the smooth open place behind Cheney's a great deal of vapor was rising to the height of a dozen feet or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is a phenomenon of quite cold weather. I did not notice it yesterday afternoon. These open places are a sort of breathing-holes of the river. 

When I look toward the sun, now that they are smooth, they are hardly to be distinguished from the ice. Just as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e. warm, moist air over, the river. 

I collect this morning the little shining black seeds of the amaranth, raised above the snow in its solid or dense spike. 

P. M. — To Ball's Hill, skating. 

Walked back, measuring the river and ice by pacing. The first open place in the main stream in Concord, or no doubt this side Carlisle Bridge, coming up stream, were: — 

• 1st, Holt Ford, 10 rods by 1 (extreme width). 
• 2d, east side Holt Bend, near last, 8 by 1 1/2. 
• 3d, west side Holt Bend (midway), 3 by 1/2. (On the 28th it must have been open nearly all round to Holt Bend.) 
• 4th, Barrett's Bar, 42 rods by 6 at west end, where it reaches 12 rods above ford; extends down the north side very narrow to the rock and only little way down the south side; can walk in middle half-way. 
• 5th, a bar above Monument, 10 by 3. 
• 6th, from Hunt's Bridge to Island, or say 54 rods by 4. 
• 7th, from 8 below willow-row to 5 below boat's place, or 80+ rods by 3. 

This as far as I looked to-day, but no doubt the next was : — 

• 8th, just above ash tree, probably three or four rods long. 
• 10th, Clamshell Bend. 
• 11th, below Nut Meadow, probably two or three rods long.
• 
  

This is the last in Concord. (I do not include the small openings which are to be found now at bridges.) [Feb. 15, 1860, when the river was much more open than Dec. 29, 1859, it was scarcely open at the narrowest place above Bound Rock, only puffed up in the channel, and the first decided opening was at Rice's Bend; all below Bound Rock to Fair Haven Pond, etc., was quite solid. Hence the statements above are true.]

The longest opening is that below my boat's place; next, at junction next Barrett's Bar; next, either Clamshell or Hubbard's Bath. But for area of water that below the junction is considerably the largest of all.

When I went to walk it was about 10° above zero, and when I returned, 1°. I did not notice any vapor rising from the open places, as I did in the morning, when it was -16° and also  -6°. Therefore the cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places. 

It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. 

Apparently, the river is not enough warmer than the air to permit of its rising into it, i. e., evaporating, unless the air is of a very low temperature. When the air is say four or five degrees below, the water being + 32°, then there is a visible evaporation.

Is there the same difference, or some 40°, between the heat of the human breath and that air in which the moisture in the breath becomes visible in vapor? This has to do with the dew-point. Next, what makes the water of those open places thus warm ? and is it any warmer than elsewhere? 

There is considerable heat reflected from a sandy bottom where the water is shallow, and at these places it is always sandy and shallow, but I doubt if this actually makes the water warmer, though it may melt the more opaque ice which absorbs it. 

The fact that Holt Bend, which is deep, is late to freeze, being narrow, seems to prove it to be the swiftness of the water and not reflected heat that prevents freezing. The water is apparently kept warm under the ice and down next to the unfrozen earth, and by a myriad springs from within the bowels of the earth. 

I notice that, on the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes, which nearly cover its surface and make it white as with snow. You see the same on pretty thick ice. This occurs whenever the weather is coldest in the night or very early in the morning. 

Also, where these open places have lately closed, the ice for long distances over the thread of the river will often be heaved up roofwise a foot or more high and a rod wide, apparently pushed up by the heat of this breath beneath. 

As I come home, I observe much thin ice, just formed as it grows colder, drifting in gauze-like masses down these open places, just as I used to see it coming down the open river when it began to freeze. In this case it is not ice which formed last night, but which is even now forming. 

The musquash make a good deal of use of these open spaces. I have seen one four times in three several places this winter, or within three weeks. They improve all the open water they can get. They occasionally leave their clamshells upon the edges of them  now. 

This is all the water to reflect the sky now, whether amber or purple.I sometimes see the musquash dive in the midst of such a placid purple lake. 

Where the channel is broad the water is more sluggish and the ice accordingly thick, or it will answer just as well if the channel is deep, i. e., if its capacity is the same, though it be very narrow. The ice will be firm there too, e. g. at Ash Tree Rock (though it was lately open off the willows eight or ten rods above, being less deep and narrower); and even at the deeper hole next below the opening is not where it is deep, though very narrow, but half a dozen rods below, where it is much wider. 

To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. 

The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. They looked like the skeletons and backbones of celestial sloths, being pointed at each end, or even like porcupine quills or ivory darts sharp at each end. So long and slender, but pronounced, with a manifest backbone and marrow. It looked as if invisible giants were darting them from all parts of the sky at the setting sun. These were long darts indeed. 

Well underneath was an almost invisible rippled vapor whose grain was exactly at right angles with the former, all over the sky, yet it was so delicate that it did not prevent your seeing the former at all. Its filmy arrows all pointed athwart the others. I know that in fact those slender white cloud sloths were nearly parallel across the sky, but how much handsomer are the clouds because the sky is made to appear concave to us! How much more beautiful an arrangement of the clouds than parallel lines!

 At length those white arrows and bows, slender and sharp as they were, gathering toward a point in the west horizon, looked like flames even, forked and darting flames of ivory-white, and low in the west there was a piece of rainbow but little longer than it was broad. 

Taking the river in Concord in its present condition, it is, with one exception, only the shallowest places that are open. Suppose there were a dozen places open a few days ago, if it has grown much colder since, the deepest of them will be frozen over; and the shallowest place in all in Concord is the latest of all to freeze, e. g. at the junction. So, if you get into the river at this season, it is most likely to be at the shallowest places, they being either open or most thinly frozen over. That is one consolation for you.

 The exception is on the west side of the Holt (and the depth is one side from the opening), but that is on account of the narrowness of the river there. Indeed, the whole of Holt Bend is slow to freeze over, on account of the great narrowness and consequent swiftness of the stream there; but the two narrowest points of it are among the first to freeze over, because they are much the deepest, the rush of waters being either below or above them, where it is much shallower, though broader. 

To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. I do not remember any particular swiftness in the current above the railroad ash tree, where there is still an opening (seen December 30th), and it may be owing to the very copious springs in the high bank for twenty rods. There is not elsewhere so long a high and springy bank bounding immediately on the river in the town. To be sure, it is not deep.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1859

Immediately after sunrise . . . a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow. . .. Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon. January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset."); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...");
Open places in the main stream in Concord. See also  December 28, 1859 ("The open places in the river yesterday between Lee's Bridge and Carlisle Bridge");

On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes. See December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday"); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter");  February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"). Compare January 1, 1856 ("On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . .like a loose web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of down")

The cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places.  See January 10, 1859 ("Four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below,")

It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. See December 27, 1859 ("Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.")

To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. See January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun."); January 19, 1859 ("I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening."); Janusry 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?"); January 23, 1859 ("I notice on the ice where it slopes up eastward a little, a distinct rosy light (or pink) reflected from it generally, half an hour before sunset. This is a colder evening than of late, and there is so much the more of it."). See also notes to January 31, 1859 ("Pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. , , , Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky.")

The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. See December 21, 1851 ("To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig . . .converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day"); February 19, 1852 ("Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest")

To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. See December 30, 1855  ("I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest.")

To-night I notice

the rose-color in the snow

and green in the ice.

 

Skating and ice fishing.

December 29

P. M. — Skate to Israel Rice’s. 

I think more. of skates than of the horse or locomotive as annihilators of distance, for while I am getting along with the speed of the horse, I have at the same time the satisfaction of the horse and his rider, and far more adventure and variety than if I were riding. 

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. Just compare him with one walking or running. The walker is but a snail in comparison, and the runner gives up the contest after a few rods. The skater can afford to follow all the windings of a stream, and yet soon leaves far behind and out of sight the walker who cuts across. Distance is hardly an obstacle to him. 

I observe that my ordinary track -- the strokes being seven to ten feet long. The new stroke is eighteen or twenty inches one side of the old. 

The briskest walkers appear to be stationary to the skater. The skater has wings, talaria, to his feet. 

Moreover, you have such perfect control of your feet that you can take advantage of the narrowest and most winding and sloping bridge of ice in order to pass between the button bushes and the open stream or under a bridge on a narrow shelf, where the walker cannot go at all. You can glide securely within an inch of destruction on this the most slippery of surfaces, more securely than you could walk there, perhaps, on any other material. You can pursue swiftly the most intricate and winding path, even leaping obstacles which suddenly present them selves. 

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual (over the middle of the river) but wholly a light yellow-brown. 

Just above south entrance to  Farrar Cut, a large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.

Heavy Haynes was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard’s Bridge. He had caught a pickerel, which the man who weighed it told me (he was apparently a brother of William Wheeler’s, and I saw the fish at the house where it was) weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. 

It was a very handsome fish,— dark-brown above, yellow and brown on the sides, becoming at length almost a clear golden yellow low down, with a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water and tigers in the jungle. 

The shiner and the red finned minnow (a dace) are the favorite bait for them. 

What tragedies are enacted under this dumb icy platform in the fields! What an anxious and adventurous life the small fishes must live, liable at any moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish of moderate size can go sculling along safely in any part of the stream, but suddenly there may come rushing out this jungle or that some greedy monster and gulp it down.

Parent fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can they trust them abroad out of their sight? It takes so many young fishes a week to fill the maw of this large one. And the large ones! Heavy Haynes and Company are lying in wait for them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1858

We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along. See January 14, 1855 (“Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — . . . A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. . . . There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.”)

I saw, on the ice off Pole Brook, a small caterpillar curled up as usual. See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball.”); February 14, 1857 ("The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.”)

A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river. See October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); December 29, 1856 (“By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”)


He had caught a pickerel, which weighed four pounds and three ounces. It was twenty-six inches long. See July 4, 1857 (“We dropped back and found it to be a pickerel, which apparently would weigh four pounds, and . . We struck him three times with a paddle, and once he nearly jumped into the boat, but at last we could not find him. ”); February 29, 1856 ("Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once, . . . which weighed four pounds. . . . and I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

All day a driving snow-storm.

December 29

We survive, in one sense, in our posterity and in the continuance of our race, but when a race of men, of Indians for instance, becomes extinct, is not that the end of the world for them? 

Is not the world forever beginning and coming to an end, both to men and races? 

Suppose we were to foresee that the Saxon race to which we belong would become extinct the present winter, — disappear from the face of the earth, -would it not look to us like the end, the dissolution of the world? 

Such is the prospect of the Indians. 

All day a driving snow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads. No school to-day. 

I cannot see a house fifty rods off from my window through [it] ; yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. [In an ordinary snow-storm, when snowing fast, Jan. 1st, '54, I can see E. Wood's house, or about a mile.]

The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices under doors and side of windows. 

P. M. — Tried my snow-shoes. 

They sink deeper than I expected, and I throw the snow upon my back. When I returned, twenty minutes after, my great tracks were not to be seen. 

It is the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember. 

The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way, it is so thick. 

Yet in spite, or on account, of all, I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note. 

An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in each pocket of my greatcoat. 

What a contrast between the village street now and last summer! The leafy elms then resounding with the warbling vireo, robins, bluebirds, and the fiery hang bird, etc., to which the villagers, kept indoors by the heat, listen through open lattices. 

Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla,-- if they were to have any there. I wade to the post-office as solitary a traveller as ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. 

The snow is mid-leg deep, while drifts as high as one's head are heaped against the houses and fences, and here and there range across the street like snowy mountains. You descend from this, relieved, into capacious valleys with a harder bottom, or more fordable. 

The track of one large sleigh alone is visible, nearly snowed up. 

There is not a track leading from any door to indicate that the in habitants have been forth to-day, any more than there is track of any quadruped by the wood-paths. It is all pure untrodden snow, banked up against the houses now at 4 P. M., and no evidence that a villager has been abroad to-day. 

In one place the drift covers the front yard fence and stretches thence upward to the top of the front door, shutting all in, and frequently the snow lies banked up three or four feet high against the front doors, and the windows are all snowed up, and there is a drift over each window, and the clapboards are all hoary with it. 

It is as if the inhabitants were all frozen to death, and now you threaded the desolate streets weeks after that calamity. 

There is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the Mill-Dam, but one saddled horse on which a farmer has come into town. 

The cars are nowhere. 

Yet they are warmer, merrier than ever there within. 

At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' --or how deep the snow is on a level. 

Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they appear in the northern parts of the United States “early in December, or with the first heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high winds.” 

This day answers to that description exactly. 

The wind is northerly. 

He adds that "they are . . . universally considered as the harbingers of severe cold weather.” 

They come down from the extreme north and are common to the two continents; quotes Pennant as saying that they

 “inhabit not only Greenland but even the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen, where vegetation is nearly extinct, and scarcely any but cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore excites wonder, how birds, which are graminivorous in every other than those frost-bound regions, subsist: yet are there found in great flocks both on the land and ice of Spitzbergen.” 

P. also says that they inhabit in summer "the most naked Lapland Alps,” and “descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads and fields; on which account the Uplanders call them "hardwarsfogel,” hard-weather birds. 

Also P. says “they overflow [in winter] the more southern countries in amazing multitudes.” 

W. says their colors are very variable, "and the whiteness of their plumage is observed to be greatest towards the depth of winter.” 

Also W. says truly that they seldom sit long, “being a roving restless bird.” 

Peabody says that in summer they are “pure white and black,” but are not seen of that color here. 

Those I saw to-day were of that color, behind A. Wheeler's. 

He says they are white and rusty brown here. 

These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. I could hardly see them, the air was so full of driving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night? 

The woodchopper goes not to the wood to-day. His axe and beetle and wedges and whetstone he will find buried deep under a drift, perchance, and his fire all extinguished. 

As you go down the street, you see on either hand, where erst were front yards with their parterres, rolling pastures of snow, unspotted blankness swelling into drifts. All along the path lies a huge barrow of snow raised by the arctic mound-builder. It is like a pass through the Wind River Mountains or the Sierra Nevada, -- a spotless expanse of drifted snow, sloping upward over fences to the houses, deep banks all along their fronts closing the doors. It lies in and before Holbrook's piazza, dwarfing its columns, like the sand about Egyptian temples. The windows are all sealed up, so that the traveller sees no face of inhabitant looking out upon him. 

The housekeeper thinks with pleasure or pain of what he has in his larder. 

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. 

The farmer considers how much pork he has in his barrel, how much meal in his bin, how much wood in his shed. 

Each family, perchance, sends forth one representative before night, who makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or post-office to learn the news; i. e., to hear what others say to it, who can give the best account of it, best can name it, has waded farthest in it, has been farthest out and can tell the biggest and most adequate story; and hastens back with the news. 


I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. I was trying to get a point d'appui within him, a shelf to spring an arch from, to suggest some employment and aim for life. 

“Satisfied!” said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another, by George. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table; that will satisfy him, by gorry."

When I met him the other day, he asked me if I had made any improvement. 

Yet I could never by any manæuvring get him to take what is called a spiritual view of things, of life. He allowed that study and education was a good thing, but for him it was too late. He only thought of its expediency; nothing answering to what many call their aspirations. 

He was humble, if he can be called humble who never aspires. 

He cut his trees very low, close to the ground, because the sprouts that came from such stumps were better. Perhaps he distinguished between the red and scarlet oak; one had a pale inner bark, the other a darker or more reddish one. 

Without the least effort he could defend prevailing institutions which affected him, better than any philosopher, because he implicitly accepted them and knew their whole value. 

He gave the true reason for their prevalence, because speculation had never suggested to him any other. Looking round among the trees, he said he could enjoy himself in the woods chopping alone in a winter day; he wanted no better sport. 

The trees were frozen, -- had been sometimes, — but would but would frequently thaw again during the day. Split easier for it, but did not chop better. 

The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.

The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.  Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1853

Wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you.  See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face . . ."); December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”); February3, 1856 (“We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back.”);  January 19, 1857 ("A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. . . .A fine dry snow, intolerable to face");

The cars are nowhere. At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' See January 19, 1857 ("It is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.!"); February 18, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow drifting. No cars from above or below till 1 P. M.”)

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. See December 30, 1855 ("About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps.")

I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note.These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. See December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic.");  March 20, 1852 ("As to the winter birds, — those which came here in the winter, - I saw . . .  in midwinter, the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. See November 15, 1851 ("Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer."); December 24, 1853 ("How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough.") See also Walden (" One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living.")

Thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds.  See February 3, 1852 ("The scenery is wholly arctic. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now."); February 9, 1851 ("We have forgotten summer and autumn. Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever."); February 27, 1852 ("We have almost completely forgotten summer."); February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer.")

December 29. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 29

Thoughts of summer and 

autumn are departed as 

leaves blown from the trees.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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