A Book of the Seasons: December 22 ( first ice, second snow, tracking, winter birds, ice fishing, the westering sun, fire on ice)

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 22

A sprinkling of snow

whitens the ice in the swamp –

I see rabbit tracks.

December 22, 1853

You cannot go out 

so early but you will find 

some wild creature's track

. December 22, 1852

Walden skimmed over

will probably freeze to-night

if this weather holds.

December 22, 1853

A narrow line of

yellow rushes lit up by

the westering sun.

December 22, 1859

December 22. 2018

Another fine winter day. December 22, 1859

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. December 22, 1850

A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter, just enough to spoil the skating, now ten days old, on the ponds. December 22, 1853

This evening and night, the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now. December 22, 1860

The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow. December 22, 1852

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. December 22, 1852

Last night's sprinkling of snow does not now whiten the ground, except that here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it. December 22, 1853

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere. December 22, 1850

I see where a rabbit has hopped across [Walden] in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is. December 22, 1858

The squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now, or the glimpse of a meadow (?) mouse, give occasion for a remark. December 22, 1852

Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree. Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that they contained an almond before the naturalist did. He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets. December 22, 1850

I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow. December 22, 1859 

In a . . . nest on this island [ what I will call Sassafras Island, in Flint's Pond], ]I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? December 22, 1859

What a reminiscence of summer, a fiery hangbird's nest dangling from an elm over the road when perhaps the thermometer is down to -20 (?), and the traveller goes beating his arms beneath it! December 22, 1859

It is a dark-aired winter day, yet I see the summer plants still peering above the snow. December 22, 1850

In the swamps the dry, yellowish-colored fruit of the poison dogwood hangs like jewelry on long, drooping stems. It is pleasant to meet it, it has so much character relatively to man. December 22, 1850

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, – the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and, on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry. December 22, 1852

The large leafy lichens on the white pines, especially on the outside of the wood, look almost a golden yellow in the light reflected from the snow, while deeper in the wood they are ash-colored. December 22, 1859

Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce swamp opposite J. Farmer's. December 22, 1853

It is remarkable how few inhabitants of Concord can těll a spruce from a fir, and probably not two a white from a black spruce, unless they are together. The woodchopper, even hereabouts, cuts down several kinds of trees without knowing what they are. Neither do the spruce trees know the villager. The villager doesn't know a black spruce tree when he sees it. How slender his relation to the spruce tree! The white has taken refuge in swamps from him. It is nothing but so much evergreen to him. December 22, 1853

Three men are fishing on Flint's Pond, where the ice is seven or eight inches thick. December 22, 1859

The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won't bite. December 22, 1859

However, the pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day. December 22, 1859

On what I will call Sassafras Island, in this pond, I notice the largest and handsomest high blueberry at the ground into four stems, all very large and the largest three inches in diameter (one way) at three feet high, and at the ground, where they seem to form one trunk (at least grown together), nine inches in diameter.  December 22, 1859

Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds. December 22, 1853

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. December 22, 1858

I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. December 22, 1858

Hear the well-known mew and watery twitter of the last and the drier chilt chilt of the former. December 22, 1858

These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow. December 22, 1858

There may be thirty goldfinches, very brisk and pretty tame. December 22, 1858

They hang head downwards on the weeds. December 22, 1858

I hear of their coming to pick sunflower seeds in Melvin’s garden these days. December 22, 1858

The cladium (?) retains its seeds over the ice, little conical, sharp-pointed, flat-based, dark-brown, shining seeds. December 22, 1859

I look back to the wharf rock shore and see that rush (cladium I have called it), the warmest object in the landscape, — a narrow line of warm yellow rushes — for they reflect the western light, — along the edge of the somewhat snowy pond and next the snow-clad and wooded shore. December 22, 1859

This rush, which is comparatively inconspicuous in the summer, becomes thus in the winter afternoons a conspicuous and interesting object, lit up by the westering sun. December 22, 1859

Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red Bridge, which looked like a bright reflection of a setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid, in this winter evening air. December 22, 1852

December 22, 2019

*****

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-bird (cedar waxwing)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

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, Winter Colors

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now

See also Winter Colors (The solstice) (posted December 21, 2020)

 *****

December 22, 2017

March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring,")

May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now.)

June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

June 26, 1853 ("Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.”)
August 31, 1858 ("The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.”)

November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”)

November 18, 1855 ("The snow is the great track-revealer.")

November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, . . . The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening.";

December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen. .. and whitened with snow , which was sprinkled on it this noon'")

December 8, 1855 ("Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected")

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

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

December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.")

December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day")

December 21, 1854 ("We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.")

December 21, 1854 "Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick")

December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")
December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”)
December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday.")

December 21, 1857 ("Walden and Fair Haven . . . have only frozen just enough to bear me.")

December 21, 1859 ("A fine winter day")

 

December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon”); also Walden (("In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December”)

December 23, 1855 ("These are the colors of the earth now.")

December 23, 1859 ("The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day")

December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”)

December 24, 1859 ("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week")

December 24, 1859 ("I measure the blueberry bushes on Flint's Pond Island.")

December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, . . . This being the only pond hereabouts that is open.”)

December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")

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

December 28, 1856 (". . . if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i.e. a wilder experience than the town affords.")

December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.”)

December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”)

December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.")

January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.")

January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! ")

January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.") 

January 12, 1855 ("On Flint’s Pond I find Nat Rice fishing. He has not caught one. I asked him what he thought the best time to fish. He said, “When the wind first comes south after a cold spell, on a bright morning.”");

January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")

January 14, 1853 ("Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.")

January 22, 1854 ("No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first")

January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”)

January 26, 1860 ("To Eleazer Davis's Hill, and made a fire on the ice, merely to see the flame and smell the smoke.")

February 2, 1860  ("And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river.")

February 7, 1854 ("Made a fire on the snow-covered ice half a mile below Ball's Hill”)

February 16, 1854 ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall.")

February 16, 1854 ("Snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.")

February 20, 1854 ("Make a fire on the south side of the pond, using canoe birch bark and oak leaves for kindling.")

February 21, 1854 ("There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.")

December 22, 2014

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 21  <<<<<<<<  December 22  >>>>>>>> December 23

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 22

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

He who fishes a pond first in the season expects to succeed best.

January  20. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow in the yard — and some are large and bushlike — for its seeds, their well-filled granary now. There are a few tracks reaching from weed to weed, where some have run, but under the larger plants the snow is entirely trodden and blackened, proving that a large flock has been there and flown. 

Ah, our indescribable winter sky, pure and continent and clear, between emerald (?) and amber (?), such as summer never sees! What more beautiful or soothing to the eye than those finely divided or minced clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton-batting, now reaching up from the west above my head! Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends are curved like spray or wisps, All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint. 

No sooner has Walden frozen thick enough to bear than the fishermen have got out their reels and minnows, for he who fishes a pond first in the season expects to succeed best.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1853

I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow. See August 31, 1859 (" Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds."); January 6. 1858 ("I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow"); see also January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them!")

Our indescribable winter sky, pure and continent and clear, See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind . . .serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."); December 25, 1858 ("In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour."); January 27, 1860 ("What hieroglyphics in the winter sky!"); June 24, 1852 ("What could a man learn by watching the clouds?")

No sooner has Walden frozen thick enough to bear than the fishermen have got out their reels and minnows. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it"); January 6, 1853 (Walden apparently froze over last night. . . .. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking.")

Look for hard ice in the shade.

February 23. 

Fire & Ice February 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Quinsigamond Pond, where was good skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. 

I was just saying to Blake that I should look for hard ice in the shade, or north side, of some wooded hill close to the shore, though skating was out of the question elsewhere, when, looking up, I saw a gentleman and lady very gracefully gyrating and, as it were, courtesying to each other in a small bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of the pond. 

Intervening bushes and shore concealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful motions, their bodies inclined at various angles as they gyrated forward and backward about a small space, looking as if they would hit each other, reminded me of the circling of two winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and approaching. 

I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. 

I see, just caught in the pond, a brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, but a much finer and slighter reticulation than the common, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout. This is much shorter and broader as you look down on it.

In Bell Pond (once Bladder Pond) on the same road, near to Worcester, they were catching little shiners, only, at most, two inches long, for perch bait. (The perch and pickerel they commonly catch at Quinsigamond are small.) They cut a round hole about three feet in diameter and let down a simple net, with only a stone to sink it in the bottom, then cast Indian meal or bits of cracker into the water, and the minnows swim forward after the bait, and the fisherman, without seeing them, pulls up the net at a venture.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1859

One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. See note to February 18, 1857 (“I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

A brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout.  See April 21, 1858 ("Melvin says that those short-nosed brook pickerel are caught in the river also, but rarely weigh more than two pounds.”) and note to January 20, 1859 (“Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

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

That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble.

January 4.

P. M.—The weather still remarkably warm; the ice too soft for skating.

I go through by the Andromeda Ponds and down river from Fair Haven. I am encouraged by the sight of men fishing in Fair Haven Pond, for it reminds me that they have animal spirits for such adventures. I am glad to be reminded that any go a-fishing.

When I get down near to Cardinal Shore, the sun near setting, its light is wonderfully reflected from a narrow edging of yellowish stubble at the edge of the meadow ice and foot of the hill, an edging only two or three feet wide, and the stubble but a few inches high. (I am looking east.)

It is remarkable because the ice is but a dull lead-color (it is so soft and sodden), reflecting no light, and the hill beyond is a dark russet, here and there patched with snow, but this narrow intermediate line of stubble is all aglow.

I get its true color and brightness best when I do not look directly at it, but a little above it toward the hill, seeing it with the lower part of my eye more truly and abstractly. It is as if all the rays slid over the ice and lodged against and were reflected by the stubble. It is surprising how much sunny light a little straw that survives the winter will reflect.

The channel of the river is open part of the way.

The Cornus sericea and some quite young willow shoots are the red-barked twigs so conspicuous now along the riversides.

That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble was remarkable. I was coming down-stream over the meadows, on the ice, within four or five rods of the eastern shore. The sun on my left was about a quarter of an hour above the horizon. The ice was soft and sodden, of a dull lead-color, quite dark and reflecting no light as I looked eastward, but my eyes caught by accident a singular sunny brightness reflected from the narrow border of stubble only three or four inches high (and as many feet wide perhaps) which rose along the edge of the ice at the foot of the hill. It was not a mere brightening of the bleached stubble, but the warm and yellow light of the sun, which, it appeared, it was peculiarly fitted to reflect. It was that amber light from the west which we sometimes witness after a storm, concentrated on this stubble, for the hill beyond was merely a dark russet spotted with snow. All the yellow rays seemed to be reflected by this insignificant stubble alone, and when I looked more generally a little above it, seeing it with the under part of my eye, it appeared yet more truly and more bright; the reflected light made its due impression on my eye, separated from the proper color of the stubble, and it glowed almost like a low, steady, and serene fire. It was precisely as if the sunlight had mechanically slid over the ice, and lodged against the stubble.

It will be enough to say of something warmly and sunnily bright that it glowed like lit stubble.

It was remarkable that, looking eastward, this was the only evidence of the light in the west.

Here and there in the meadow, etc., near springy places, you see where the thinner ice has been pushed up tentwise and cracked, either for want of room, two fields crowding together, or expanding with heat from below.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1858

The sun near setting, its light is wonderfully reflected from a narrow edging of yellowish stubble at the edge of the meadow ice. See February 12, 1851 ("Along the channel of the river I see at a distance thin cakes of ice forced upon their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river."); October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before."); December 25, 1858 ("Now that the sun is setting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-clad pond and strike the rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end. Though the bare rocky shore there is only a foot or a foot and a half high as I look, it reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct"); August 28, 1860 ("[J]ust before setting, the sun comes out into a clear space in the horizon and a sudden blaze of light falls on east end of the pond and the hillside. . . . revealing the most vivid and varied shades of green. I never saw such a green glow before.")

The channel of the river is open part of the way. See January 7, 1855 ("The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and I hear the pleasant sound of running water. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again.")

A wilder experience than the town affords

December 28. Sunday. 

Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here.

Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water. 

They have had but poor luck. One middling-sized pickerel and one large yellow perch only, since 9 or 10 a. m. It is now nearly sundown. 

The perch is very full of spawn. How handsome, with its broad dark transverse bars, sharp narrow triangles, broadest on the back! 

The men are standing or sitting about a smoky fire of damp dead wood, near by the spot where many a fisherman has sat before, and I draw near, hoping to hear a fish story. 

One says that Louis Menan, the French Canadian who lives in Lincoln, fed his ducks on the fresh-water clams which he got at Fair Haven Pond. He saw him open the shells, and the ducks snapped them up out of the shells very fast. 

I observe that some shrub oak leaves have but little silveriness beneath, as if they were a variety, the color of the under approaching that of the upper surface somewhat. 

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. 

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. 

There lies a pickerel or perch on the ice, waving a fin or lifting its gills from time to time, gasping its life away. 

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. 

As the Esquimaux of Smith's Strait in North Greenland laughed when Kane warned them of their utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice on all sides from their race, unless they attempted in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I laugh when you tell me of the danger of impoverishing myself by isolation. It is here that the walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the eider ducks and auks on which I batten, most abound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1856


Walden completely frozen over again last night. See December 19, 1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night . . . "); December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle."); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.").

. . .  if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. See January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.") June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind. The mass of men are still and always young men in this respect. They do not think they are lucky unless they get a long string of fish, though they have the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself."); October 4, 1858 ("A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. . . There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. See December 17, 1850 ("I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer.")

I thrive best on solitude. . . . See August 2, 1854 ("I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much.")

That grand old poem called Winter is round again

December 7

Sunday. P. M. — Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond. 

It takes my feet a few moments to get used to the skates. I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning. This is the first skating. I keep mostly to the smooth ice about a rod wide next the shore commonly, where there was an overflow a day or two ago. There is not the slightest overflow to-day, and yet it is warm (thermometer at 25 at 4.30 p. m.). It must be that the river is falling. 

Now I go shaking over hobbly places, now shoot over a bridge of ice only a foot wide between the water and the shore at a bend, — Hubbard Bath, — always so at first there. Now I suddenly see the trembling surface of water where I thought were black spots of ice only around me. 

The river is rather low, so that I cannot keep the river above the Clamshell Bend. I am confined to a very narrow edging of ice in the meadow, gliding with unexpected ease through withered sedge, but slipping sometimes on a twig; again taking to the snow to reach the next ice, but this rests my feet; straddling the bare black willows, winding between the button-bushes, and following narrow threadings of ice amid the sedge, which bring me out to clear fields unexpectedly. 

Occasionally I am obliged to take a few strokes over black and thin-looking ice, where the neighboring bank is springy, and am slow to acquire confidence in it, but, returning, how bold I am! 

Where the meadow seemed only sedge and snow, I find a complete ice connection. 

At Cardinal Shore, as usual, there is a great crescent of hobbly ice, where, two or three days ago, the northwest wind drove the waves back up-stream and broke up the edge of the ice. This crescent is eight or ten rods wide and twice as many long, and consists of cakes of ice from a few inches to half a dozen feet in diameter, with each a raised edge all around, where apparently the floating sludge has been caught and accumulated. (Occasionally the raised edge is six inches high!) This is mottled black and white, and is not yet safe. It is like skating over so many rails, or the edges of saws. 

Now I glide over a field of white air-cells close to the surface, with coverings no thicker than egg-shells, cutting through with a sharp crackling sound. There are many of those singular spider-shaped dark places amid the white ice, where the surface water has run through some days ago. 

As I enter on Fair Haven Pond, I see already three pickerel-fishers retreating from it, drawing a sled through the Baker Farm, and see where they have been fishing, by the shining chips of ice about the holes. 

Others were here even yesterday, as it appears. The pond must have been frozen by the 4th at least. 

Some fisherman or other is ready with his reels and bait as soon as the ice will bear, whether it be Saturday or Sunday. Theirs, too, is a sort of devotion, though it be called hard names by the preacher, who perhaps could not endure the cold and wet any day. Perhaps he dines off their pickerel on Monday at the hotel. 

The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick. 

That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine. As I sit under Lee's Cliff, where the snow is melted, amid sere pennyroyal and frost-bitten catnep, I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. 

I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before, where so lately were lapsing waves or smooth reflecting water. 

I see the holes which the pickerel-fisher has made, and I see him, too, retreating over the hills, drawing his sled behind him. The water is already skimmed over again there. I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. 

It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it. 

But I see that the farmers have had time to gather their harvests as usual, and the seasons have revolved as slowly as in the first autumn of my life. 

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It is wonderful that old men do not lose their reckoning. It was summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeating it. 

So sweet and wholesome is the winter, so simple and moderate, so satisfactory and perfect, that her children will never weary of it. What a poem! an epic in blank verse, enriched with a million tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty. 

It has been subjected to the vicissitudes of millions of years of the gods, and not a single superfluous ornament remains. The severest and coldest of the immortal critics have shot their arrows at and pruned it till it cannot be amended. 

The swamp white oak leaves are like the shrub oak in having two colors above and beneath. They are considerably curled, so as to show their silvery lining, though firm. Hardy and handsome, with a fair silver winter lining. 

Am pleased to see the holes where men have dug for money, since they remind me that some are dreaming still like children, though of impracticable things, — dreaming of finding money, and trying to put their dream in practice. It proves that men live Arabian nights and days still. I would they should have even that kind of faith than none at all.

If any silly or abominable or superstitious practice ever prevailed among any savage race, just that may be repeated in the most civilized society to-day. 

You will see full-grown woods where the oaks and pines or birches are separated by right lines, growing in squares or other rectilinear figures, because different lots were cut at different times.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 7, 1856


Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond. See  December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.");  December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. . . . Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also."); December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited, not having a boat in the summer."); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."): December 15, 1855 ("The boys have skated. a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet."); December 19, 1854 (" Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before."); December 20, 1854 ( P. M. — Skate to Fair Haven.”)

The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter. See July 19, 1851 (" Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?”)

That grand old poem called Winter is round again . . . See December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,");  December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be."); December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple . . ."); December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”)

You will see full-grown woods where the oaks and pines or birches are separated by right lines. See October 16, 1860 ("I observe at a distance an oak wood- lot some twenty years old, with a dense narrow edging of pitch pines . . . I understand it and read its history easily before I get to it.")

December 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 7

That grand old poem

called Winter is round again –

Nature loves this rhyme.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, That grand old poem called Winter

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

tinyurl.com/HDT561207