Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place. 

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. 

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. 

Aster puniceus left. 

A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night. 

I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck! 

 А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.

The river is smooth as polished silver. 

A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat. 

I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over. 

Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before. 

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries. 

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle. 

It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.

There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water. 

I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered. 

I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time. 

At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move? 

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. 

I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank. 

I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants. 

I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by.  The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance. 

This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass. 

There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with! 

The wind has risen and sky overcast. 

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back. 

Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 11

Toward the distant wood

I hear the cawing of crows –

I wear mittens now.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

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-531111

A Book of the Seasons: December 6 (walking on ice, tracking, buds and pinweed)

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 6

I see boys skating

but know not when the ice froze.

So busy writing.

December 6, 1854

The mist is so thick

even the reflected mist

now veils the hillsides.

December 6, 1859

Some plants are now seen

more simply and distinctly

and to advantage.

December 6, 1856

December 6, 2024

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. December 6, 1858

Though foul weather yesterday, this is the warmest and pleasantest day yet. December 6, 1852

Cows are turned out to pasture again. December 6, 1852

On the Corner causeway fine cobwebs glimmer in the air, covering the willow twigs and the road, and sometimes stretching from side to side above my head. December 6, 1852

I see many little gnat-like insects in the air there. December 6, 1852

Tansy still fresh, and I saw autumnal dandelion a few days since. December 6, 1852

A great slate-colored hawk sails away from the Cliffs. December 6, 1852

To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. December 6, 1859

It is somewhat of a lichen day . . .What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. . . .How naturally they adorn our works of art! December 6, 1859

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. December 6, 1859

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. December 6, 1859

You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. December 6, 1859

The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. December 6, 1859

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze. December 6, 1858

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. December 6, 1859

It is already half fallen, melting off. December 6, 1858

The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. December 6, 1858

It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. December 6, 1858

Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light. December 6, 1858

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. December 6, 1859

I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture. December 6, 1854

Skating is fairly begun. December 6, 1856

The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. December 6, 1856

Much of the ice in the middle is dark and thin, having been formed last night, and when you stamp you see the water trembling in spots here and there. December 6, 1856

I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca. December 6, 1856

I feel an affection for the rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. December 6, 1856

The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray. December 6, 1856

How handsome every one of these leaves that are blown about the snow-crust or lie neglected beneath, soon to turn to mould! December 6, 1856

Though so many oak leaves hang on all winter, you will be surprised on going into the woods at any time, only a short time after a fall of snow, to see how many have lately fallen on it and are driven about over it, so that you would think there could be none left till spring. December 6, 1856

Far the greater part of the shrub oak leaves are fallen. December 6, 1856

Against this swamp I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. December 6, 1856

White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday. December 6, 1856

On the meadows, where this overflow was so deep that it did not freeze solid, it cracks from time to time with a threatening squeak. December 6, 1856

Where I crossed the river on the roughish white ice, there were coarse ripple-marks two or three feet apart and convex to the south or up-stream, extending quite across, and many spots of black ice a foot wide, more or less in the midst of the white, where probably was water yesterday. December 6, 1856

The water, apparently, had been blown southerly on to the ice already formed, and hence the ripple-marks. December 6, 1856

I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy, leading from the springy shore to the then open middle, — the faintest possible vestiges, which are only seen in a favorable light. December 6, 1856

I see also what I take to be rabbit's tracks made in that slosh, shaped like a horse's track, only rather longer and larger. December 6, 1856

Flannery tells me he is cutting in Holbrook's Swamp, in the Great Meadows, a lonely place. He sees a fox repeatedly there, and also a white weasel,--once with a mouse in its mouth, in the swamp. December 6, 1857

Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter, made undoubtedly December 3d, when this snow ice was mere slosh. It had come up through a hole (now black ice) by the stem of a button-bush, and, apparently, pushed its way through the slosh, as through snow on land, leaving a track eight inches wide, more or less, with the now frozen snow shoved up two inches high on each side, i. e. two inches above the general level. December 6, 1856

Where the ice was firmer are seen only the tracks of its feet. It had crossed the open middle (now thin black ice) and continued its singular trail to the opposite shore, as if a narrow sled had been drawn bottom upward. December 6, 1856

At Bittern Cliff I saw where they had been playing, sliding, or fishing, apparently to-day, on the snow- covered rocks, on which, for a rod upward and as much in width, the snow was trodden and worn quite smooth, as if twenty had trodden and slid there for several hours. Their droppings are a mass of fishes' scales and bones, — loose, scaly black masses. December 6, 1856

At this point the black ice approached within three or four feet of the rock, and there was an open space just there, a foot or two across, which appeared to have been kept open by them. December 6, 1856

I continued along up that side and crossed on white ice just below the pond. December 6, 1856

The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. December 6, 1856

Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks. December 6, 1856

I saw one place where there was a zigzag piece of black ice two rods long and one foot wide in the midst of the white, which I was surprised to find had been made by an otter pushing his way through the slosh. December 6, 1856

In many places the otters appeared to have gone floundering along in the sloshy ice and water. December 6, 1856

These very conspicuous tracks generally commenced and terminated at some button-bush or willow, where a black ice now masked the hole of that date. December 6, 1856

When I speak of the otter to our oldest village doctor, who should be ex officio our naturalist, he is greatly surprised, not knowing that such an animal is found in these parts, December 6, 1856

It is surprising that our hunters know no more about them. December 6, 1856

On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits. December 6, 1856

Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides. December 6, 1856

What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! December 6, 1856

They are never more interesting than now on Lechea Plain, since they are perfectly relieved, brown on white. December 6, 1856

You were not aware before how extensive these grain-fields. December 6, 1856

Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage. December 6, 1856

The pinweeds, etc., have been for the most part confounded with the russet or brown earth beneath them, being seen against a background of the same color, but now, being seen against a pure white background, they are as distinct as if held up to the sky. December 6, 1856

Some plants seen, then, in their prime or perfection, when supporting an icy burden in their empty chalices. December 6, 1856

Our eyes go searching along the stems for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters. December 6, 1856

For we are hunters pursuing the summer on snow-shoes and skates, all winter long. There is really but one season in our hearts. December 6, 1856

In the evening I see the spearer's light on the river. December 6, 1852

10 P. M. — Hear geese going over. December 6, 1855

*****

A Book of the Seasons: First Ice

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

*****

April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.")

November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.")

November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.")

November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm")

November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering") 

November 20, 1858  ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields.")

November 24, 1858 ("It is lichen day.")

November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow,. . .. Now see . . .the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.")

December 1, 1852 ('' At this season I observe the form of the buds which hare prepare for spring.")
December 3, 1856 ("Fewer weeds now rise above the snow. Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed.")

December 4, 1856 ("Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night.")

December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See 

December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth.")

December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too ") 

December 5, 1856 ("The ice trap was sprung last night.")

December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.")

December 5, 1858 ("Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing . . .so that there is quite a glaze.")

December 5, 1859 ("There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves")

The dripping trees and

falling ice will wet you through

like rain in the woods.

Here or there one or

another rainbow color –

a small point of light.

December 6, 1858

December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”)

December 8, 1850 ("A week ago I saw cows being driven home from pasture. Now they are kept at home.")

December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year.")

December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day.") 

December 13, 1852 (" About the base of the larger pin-weed, the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem.")

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.")

December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds.") 

December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produces a slight glaze, the first of the winter.")

December 26, 1855 ("After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had.")
December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”)
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.”)
December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")
January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”)

January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran.")

January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it.")

January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.")

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.”)

January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.")

February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

 February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.")

February 7. 1859("They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")

February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.”)

February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”)

February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday.. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”)

February 21, 1855 ("How plain, wholesome, and earthy are the colors of quadrupeds generally! . . . The white of the polar bear, ermine weasel, etc., answers to the snow; . . .There are few or no bluish animals.")

February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”)

February 22, 1855 ("Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago . . . All white but the tip of the tail.")

We are hunters 

pursuing the summer

on snow-shoes and skates

 all winter long.

 

There is but 

one season 

in our hearts. 

December 6, 1856

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 5 <<<<<<<< December 6 >>>>>>>> December 7

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 6

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

tinyurl.com/HDT06DEC

A Book of the Seasons: December 5 (clear cold winter weather, a pause in boating, ice snow and solitude, winter birds, winter colors, winter sky)

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 5

I love best to have 

each thing in season only

and then do without.

December 5, 1856

There is a bright light

on the pines and on their stems –

the lichens on their bark. 

December 5, 1850

Many winter birds
have a sharp note like tinkling 
glass or icicles.
December 5, 1853

Now for the short days.

Sun behind a low cloud and

the world is darkened.

December 5, 1853

Pale blue winter sky

simple, perfectly cloudless –

a white moon half full.

December 5, 1856

To be born into

the most estimable place

in the nick of time.

December 5, 1856

December 5, 2020

Very cold last night. December 5, 1854

What a contrast between this week and last. December 5, 1856

The ground has been frozen more or less about a week. December 5, 1853

Suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter. December 5, 1859

Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep. December 5, 1858

Clear, cold winter weather. December 5, 1856

Probably river skimmed over in some places. December 5, 1854

The river is well skimmed over in most places. December 5, 1856

The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow, which was sprinkled on it this noon. December 5, 1853

Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over. December 5, 1853

Got my boat in. December 5, 1853

I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in. December 5, 1856

I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. December 5, 1856

I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. December 5, 1856

The damp snow with water beneath . . . is frozen solid, making a crust which bears well. December 5, 1854

There are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has scattered many over the snow-crust. December 5, 1856

It would be easier gathering them now than ever. December 5, 1856

Some fine straw-colored grasses . . . still rise above this crusted snow, and even a recess is melted around them. December 5, 1856

The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow. December 5, 1856

As I walk along the side of the Hill, a pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut, flying low in mid- course and then ascending to the tree. December 5, 1856

I hear one's faint tut tut or gnah gnah — no doubt heard a good way by its mate now flown into the next tree .December 5, 1856

It is a chubby bird, white, slate-color, and black. December 5, 1856

Saw and heard a downy woodpecker on an apple tree.  December 5, 1853

Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? December 5, 1853

The chip of the tree sparrow, also, and the whistle of the shrike, are they not wintry in the same way ? December 5, 1853

The partridge is budding on the apple tree and bursts away from the path-side. December 5, 1853

Four quails running across the Turnpike. December 5, 1859

At noon a few flakes fall. December 5, 1857

Rather hard walking in the snow. December 5, 1859

There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves December 5, 1859

The perfect silence, as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled (her axle). December 5, 1859

The stillness (motionlessness) of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses, as if they were sculptured out of marble. December 5, 1859

A fine mizzle falling and freezing to the twigs and stubble, so that there is quite a glaze. December 5, 1858

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters. December 5, 1858

These humble withered plants, which have not of late attracted your attention, now arrest it by their very stiffness and exaggerated size. December 5, 1858

Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow. December 5, 1858

The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms. December 5, 1858

It is surprising how the slenderest grasses can support such a weight, but the culm is buttressed by an other icy culm or column, and the load gradually taken on. December 5, 1858

In the woods the drooping pines compel you to stoop. December 5, 1858

In all directions they are bowed down, hanging their heads. December 5, 1858

Several small white oak trees full of stiffened leaves by the roadside, strangely interesting and beautiful. December 5, 1859

The evergreens are greener than ever. There is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems. The lichens on their bark reflect it. December 5, 1850

Some sugar maples, both large and small, have still, like the larger oaks, a few leaves about the larger limbs near the trunk. December 5, 1858

The large yellowish leaves of the black oak (young trees) are peculiarly conspicuous, rich and warm, in the midst of this ice and snow December 5, 1858

And on the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. December 5, 1858

The birches are still upright, and their numerous parallel white ice-rods remind me of the recent gossamer-like gleams which they reflected. December 5, 1858

Half a mile off, a tall and slender pitch pine against the dull-gray mist, peculiarly monumental. December 5, 1859

Many living leaves are very dark red now. . .  the checkerberry, andromeda, low cedar, and more or less lambkill. December 5, 1853

Now for the short days and early twilight, in which I hear the sound of woodchopping. December 5, 1853

The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened. December 5,1853

It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. December 5, 1856

A white moon, half full, in the pale or dull blue heaven and a whiteness like the reflection of the snow, extending up from the horizon all around a quarter the way up to the zenith. December 5, 1856 (This at 4 p. m. December 5, 1856)

The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky. December 5, 1856

Before I got home the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow yellowish light equally diffused, so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon cloud, fifteen minutes before. December 5, 1853

In the horizon I see a succession of the brows of hills, - the eyebrows of the recumbent earth - separated by long valleys filled with vapory haze.   December 5, 1850

I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too. December 5, 1856

I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold. December 5, 1856

December 5, 2014

*****

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in Boat out

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Anthropic Principle

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

*****

December 5, 2023

February 19, 1854 ("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”)
April 13, 1852 ("The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts.”)
April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season").
August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe.")
August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.")
August 22, 1854 ("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.")
August 23, 1853 ("Live in each season as it passes.")
August 23, 1853 ("Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end")
September 9, 1854 ("The earth is the mother of all creatures.")

November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.")

November 20, 1857 ("I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.")

 November 26, 1860 ("I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off.")

November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.") 

December 1, 1857 ("I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me on a pine. I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter")

December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat,")

December 4, 1856 ("Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night.")
December 4, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river.")
December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.")
December 4, 1856 ("Each day at present, the wriggling river nibbles off the edges of the trap which have advanced in the night.")

December 7, 1856 (The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter."")

December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond . . .The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick.”)

December 8, 1850 ("The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)

December 8, 1859 ("The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree.")
December 9, 1855 ("At 8.30 a fine snow begins to fall, increasing very gradually, perfectly straight down, till in fifteen minutes the ground is white . . . But in a few minutes it turns to rain, and so the wintry landscape is postponed for the present.”)

December 9, 1856 ("Fair Haven was so solidly frozen on the 6th that there was fishing on it,")
December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden.")

December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)
December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be,")
December 16, 1857 ("Begins to snow about 8 A. M., and in fifteen minutes the ground is white, but it soon stops.")

December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle! ")

December 24, 1854 ("A slight glaze, the first of the winter. This gives the woods a hoary aspect and increases the stillness by making the leaves immovable even in considerable wind.")
December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.")

December 26, 1855 ("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are.")

December 5, 2020

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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 4 <<<<<<<< December 5  >>>>>>>> December 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 5 

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 ©  2009-2022