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 8, 2022
The light of the sun
on the snow-banks make them
glow almost yellow.
Almost every track
made yesterday in the snow –
A dead leaf in it.
The sky reflected
in the open river-reach,
now perfectly smooth.
Along the pond-side
a man’s tracks perhaps my own
like white stepping stones.
 |
January 8, 2017 |
It is now a clear warm and sunny day. January 8, 1855
The streets are washed bare down to the ice. January 8, 1855
I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. January 8, 1860
Walden, which was covered with snow, is now covered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. January 8, 1860
The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. January 8, 1860
The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. January 8, 1854
Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. January 8, 1855
We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. January 8, 1860
How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! January 8, 1860
How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! January 8, 1860
After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. January 8, 1860
There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. January 8, 1855
You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind. January 8, 1860
All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. January 8, 1856
Many white pine cones had been eaten in the neighborhood. January 8, 1854
Walk up on the river a piece above the Holden Swamp, though there are very few places where I can get on to it, it has so melted along the shore and on the meadows. The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots. January 8, 1855
The fine dry snow is driving over the fields like steam, if you look toward the sun. January 8, 1856
Can go across both rivers now. New routes are more practicable. January 8, 1854
Going through the swamp, the snow balled so as to raise me three inches higher than usual. January 8, 1858
I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow - perhaps ten inches deep - has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around. January 8, 1852
We see no fresh tracks. January 8, 1860
I see the great tracks of white rabbits that have run and frisked in the night along the pond-side. January 8, 1856
The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. January 8, 1860
The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. January 8, 1860
The old tracks . . . of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. January 8, 1860
There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated . . . they look like white stepping-stones January 8, 1860
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. January 8, 1857
Black at the two ends
and red-brown in the middle --
rolled into a ball.
I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow and in one place a reddish ant about a third of an inch long walking off. In the swamps you see the mouths of squirrels’ holes in the snow, with dirt and leaves and perhaps pine scales about them. January 8, 1855
The surface of the snow on the pond is finely scored in many places by the oak leaves which have been blown across it. They have furrowed deeper than a mouses track and might puzzle a citizen. January 8, 1856
The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds. January 8, 1855
I see what are probably the anther cells distinctly in the large buds of the poplar, which for a long time have shown their wool one sixth of an inch long. January 8, 1853
Also similar cells in the alder catkins, but greener and less springlike. January 8, 1853
The birch ones are the yellowest. January 8, 1853
I see prying into the black fruit of the alder, along the pond-side, a single probably lesser redpoll yellowish breast and distinct white bar on wing. January 8, 1856
Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias?] January 8, 1860
Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It looks behind as if it had on a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment between the shoulders and down the back. It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but rarely twice in a place, as if to sound the tree and so see if it has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tapping and inspecting it! He it is that scatters those fragments of bark and lichens about on the snow at the base of trees. What a lichenist he must be! Or rather, perhaps it is fungi makes his favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. How briskly he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his wings to another tree! January 8, 1854
I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off. January 8, 1855
Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias?] January 8, 1860
Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It looks behind as if it had on a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment between the shoulders and down the back. It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but rarely twice in a place, as if to sound the tree and so see if it has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tapping and inspecting it! He it is that scatters those fragments of bark and lichens about on the snow at the base of trees. What a lichenist he must be! Or rather, perhaps it is fungi makes his favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. How briskly he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his wings to another tree! January 8, 1854
I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off. January 8, 1855
And, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him. Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness. January 8, 1855
It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth. January 8, 1855
We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8, 1854
The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks today make them glow almost yellow. January 8, 1851
Even as early as 3 o'clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor. January 8, 1852
When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly conforming to the outline of Wachusett. January 8, 1860
We love . . .morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8 1854
Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . . 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. January 8, 1854
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment
*****
January 8, 2024
August 30, 1854("I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and a river-reach shining in the sun, and to the mountains in the horizon.")
August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive.")
September 13, 1851 ("The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone.")
December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.")
December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us.")
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.")
September 13, 1851 ("The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone.")
December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.")
December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us.")
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.")
December 24, 1850 (" I notice that the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up,')
December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.")January 4, 1860 (" In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox.")
January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.")
January 6, 1854 ("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.")
January 6, 1857 ("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.")
January 7, 1857 ("Though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")
January 7, 1857 ("In the wood-path [the snow] is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious").
January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")
January 7, 1857 ("Though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")
January 7, 1857 ("In the wood-path [the snow] is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious").
January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")
January 7, 1855 ("Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note")
January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.")
January 9, 1860 ("After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring.")
January 10, 1859 ("I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset. . . .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 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side.")
January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")
January 13, 1855 ("Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel.")
January 14, 1854 ("The meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left")
January 15, 1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me.”)
January 16, 1855 ("Carried to Harris the worms -- brown, light-striped-and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw")
January 17, 1860 ("I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore")
January 13, 1855 ("Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel.")
January 14, 1854 ("The meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left")
January 15, 1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me.”)
January 16, 1855 ("Carried to Harris the worms -- brown, light-striped-and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw")
January 17, 1860 ("I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore")
January 19, 1852 ("The snow blowing far off in the sun . . .looks like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning.")
January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago.")January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?")
January 22, 1856 (“At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively.”)
January 22, 1859 ("Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas")
January 22, 1856 ("I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats“)
January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weathercontinues. The ground has been bare since the 11th . . . The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")
January 23, 1860 ("When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe ")
January 24, 1858 (" I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars")
January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad.")
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")
January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,")
January 25, 1856 (“A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber.”)
January 26, 1853 ('There is now a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice."0
January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”)
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. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.")
January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky?")
February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree.")
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. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.")
January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky?")
February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree.")
March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from?")
March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”)
March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.")
March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”)
March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.")
January 8, 2023
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 8
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
