A Book of the Seasons: January 6 (snow buntings, tree sparrows, snow flakes, snow drifts, blue shadows, ice, happiness)

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 6

Through thin ice I see

my face in bubbles against

its undersurface.

January 6, 1853

High wind and howling

and driving snowstorm all night,

now much drifted.

January 6, 1856

Neither man woman

nor child dog nor cat nor fowl

has stirred out to-day.

January 6, 1856

The stones are happy.

Concord River is happy –

I am happy too.

January 6, 1857

January 6 , 2014

The skating is for the most part spoiled by a thin, crispy ice on top of the old ice, which is frozen in great crystals and crackles under your feet. January 6, 1855

The main stream, barely skimmed over with snow, which has sunk the thin ice and is saturated with water, is of a dull-brown color between the white fields. January 6, 1858

The North River is not frozen over. January 6, 1858

Walden apparently froze over last night. It is but little more than an inch thick, and two or three square rods by Hubbard's shore are still open. A dark, transparent ice. It would not have frozen entirely over, as it were in one night, or maybe a little more, and yet have been so thin next the shore as well as in the middle, if it had not been so late in the winter, and so ready to freeze. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking. January 6, 1853

Frequently see a spider apparently stiff and dead on snow. January 6, 1854

Very little evidence of God or man did I see just then, and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve. January 6, 1858

It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart? January 6, 1858

These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. There were mingled with these starry flakes small downy pellets also. . . .We are rained and snowed on with gems. January 6, 1858

I confess that I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe that Nature was poor and mean, and I was now convinced that she turned off as good work as ever. January 6, 1858

What a world we live in! . . . There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. January 6, 1858

I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. . . .in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill. January 6, 1858

What is that small insect with large, slender wings which I see on the snow or fluttering in the air these days? January 6, 1855

Also some little black beetles on the ice of the meadow, ten rods from shore. January 6, 1855

When I lie down on [Walden's dark, transparent ice] and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles which I had thought were within its own substance are against its under surface, and that they are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, apparently, and very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice. January 6, 1853

"Why!" said I,. . ."the stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. . . .The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt's Island, if it had not been happy, — if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang ?"

I walk amid the bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. January 6, 1858

Still colder and perhaps windier. January 6, 1857

A fine snow is falling and drifting before the wind over the ice and lodging in shallow drifts at regular intervals. January 6, 1855

High wind and howling and driving snowstorm all night, now much drifted. There is a great drift in the front entry and at the crack of every door and on the window-sills. Great drifts on the south of walls. January 6, 1856

Neither man, woman, nor child, dog nor cat nor fowl, has stirred out to-day. There has been no meeting. Yet this afternoon, since the storm, it has not been very bad travelling. January 6, 1856

While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings. January 6, 1856

Near Nut Meadow Brook, on the Jimmy Miles road, I see a flock of snow buntings. They are feeding exclusively on that ragged weed which I take to be Roman wormwood. January 6, 1859

They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. January 6, 1859

Though there is an extremely cold, cutting northwest wind, against which I see many travellers turning their backs, and so advancing, I hear and see an unusual number of merry little tree sparrows about the few weeds that are to be seen. They look very chipper, flitting restlessly about and jerking their long tails., January 6, 1857

I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds, but soon I see their bright-chestnut crowns and clear white bars; as the poet says, “a thousand feeding like one,” — though there are not more than a dozen here. January 6, 1858

At every post along the brook-side, and under almost every white pine, the snow strewn with the scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels. January 6, 1854

It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown. January 6, 1858

The partridges were budding on the Fair Haven orchard, and flew for refuge to the wood, twenty minutes or more after sundown. January 6, 1854

Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks. January 6, 1856

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Spiders on Ice

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Bunting (Emberiza nivalis)

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

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, Reminiscence and Prompting

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter

*****

Januaary 6, 2023

December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. ...Also I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm.")
December 14, 1855 ("Looking more closely at the light snow... I found that it was sprinkled all over ... with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry.")
December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.")

January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.")
January 2, 1856 ("Crossing the railroad at the Heywood meadow, I see some snow buntings rise from the side of the embankment, and with surging, rolling flight wing their way up through the cut")
January 2, 1856 ("Returning, I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed, picking them from the snow,-- apparently flat on the snow, their legs so short, -- and, when I approach, alighting on the rail fence.")
January 3, 1860 ("Saw four snow buntings by the railroad causeway, just this side the cut, quite tame. They arose and alighted on the rail fence as we went by. . . .They were busily eating the seed of the piper grass on the embankment there, and it was strewn over the snow by them like oats in a stable.")
January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.")

January 5, 1856 (“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. . . .A divinity must have stirred within them before the crystals did thus shoot and set. Wheels of the storm chariots.”)
January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes . . .countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.”)

Countless snow-stars come

whirling to earth pronouncing

thus the number six.

January 5, 1856 

January 7, 1858 (“I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside.")
January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue. . . .")

 January 12, 1860 ("When I look closely I see each snowflake lies as it first fell, delicate crystals with the six rays or leafets more or less perfect, not yet in the least melted by the sun.”)
January 14, 1853 ("Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw.")
January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter.")
January 15, 1856 ("A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. ")
January 18, 1852 ("Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue.”)
January 18, 1856 ("clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. . . .I am in raptures at my own shadow. . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue. This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low.")
January 19, 1855 ("I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning at 7 A. M.”)
January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast”)

January 22, 1860 ("Snow buntings are very wandering. They were quite numerous a month ago, and now seem to have quit the town. They seem to ramble about the country at will.")
January 26, 1852 ("To-day I see . . . a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting.”)
January 30, 1856 ("crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!")
February 1, 1857 ("Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway.")

February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black.")
February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. ")

February 27, 1858 (" I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm.")
March 3, 1859 ("I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak.”)
March 10, 1856 ("The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever.")
March 30, 1856 ("there are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw.")

January 6, 2013

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 

January 5 <<<<<<<< January 6 >>>>>>>> January 7

stuck halfway down and

halfway up we climb back up
to get back down

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2024

A low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west – coppery yellow.

January 6

A low, narrow, clear

segment of sky in the west -

coppery yellow.

January 6, 1854

Walked Tappan in P. M. down railroad to Heywood Brook, Fair Haven, and Cliffs.

At every post along the brook-side, and under almost every white pine, the snow strewn with the scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels. They have sat on every post and dropped them for a great distance, also acorn-shells.

The surface of the snow was sometimes strewn with the small alder scales, i. e. of catkins; also, here and there, the large glaucous lichens (cetrarias?).

Showed Tappan a small shad bush, which interested him and reminded him of a greyhound, rising so slender and graceful with its narrow buds above the snow.

To return to the squirrels, I saw where they had laid up a pitch pine cone in the fork of a rider in several places.

Many marks of partridges, and disturbed them on evergreens.

A winter (?) gnat out on the bark of a pine.

On Fair Haven we slumped nearly a foot to the old ice.

The partridges were budding on the Fair Haven orchard, and flew for refuge to the wood, twenty minutes or more after sundown.

There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin's pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard's skin.

I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before. Do they go into the snow at night? 

Frequently see a spider apparently stiff and dead on snow.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, January 6, 1854

A small shad bush. . . rising so slender and graceful with its narrow buds above the snow. See November 4, 1854 ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring, "); 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry

The scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels. See January 13, 1860 ("The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there. They seek a dry place to open them, — a fallen limb that rises above the snow, or often a lower dead stub projecting from the trunk of the tree.");  January 22,  1856 ("he snow under one young pine is covered quite thick with the scales they have dropped while feeding overhead.").See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Plucking and Stripping a Pine Cone.

The surface of the snow was sometimes strewn with the small alder scales. See December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales."); January 5, 1851 ("The catkins of the alders are now frozen stiff !!") January 20, 1860 (" The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

Winter gnats? See February 2, 1854 ("The winter gnat is seen in the warm air.");  March 19, 1858  ("Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water-bugs on the water.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

On Fair Haven we slumped nearly a foot to the old ice. See January 6, 1855 ("The skating is for the most part spoiled by a thin, crispy ice on top of the old ice, which is frozen in great crystals and crackles under your feet.")

The partridges were budding on the Fair Haven orchard, and flew for refuge to the wood, twenty minutes or more after sundown. See February 18, 1852 ("I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard")

There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset.  See January 2, 1854 ("The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and ethereal than in the coldest winter days. "); January 5, 1852 ("I thought I saw an extensive fire in the western horizon . It was a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud along the edge of the horizon  gold with some alloy of copper"); January 7, 1852 ("I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset , with fresh curiosity , to see what new picture will be painted there") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

Gilpin. William Gilpin, English writer, printmaker, clergyman and schoolmaster, best known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque. See January 8, 1854 ("Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch therefore with Indian ink, as far as you propose, tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue. It may be the rosy tint of morning; or the more ruddy one of evening; or it may incline more to a yellowish, or a greyish cast. . . . By washing this tint over your whole drawing, you lay a foundation for harmony." I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head.")

I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before.  See January 5, 1854 ("The snow is covered with snow-fleas . . . sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow."); January 9, 1854 ("Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow. "); January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

Frequently see a spider apparently stiff and dead on snow. See December 18, 1855 ("See to-day a dark-colored spider of the very largest kind on ice."); December 23, 1859 ("A little black, or else a brown, spider (sometimes quite a large one) motionless on the snow or ice. . . .The spiders lie torpid and plain to see on the snow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Spiders on Ice

January 6.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt540106

Walden apparently froze over last night.

January 6. 

Walden apparently froze over last night. 

It is but little more than an inch thick, and two or three square rods by Hubbard's shore are still open. A dark, transparent ice. It would not have frozen entirely over, as it were in one night, or maybe a little more, and yet have been so thin next the shore as well as in the middle, if it had not been so late in the winter, and so ready to freeze. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking. 

As I walked along the edge, I started out three little pickerel no longer than my finger from close to the shore, which went wiggling into deeper water like bloodsuckers or pollywogs. 

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles which I had thought were within its own substance are against its under surface, and that they are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, apparently, and very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice (perhaps an inch and an eighth), from one eightieth of an inch in diameter, or a mere point, up to one eighth of an inch. 

There are thirty or forty of these, at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop. There are, also, within the substance of the ice, oblong perpendicular bubbles half an inch long, more or less, by about one thirtieth of an inch, and these are commonly widest at the bottom (?), or, oftener, separate minute spherical bubbles of equal or smaller diameter, one directly above another, like a string of beads, perhaps the first stage of the former. But these internal bubbles are not nearly so numerous as those in the water beneath. 

It may be twenty-four hours since the ice began to form decidedly. 

I see, on the sandy bottom a few inches beneath, the white cases of caddis-worms made of the white quartz sand or pebbles. And the bottom is very much creased or furrowed where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks, — perhaps the caddis-worm, for I find one or two of the same in the furrows, though the latter are deep and broad for them to make. 

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost, the leaves a third of an inch long, shaped somewhat like this, with triangular points, but very thin. Another morning there will be no frost. 

I forgot to say yesterday that I picked up four pignuts by the squirrel's hole, from which he had picked the meat, having gnawed a hole about half the diameter of the nut in width on each side. After I got home I observed that in each case the holes were on the sides of the nut and not on the edges, and I cut into a couple with my knife in order to see certainly which was the best way to get at the meat. 

Cutting into the edge, I came upon the thick partition which runs the whole length of the nut, and then came upon the edges of the meats, and finally was obliged to cut away a good part of the nut on both edges before I could extract the meat, because it was held by the neck in the middle. 

But when I cut holes on the sides, not only the partitions I met with were thin and partial, but I struck the meats broadside and extracted them with less trouble. It may be that it is most convenient for the squirrel to hold the nut thus, but I think there is a deeper reason than that. 

I observe that, out of six whole pignuts which I picked from a tree, three are so cracked transversely to the division of the meat that I can easily pry them open with my knife. 

They hang on as food for animals.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1853

Walden apparently froze over last night. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it."); . January 2, 1853 ("Walden begins to freeze in the coves or shallower water on the north side, where it was slightly skimmed over several weeks ago"); January 3, 1853 ("Walden not yet frozen.")

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice. June 3, 1854 ("On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head).")

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2022

A little owl

January  6.  

— To M. Miles’s. 

Near Nut Meadow Brook, on the Jimmy Miles road, I see a flock of snow buntings. They are feeding exclusively on that ragged weed which I take to be Roman wormwood. Their tracks where they sink in the snow are very long, i. e., have a very long heel, or sometimes almost in a single straight line. They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. They had run about to every such such, leaving distinct tracks raying from and to them, While the snow immediately about the weed was so tracked and pecked where the seeds fell that no track was distinct. 

Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl (Strix Acadica) which he caught alive with his hands about a week ago. He had forced it to eat, but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the claws, by nineteen in alar extent, — not so long by considerable as a robin, though much stouter. This one had three (not two)  white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the extremity of the toes, looking like whitish (or tawny-white) mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his boots. 

As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. Even a bird’s wing has an upper and under side, and the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1859

They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. See January 6, 1856 (“While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings”). Also January 21, 1857 (“Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter”).

A funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long.  The Little Owl is known in Massachusetts by the name of the "Saw-whet," the sound of its love-notes bearing a great resemblance to the noise produced by filing the teeth of a large saw. ~ JJ Audubon.  Compare December 14, 1858 (“ a barred owl (Strix nebulosa), . . . measures about three and a half feet in alar extent by eighteen to twenty inches long,  . . . apparently a female, since it is large and has white spots on the wings.”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2022

When my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve.

January 6. 

The first snow-storm of much importance. By noon it may be six inches deep. 

P. M. — Up railroad to North River. 

The main stream, barely skimmed over with snow, which has sunk the thin ice and is saturated with water, is of a dull-brown color between the white fields. 

I detect a very tall and slender tupelo by its thorny looking twigs. It is close by a white oak, at the yellow gerardia up railroad. It is nearly fifty feet high and only one foot through at the ground. 

I derive a certain excitement, not to be refused, even from going through Dennis's Swamp on the opposite side of the railroad, where the poison-dogwood abounds. This simple stemmed bush is very full of fruit, hanging in loose, dry, pale-green drooping panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It impresses me as the most fruitful shrub thereabouts. I cannot refrain from plucking it and bringing home some pretty sprigs. 

Other fruits there are there which belong to the hard season, the enduring panicled andromeda and a few partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. I was feeling very cheap, nevertheless, reduced to make the most of dry dogwood berries. 

Very little evidence of God or man did I see just then, and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart? 

Sometimes the pines were worn and had lost their branches, and again it appeared as if several stars had impinged on one another at various angles, making a somewhat spherical mass. These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. There were mingled with these starry flakes small downy pellets also. 

This was at mid-afternoon, and it has not quite ceased snowing yet (at 10 P.M.). 

We are rained and snowed on with gems. I confess that I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe that Nature was poor and mean, and I was now convinced that she turned off as good work as ever. 

What a world we live in! Where are the jewellers’ shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill. 

The North River is not frozen over. 

I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds, but soon I see their bright-chestnut crowns and clear white bars; as the poet says, “a thousand feeding like one,”  — though there are not more than a dozen here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1858

It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful. See  December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. ...Also I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d'oeuvre of the Genius of the storm. ...");  January 14, 1853 ("Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); December 14, 1855 ("Looking more closely at the light snow... I found that it was sprinkled all over ... with regular star-shaped cottony flakes with six points, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and on an average a half an inch apart. It snowed geometry.") January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes . . .countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth, pronouncing thus, with emphasis, the number six.”); January 12, 1860 ("When I look closely I see each snowflake lies as it first fell, delicate crystals with the six rays or leafets more or less perfect, not yet in the least melted by the sun.”).

These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. See January 5, 1856 (“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. . . .A divinity must have stirred within them before the crystals did thus shoot and set. Wheels of the storm chariots.”)

There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down . . . The product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's utmost skill. See January 5, 1856 ("Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Nothing is cheap and coarse, neither dewdrops nor snowflakes.") See also There was an artist in the city of Kouroo.

I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow. See January 6, 1857 ("I hear and see an unusual number of merry little tree sparrows about the few weeds that are to be seen. They look very chipper, flitting restlessly about and jerking their long tails.”); January 7, 1858 (“I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house.. . .")

January 6. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/hdt580106

Colder and perhaps windier.

January 6. 

Still colder and perhaps windier. 

The river is now for the most part covered with snow again, which has blown from the meadows and been held by the water which has oozed out. I slump through snow into that water for twenty rods together, which is not frozen though the thermometer says — 8°. 

I think that the bright-yellow wood of the barberry, which I have occasion to break in my surveying, is the most interesting and remarkable for its color of any. 

When I get home after that slumping walk on the river, I find that the slush has balled and frozen on my boots two or three inches thick, and can only be thawed off by the fire, it is so solid. 

I frequently have occasion in surveying to note the position or bearing of the edge of a wood, which I describe as edge of wood. In such a way apparently the name Edgewood originated. 

Beatton, the old Scotch storekeeper, used to say of one Deacon (Joe ?) Brown, a grandfather of the milkman, who used to dine at his house on Sundays and praise his wife's dinners but yet prevented her being admitted to the church, that his was like a "coo's (cow's) tongue, rough one side and smooth the other." 

A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. 

"Why!"

 said I, speaking to his condition,

"the stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I am happy too.

When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, its form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness.

The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content.

Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy.

 
Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt's Island, if it had not been happy, — if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang ?" 

Though there is an extremely cold, cutting northwest wind, against which I see many travellers turning their backs, and so advancing, I hear and see an unusual number of merry little tree sparrows about the few weeds that are to be seen. 

They look very chipper, flitting restlessly about and jerking their long tails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1857

I am happy too. See September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”); January 7, 1855 ("It would not be worth the while to die and leave all this life behind one.”); March 15, 1852 ("The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Concord River . . . continued to flow these millions of years . . . See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years."); March 12, 1856 ("It is long-continued, steady cold which produces thick ice. If the present cold should continue uninterrupted a thousand years would not the pond become solid?"); March 24, 1855 ("In the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. Time is cheap and rather insignificant."); February 11, 1854 ("For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created!"); May 5, 1860 ("Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

Friday I get home after 630 and change and by seven we are out under red light only with the half moon on the crusty snow for a long walk up to the view down to the Moosetrail back up via Beech Lane and then bushwhacking to the Kendall Fisher pond where there are some very distinct old Fisher tracks frozen in the ice then up to the double chair but By now I've taken off my mittens even though it's 21° and we decide to bushwhack down the property line. Easier said than done because of those cliffs in the dark and forgetting just where the Way around is we end up stuck halfway down and halfway up a cliff over on the neighbors land and have to climb back up in order to get down and it seems as though we are at the stream that flows down through our St. George land but we head back south and end up (although I have no clue) near the lake view farm corner above the ramp and having to slide down here and there and over the boulders and eventually down to the ramp and out and starting down that old first trail that we saw when we first bought this land but I veer off to the sheep trail by the stream and over rainbow bridge to pick up Jane's glove where she at the start of the hike already too hot had left that behind. home by 10PM. 20170106

stuck halfway down and

halfway up we climb back up

to get  back down.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 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 © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/HDT570106

I am come forth to observe the drifts.

January 6


High wind and howling and driving snowstorm all night, now much drifted. There is a great drift in the front entry and at the crack of every door and on the window-sills. Great drifts on the south of walls.

Clears up at noon, when no vehicle had passed the house. 

Frank Morton has brought home, and I opened, that pickerel of the 4th. It is frozen solid. Yellow spawn as big as a pin-head, with smaller between, enwraps its insides the whole length, half an inch thick. It must spawn very early then. I find in its gullet, or paunch, or maw (the long white bag), three young perch, one of them six inches long, and the tail of a fourth. Its belly was considerably puffed out. 

Two of the perch lay parallel, side by side, of course head downward, in its gullet(?). The upper and largest perch was so high that he was cut in two in the middle in cutting off the head. And yet it was caught in endeavoring to swallow another large minnow! 

This is what you may call voracity. 

P. M. -— To Drifting Cut. 

The snow is now probably more than a foot deep on a level. 

While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings. What a pity our yard was made so tidy in the fall with rake and fire, and we have now no tall crop of weeds rising above this snow to invite these birds! 

I am come forth to observe the drifts. They are, as usual, on the south side of the walls and fences and, judging from the direction of their ridges, the wind was due north. 

Behind Monroe’s tight board fence it is a regularly swelled, unbroken bank, but behind the wall this side carved into countless scallops, perforations, scrolls, and copings. 


An open wall is, then, the best place for a drift. Yet these are not remarkably rich. The snow was perhaps too dry. Perhaps six more inches on a level has fallen, or more. It has not lodged on the trees.

Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks. 

On the north side of the Cut, above the crossing, the jutting edges of the drift are quite handsome upon the bank. The snow is raised twelve feet above the track, and it is all scalloped with projecting eaves or copings, like turtle-shells. 

They project from three to five feet, and I can stand under them. They are in three or four great layers, one lapping over another like the coarse edge of a shell. Looking along it, they appear somewhat thus : —

Often this coping has broken by its own weight, and great blocks have fallen down the bank, like smoothed blocks of white marble.

The exquisite purity of the snow and the gracefulness of its curves are remarkable. 

Bobcat
January 6, 2016

Around some houses there is not a single track. Neither man, woman, nor child, dog nor cat nor fowl, has stirred out to-day. There has been no meeting. Yet this afternoon, since the storm, it has not been very bad travelling.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1856

High wind and howling and driving snowstorm all night, now much drifted . . . Great drifts on the south of walls. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north");  December 15, 1859 ("The first kind of snow-storm, or that of yesterday, . . .was that kind that makes handsome drifts behind the walls. There are no drifts equal to these behind loosely built stone walls, the wind passing between the stones.");  January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, . . . thin and partly transparent . . ., perfect little wheels with six spokes.”); January 7, 1856 ("The whole surface of the snow on fields and river is composed now of flat, rough little drifts, like the surface of some rough slaty rocks."); February 8, 1856 ("For two or three weeks, successive light and dry snows have fallen on the old crust and been drifting about on it, leaving it at last three quarters bare and forming drifts against the fences, etc., or here and there low, slaty, fractured ones in mid-field, or pure white hard-packed ones. These drifts on the crust are commonly quite low and flat.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

Hurried rippling notes of . . . of snow buntings coming to alight . . . a sound almost as if made with their wings. See  January 6, 1859 ("sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring."); See also January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.");January 21, 1857  ("Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter,") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Bunting (Emberiza nivalis) 

Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks. See January 4, 1856 ("I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow.") See alsoo  February 6, 1854 ("Crossing Walden where the snow has fallen quite level, I perceive that my shadow is a delicate or transparent blue rather than black."): December 31, 1854 ("A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue."); February 10, 1855 ("I go across Walden. My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow."); 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 18, 1856 ("Clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden . . . I am in raptures at my own shadow . . . Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue. This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low."); January 30, 1856 ("Crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects. What a solemn silence reigns here!"); March 10, 1856 ("The blue shadows on snow are as fine as ever."); March 30, 1856 ("There are as intense blue shadows on the snow as I ever saw.")

January 6.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 6

High wind and howling

and driving snowstorm all night,

now much drifted.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  I am come forth to observe the drifts.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560106