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.
Single trees on hill
so distinct and black under
dull mist-covered sky.
This water on ice –
reflected trees appear as
if seen through a mist.
of yellowish or golden moss –
sunlight on the ground.
The distant woods are
more bluish these warm and moist
misty winter days.
How often we sailed
over this spot where we make
a fire on the ice.
February 7, 2016 |
This morning was one of the coldest in the winter. February 7, 1854
The coldest night for a long, long time. February 7, 1855
People dreaded to go to bed. . . .Sheets froze stiff about the faces. February 7, 1855
My pail of water was frozen in the morning so that I could not break it. February 7, 1855
The latches are white with frost, and every nail-head in entries, etc., has a white cap. February 7, 1855
Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. February 7, 1855
The cold has stopped the clock. February 7, 1855
The river has not been so concealed by snow before. February 7, 1854
The snow does not merely lie level on it so many inches deep, but great drifts, perchance beginning on the land, stretch quite across it, so that you cannot always tell where it is. February 7, 1854
Many of the roads about the town, which for long distances have been completely closed by the snow for more than a month, are just beginning to be open. February 7, 1857
In severe winters the quails venture out of the woods and join the poultry of the farmer's yard, if it be near the edge of the wood. February 7, 1857
Begins to snow at 8 A.M.; turns to rain at noon, and clears off, or rather ceased raining, at night, with some glaze on the trees. February 7, 1856
This the first thawing, though slight, since the 25th of December February 7, 1856
Another warm day, the snow fast going off . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m. February 7, 1857
It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my greatcoat and carry it on my arm. February 7, 1857
Thermometer 43°. Fair, with many clouds, mostly obscuring the sun. Wind northwest, growing cooler. February 7, 1860
The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist or smoke, apparently owing to the color of the ice. February 7, 1857
During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black. February 7, 1856
Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days? February 7, 1859
Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. February 7, 1859
They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes. February 7, 1859
These brightening lichens in a moist day. Go and bathe and screen your eyes with them in the softened light of the woods. February 7, 1859
Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. February 7, 1858
I am surprised to find the epigaea on this hill . . . It extends a rod or so and is probably earlier there than where I have found it before. February 7, 1858
Some of the buds show a very little color. The leaves have lately been much eaten, I suspect by partridges. February 7, 1858
The bark of the Populus grandidentata [in the Fair Haven orchard] is a green clay-color. February 7, 1858
Heard a loud or tumultuous warbling or twittering of birds . . . when they came in sight and passed over my head I saw that they were probably redpolls. February 7, 1857
Made a fire on the snow-covered ice half a mile below Ball's Hill -- a large warm fire . . . We had often sailed over this very spot. February 7, 1854
*****
*****.
December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”)January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”) January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color.") January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue.") January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”) January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”) Now the river is
one level white blanket of
snow quite to each shore.
February 1, 1855
February 2, 1854 ("Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. ")February 3, 1852 ("The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs . . .Who can believe that this is the habitable globe?")February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”) February 5, 1852 ("The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, -- in sun, rain, and in the night.")
February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”) February 5, 1857 ("Mizzling rain.")
February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more imposing.) February 6, 1852 ("Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly") February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue .") February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day.")
February 6, 1856 (" The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds")
February 6, 1857 ("One who has seen them tells me that a covey of thirteen quails daily visits Hayden's yard and barn, where he feeds them and can almost put his hands on them.")
February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on.") February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice.") February 8, 1856 ("The snow is soft, and the eaves begin to run as not for many weeks.") February 8, 1857 (".the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter.")
February 8, 1858 ("The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden . . . . . In many places about the shore it is open a dozen feet wide, as when it begins to break up in the spring.") February 8. 1860 ("40°and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring.")
February 8, 1861 ("Coldest day yet; –22 ° at least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day.")
February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy. . . We had now forgotten summer and autumn, but had already begun to anticipate spring.")
February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour.”) February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be some thing divine, something celestial, in me.")
February 11, 1855 (“The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods.”
February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”)
February 11, 1858 ("11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter.")
February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts; the cocks crow more than usual in barns; my greatcoat is an incumbrance.")
Birch trees along the
way – a sense of place in
these beautiful woods.
February 7, 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.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
tinyurl.com/HDT07Feb
