A Book of the Seasons: January 1 (cloudless sky, moon half full, winter moods, a clear winter day, ice storm, ice fishing, ice skating, ice crystals, the winter night 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

January 1

Looking closely as

this thin and fragile frostwork

melts under my breath.

January 1, 1856

January 1, 2017

I would fain keep a journal of those thoughts and impressions i am most liable to forget; that have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me. January, 1851

The river has risen and flooded the meadows again. The white pines, now seen against the moon, with their single foliage, look thin.   January 1, 1852

I observe a shelf of ice . . . adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze. It is often two or three feet wide and now six inches thick.  January 1, 1857

This morning we have something between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The whole earth . . . is encased in ice. . . frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores, gives prominence to the least withered herbs and grasses. . . . Standing on the north side of a bush or tree, looking against the sky, you see only a white ghost of a tree. January 1, 1853

The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the most feathery, fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. January 1, 1853

Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain is falling, . . . I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. January 1, 1853

This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 a. m., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day. January 1, 1854

All the tolerable skating is a narrow strip, often only two or three feet wide, between the frozen spew and the broken ice of the middle. January 1, 1855

Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing . . .  A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water. January 1, 1856

I notice that in the angle made by our house and shed, a southwest exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. It shows where the wind has been, the form of the wind. January 1, 1854

The snow is like a mould, showing the form of the eddying currents of air which have been impressed on it, while the drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium between the currents of air or particular winds. January 1, 1854

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

 I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits, and where they had squatted under or rather by the side of an alder stem or the like, and left many balls in the pure snow. Many have run in one course. January 1, 1856

In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice. Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately. January 1, 1856

We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue. January 1, 1855

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 1, 1856

Moon little more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars dazzlingly bright. It is a remarkably warm night for the season, the ground almost entirely bare. January 1, 1852

On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . . They are, on a close examination, surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns . . .They are so thin and fragile that they melt under your breath while looking closely at them. January 1, 1856

I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. January 1, 1853

The stars of higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, and therefore appear more near and numerable, while those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky, are scarcely seen at all. January 1, 1852

The front halls of heaven are so brilliantly lighted that they quite eclipse the more remote. January 1, 1852

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I . . .am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a one's wood-lot to such another's. I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will seem so unexplored now that I know that a stake and stones may be found in it.  January 1, 1858

Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer. January 1, 1852

Lichen-covered rock

almost warm as in summer --

naked in moonlight.

The fault may be in my own barrenness, but methinks there is a certain poverty about the winter night's sky . . .  The sky has fallen many degrees.  January 1, 1852

*****

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

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

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

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

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 Winter of Skating

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January  Moonlight

*****

January 1, 2023

March 5, 1852 ("The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk")

April 13, 1856 (“[D]ark-green clear ice . . . At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still . . .it is blue as in summer.“)

May 6, 1858 ("One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it")

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.”)

August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")
October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.")

November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.")

November 25, 1850 ("I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit . . . the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to my senses like a bird or a beast.")

December 6, 1858  ("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 18, 1852 ("I slid over it with a little misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. “)

Surface so polished

I mistake it for water.

This the first skating.

December 18, 1852

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. You won't catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had "fisherman's luck," and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow . . . .[T]he pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day")
December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, — that dun atmosphere instead of clouds reflecting the sun, — and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon")

December 28, 1856 ("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")

December 30, 1855 ("A dry, light, powdery snow. . .The pump has a regular conical Persian( cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. ")

December 20, 1854 ("In some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge")

December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. ")

Venus -- very bright

now in the early twilight.

right after sunset

December 27, 1851

The evening star seen

shining brightly before the

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853

December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue")

December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies.  . . . The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”)

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 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 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. ")

January 19, 1859 ("Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening.")

January 22, 1852 ("Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, of keeping a journal, - that so we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves.")

January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”)

January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”)

January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”)

January 31, 1859 ("The 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. ")

February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight")

February 3, 1852 ("The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, - rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.")
February 9, 1855 ("A very fine and dry snow, about a foot deep on a level. It stands on the top of our pump about ten inches deep, almost a perfect hemisphere, or half of an ellipse.”)
February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)
February 12, 1854 (“The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering”); Walden (“Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should.”)
February 12, 1860("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.")

January 1, 2017

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 31 <<<<<<<< January 1 >>>>>>>> January 2

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 1

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/hdt01jan

I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields.

January  1. 

Saturday. 

January 1, 2018

This morning we have something between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The whole earth, as last night, but much more, is encased in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icy coat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. 

About 9 o'clock a. m., I go to Lee's via Hubbard's Wood and Holden's Swamp and the riverside, for the middle is open. 

The stones and cow-dung, and the walls too, are all cased in ice on the north side. The latter look like alum rocks. This, not frozen mist or frost, but frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores, gives prominence to the least withered herbs and grasses. Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field, appears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage. The stems of the herbs on their north sides are enlarged from ten to a hundred times. 

The addition is so universally on the north side that a traveller could not lose the points of compass to-day, though it should [be] never so dark, for every blade of grass would serve to guide him, telling from which side the storm came yesterday. 

These straight stems of grasses stand up like white batons or sceptres, and make conspicuous foreground to the landscape, from six inches to three feet high. C. thought that these fat, icy branches on the withered grass and herbs had no nucleus, but looking closer I showed him the fine black wiry threads on which they impinged, which made him laugh with surprise. 

The very cow-dung is incrusted, and the clover and sorrel send up a dull-green gleam through their icy coat, like strange plants. The pebbles in the plowed land are seen as through a transparent coating of gum. 

Some weeds bear the ice in masses, some, like the trumpet-weed and tansy, in balls for each dried flower. What a crash of jewels as you walk! The most careless walker, who never deigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannot help observing them now. This is why the herbage is left to stand dry in the fields all winter. 

Upon a solid foundation of ice stand out, pointing in all directions between northwest and northeast, or within the limits of ninety degrees, little spicula or crystallized points, half an inch or more in length. Upon the dark, glazed plowed ground, where a mere wiry stem rises, its north side is thickly clad with these snow-white spears, like some Indian's head-dress, as if it had attracted all the frost. 

I saw a prinos bush full of large berries by the wall in Hubbard's field. Standing on the west side, the contrast of the red berries with their white incrustation or prolongation on the north was admirable. I thought I had never seen the berries so dazzlingly bright. The whole north side of the bush, berries and stock, was beautifully incrusted. And when I went round to the north side, the redness of the berries came softened through and tingeing the allied snow-white bush, like an evening sky beyond. These adjoined snow or ice berries being beset, within the limits of ninety degrees on the north, with those icy prickles or spicula, between which the red glow and sometimes the clear red itself appeared, gave it the appearance of a raspberry bush full of over-ripe fruit. 

Standing on the north side of a bush or tree, looking against the sky, you see only a white ghost of a tree, without a mote of earthiness, but as you go round it, the dark core comes into view. It makes all the odds imaginable whether you are travelling north or south. 

The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the most feathery, fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. 

The weight of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending and twisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes of the pines, being frozen, remain as the wind held them, and new portions of the trunk are exposed. Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the pines, and the character of the tree is changed. 

The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like trees make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen. I see now the beauty of the causeway, by the bridge alders below swelling into the road, overtopped by willows and maples. The fine grasses and shrubs in the meadow rise to meet and mingle with the drooping willows, and the whole make an indistinct impression like a mist, and between this the road runs toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in the distance, — toward spirit-land. 

The pines are as white as a counterpane, with raised embroidery and white tassels and fringes. Each fascicle of leaves or needles is held apart by an icy club surmounted by a little snowy or icy ball. Finer than the Saxon arch is this path running under the pines, roofed, not with crossing boughs, but drooping ice-covered twigs in irregular confusion. 

See in the midst of this stately pine, towering like the solemn ghost of a tree, the white ice-clad boughs of other trees appearing, of a different character; sometimes oaks with leaves incrusted, or fine-sprayed maples or walnuts. 

But finer than all, this red oak, its leaves incrusted like shields a quarter of an inch thick, and a thousand fine spicula, like long serrations at right angles with their planes, upon their edges. It has an indescribably rich effect, with color of the leaf coming softened through the ice, a delicate fawn-color of many shades. 

Where the plumes of the pitch pine are short and spreading close upon the trunk, sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed. Pitch pines present rough, massy grenadier plumes, with each a darker spot or cavity in the end, where you look in to the buds. 

I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. 

I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. 

Being at Cambridge day before yesterday, Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark. 

As I stood on the top of a ladder, he came along with his hand full of papers and inquired, "Do you value autographs ?" "No, I do not," I answered slowly and gravely. "Oh, I didn't know but you did. I had some of Governor Dunlap," said he, retreating. 

After talking with Uncle Charles the other night about the worthies of this country, Webster and the rest, as usual, considering who were geniuses and who not, I showed him up to bed, and when I had got into bed myself, I heard his chamber door opened, after eleven o'clock, and he called out, in an earnest, stentorian voice, loud enough to wake the whole house, 

"Henry! was John Quincy Adams a genius?"

      "No, I think not," was my reply.

     "Well, I didn't think he was," answered he.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1853

I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. See February 12, 1854 (“The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering”);  Walden (“Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should.”)

Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world. Harris ( the librarian of Harvard University, and one of Thoreau's professors).had commented that “Thoreau would be a splendid entomologist if he had not been spoiled by Emerson.” Clark A. Elliott, Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: Nature, Science, and Society in the Life of an American Naturalist 175. See e.g.July 26, 1852 ("Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day. Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna"); November 11, 1852 (" Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day ?");    February 9, 1853 ("Dr. Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum, and, he thinks, a kind of nettle, and an asclepias, etc.He doubts if the dog was indigenous among them."); April 11, 1853 ("Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff-edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter.”); January 19, 1854 ("[Dr, Harris] thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was a Donax or one of the Donasia (?)"); January 22, 1854 (“Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. ”); May 9, 1854 ("That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera he [ Harris ] says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla. . . . Says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ"); January 16, 1855 ([Harris] says the ant-lion is found at Burlington, Vermont, and may be at Concord"); October 19, 1857 ("Harris says the crickets produce their shrilling by shuffling their wing-covers together lengthwise.")

Uncle Chrarles. See March 28, 1856 ("Uncle Charles buried. He was born in February, 1780, the winter of the Great Snow, and he dies in the winter of another great snow,—a life bounded by great snows.")

No thicket will seem so unexplored now that I know that a stake and stones may be found in it.

January 1.

Deer beds
January 1, 2018

There are many words which are genuine and indigenous and have their root in our natures, not made by scholars, and as well understood by the illiterate as others. There are also a great many words which are spurious and artificial, and can only be used in a bad sense, since the thing they signify is not fair and substantial, – such as the church, the judiciary, to impeach, etc., etc. They who use them do not stand on solid ground. It is in vain to try to preserve them by attaching other words to them as the true church, etc. It is like towing a sinking ship with a canoe. 

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I now see it mapped in my mind's eye – as, indeed, on paper – as so many men’s wood-lots, and am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a one's wood-lot to such another's. I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will seem so unexplored now that I know that a stake and stones may be found in it. 

In these respects those Maine woods differed essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all, some villager's familiar wood-lot from which his ancestors have sledded their fuel for generations, or some widow’s thirds, minutely described in some old deed, which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan, too, and old bound marks may be found every forty rods if you will search. 

What a history this Concord wilderness which I affect so much may have had! How many old deeds describe it, — some particular wild spot, — how it passed from Cole to Robinson, and Robinson to Jones, and Jones finally to Smith, in course of years! Some have cut it over three times during their lives, and some burned it and sowed it with rye, and built walls and made a pasture of it, perchance. All have renewed the bounds and reblazed the trees many times. 

Here you are not reminded of these things. 'T is true the map informs you that you stand on land granted by the State to such an academy, or on Bingham's Purchase, but these names do not impose on you, for you see nothing to remind you of the academy or of Bingham.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1858

Words which are genuine and indigenous and have their root in our natures See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”)

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I now see it mapped in my mind's eye and am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a one's wood-lot to such another’s. See November 25, 1850 ("I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit . . . the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to my senses like a bird or a beast."); August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things"); November 18 1851 ("\ A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); March 5, 1852 ("The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); February 12, 1860("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.")

A shelf of ice.

January 1, 2017 

January  1. 

I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze. It is often two or three feet wide and now six inches thick. . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1857

What arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot. See January 16, 1857 ("As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. . . . The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north.”)

A Book of the Seasons: January 1.

January 1.

Lichen-covered rock

almost warm as in summer –

naked in moonlight,

January 1, 1852

I return at last
in a rain and am coated
with glaze like the fields. 

January 1, 1853

Snow is like a mold

showing the form of the wind –

where the wind has been.

January 1, 1854 

Pink light on the snow.

The shadow of the bridges

dark indigo blue.

January 1, 1855

Looking closely as

the thin and fragile frostwork

melts under my breath.

January 1, 1856

Here two fishermen

know not why they have no bites

this clear winter day.

January 1, 1856

January 1, 2017

Moon little more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars dazzlingly bright. It is a remarkably warm night for the season, the ground almost entirely bare . . . Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer. January 1, 1852

This morning we have something between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The whole earth . . . is encased in ice . . . I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. January 1, 1853

This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 a. m., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day . . . The snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. It shows where the wind has been, the form of the wind  January 1, 1854

We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue. January 1, 1855

On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . . They are, on a close examination, surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns . . .They are so thin and fragile that they melt under your breath while looking closely at them. 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 1, 1856

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 © 2009-2017

A clear winter day.

January 1

P. M. —To Walden. 

January 1, 2016

Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing, though commonly there is a thin dark beneath. This is now, therefore, bare, while the river, which was frozen before, is covered with snow.

A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water.

The track-repairers have shovelled four little paths by the sides of the rails, all the way from the depot to Walden. As I went by the engine-house, I saw great icicles four feet long hanging from the eastern eaves, like slender pointed spears, the last half blown aside by the wind: and still more.

By the side of the Deep Cut are the tracks of probably tree sparrows about the weeds, and of partridges.

On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion. 

The ice is frequently thickly covered with them for many rods. They seem to be connected with the rosettes,—a running together of them. They look like a loose web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of down, for their shafts are lost in a tuft of fine snow like the down about the shaft of a feather, as if a feather bed had been shaken over the ice.

They are, on a close examination, surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns, only very broad for their length and commonly more on one side the midrib than the other. They are from an inch to an inch and a half long and three quarters wide, and slanted, where I look, from the southwest.

They have, first, a very distinct midrib, though so thin that they cannot be taken up; then, distinct ribs branching from this, commonly opposite, and minute ribs springing again from these last, as in many ferns, the last running to each crenation in the border. How much further they are subdivided, the naked eye cannot discern.

They are so thin and fragile that they melt under your breath while looking closely at them.

A fisherman says they were much finer in the morning. In other places the ice is strewn with a different kind of frostwork in little patches, as if oats had been spilled, like fibres of asbestos rolled, a half or three quarters of an inch long and an eighth or more wide. Here and there patches of them a foot or two over. Like some boreal grain spilled.

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 1, 2017

On the north shore, near the railroad, I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits, and where they had squatted under or rather by the side of an alder stem or the like, and left many balls in the pure snow. Many have run in one course.

In the midst of them I see the track of a large rabbit, probably a white one, which was evidently on the full spring. Its tracks are four feet apart, and, unlike the others, which are on the surface even of this light snow, these break through deep, making a hole six inches over. Why was this one in such haste?

I conclude to trace him back and find out. His bounds grow greater and greater as I go back, now six feet quite, and a few rods further are the tracks of a fox (possibly a dog, but I think not) exactly on the trail! A little further, where the rabbit was ascending a considerable slope, through this snow nearly a foot deep, the bounds measure full seven feet, leaving the snow untouched for that space between.

It appears that the fox had started the rabbit from a bank on which it was resting, near a young hemlock, and pursued it only a dozen rods up the hill, and then gave up the chase,—and well he might, methought.

In a rabbit’s track the two forefeet are the furthest apart. This chase occurred probably in the night, either the last or night before, when there was not a man within a mile; but, treading on these very deep and distinct tracks, it was as if I had witnessed it, and in imagination I could see the sharp eyes of the crafty fox and the palpitating breast of the timorous rabbit, listening behind.

We unwittingly traverse the scenery of what tragedies! Every square rod, perchance, was the scene of a life or death struggle last night. As you track the rabbit further off, its bounds becoming shorter and shorter, you follow also surely its changing moods from desperate terror till it walks calmly and reassured over the snow without breaking its very slight crust, — perchance till it gnaws some twig composedly, —and in the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.

Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately.

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

A very small patch of Walden looks at a little distance exactly like open water, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water. See April 13, 1856 (“[D]ark-green clear ice . . . At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still . . .it is blue as in summer.“); December 18, 1852 ("I slid over it with a little misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. “)

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. See December 28, 1856 ("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");  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.”); 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. You won't catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had "fisherman's luck," and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow. . . .[T]he pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day"); May 6, 1858 ("One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it")

Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately. See January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for, tracing back the rabbit, I found that it had first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.”)

January 1. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, January 1

Looking closely as

this thin and fragile frostwork

melts under my breath.

Here two fishermen

know not why they have no bites

this clear winter day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A clear winter day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560101

Between frozen spew and broken ice

January 1.

P. M. —Skate to Pantry Brook with C. 

All the tolerable skating is a narrow strip, often only two or three feet wide, between the frozen spew and the broken ice of the middle.

We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1855

Frozen spew. See December 20, 1854 (The river is "uneven like frozen suds, in rounded pan cakes, as when bread spews out in baking.)

Pink light on the snow. See December 20, 1854 ("In some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue"); 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 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. "); January 19, 1859 ("Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening.");January 31, 1859 ("the 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. "); February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)

January 1. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, January 1

Pink light on the snow –

the shadow of the bridges

dark indigo blue.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Between frozen spew and broken ice 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550101

Jan. 1. P. M. —Skated to Pantry Brook with C. All the tolerable skating was a narrow strip, often only two or three feet wide, between the frozen spew and the broken ice of the middle.

Jan. 2. I see, in the path near Goose Pond, where the rabbits have eaten the bark of smooth sumachs and young locusts rising above the snow; also bar berry. Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges, etc., on the snow was a dark indigo blue.

The form of the wind.

January 1

January 1, 2017

This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 a. m., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day.

I notice that in the angle made by our house and shed, a southwest exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. It shows where the wind has been, the form of the wind.

The snow is like a mould, showing the form of the eddying currents of air which have been impressed on it, while the drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium between the currents of air or particular winds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1854

The snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl. Compare February 9, 1855 ("A very fine and dry snow, about a foot deep on a level. It stands on the top of our pump about ten inches deep, almost a perfect hemisphere, or half of an ellipse.”); December 30, 1855 ("A dry, light, powdery snow . . . The pump has a regular conical Persian( cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. ")

January 1. See AA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 1

Snow is like a mold

showing the form of the wind –

where the wind has been.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The form of the wind. 

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-540101