Who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?

December 14. Tuesday.

P. M. – To Assabet Stone Bridge.

We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. 

December 14. 2021

The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls and the long sharp red capsules of the small ( ? ) hypericum, etc., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs.

Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came. Ah, what isles those western clouds! in what a sea! 

Just after sunset there is a broad pillar of light for many minutes in the west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1852

The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls. See December 14, 1851 ("The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. Where lately was a delicate blue flower, now all the winter are held up these dry chalices.") See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “); November 30, 1856 (“Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.”); December 1, 1856 (“The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.”); December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?. . .They were not observed against the dark ground, but the first snow comes and reveals them")

The long sharp red capsules of the small hypericum, etc., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs. See September 19, 1852 ("The red capsules of the sarothra."); December 3, 1856 ("Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed." ); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow. "); December 6, 1856 ("Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides. . . . What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! . . .Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); December 13, 1852 ("About the base of the larger pin-weed, the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem")

Who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? See December 14, 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.") See also  December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); December 8, 1854 (“There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm”); December 9, 1856 ("A slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame. Such is a winter eve."); December 9, 1859 (" I observe at mid-afternoon, the air being very quiet and serene, that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .[T]here is just enough invisible vapor, perhaps from the snow, to soften the blue, giving it a slight greenish tinge. Thus, methinks, it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer"); December 11, 1854 ("I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely"); December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.")

 Night comes on early.

Pine tree tops outlined against

the cold western sky,

December 12, 1859

December 18, 1853 ("The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky. "); December 19, 1851 (".Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud– & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon."); December 20, 1851 ("The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon."); December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass.")

The icy water

reflecting the warm colors

of the sunset sky.

December 20, 1855

December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west."); December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle!"); December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun.”); December 23, 1851 ("The evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon."); December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

 Western sky full of

soft pure light after sunset,

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

December 27, 1851("Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight."); December 27, 1853 (" It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon")

The evening star seen

shining brightly before the

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853

January 5, 1853 ("A fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon."); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky")

To look over pines

so rich and distinct, into

the soft western sky.

January 9, 1859

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 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset."); January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east."); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. . . .As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind.")

The unclouded mind,

serene, pure, ineffable

like the western sky.

January 17, 1852

 January 24, 1852 ("A single elm by Hayden's stands in relief against the amber and golden, deepening into dusky but soon to be red horizon."); January 17, 1860 ("When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset.)"); January 26, 1852. ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")

See also July 23, 1852  ("As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.")

December 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 14

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/hdt521214

You have now forgotten winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions.

August 24.

August 24, 2019

Mollugo verticillata, carpet-weed, flat, whorl-leaved weed in gardens, with small white flowers.

Portulaca oleracea, purslane, with its yellow blossoms.

Chelone glabra.

I have seen the small mulleins as big as a ninepence in the fields for a day or two? 

The weather is warmer again after a week or more of cool days. There is greater average warmth, but not such intolerable heats as in July.

The nights especially are more equably warm now, even when the day has been comparatively rather cool. There are few days now, fewer than in July, when you cannot lie at your length on the grass.

You have now forgotten winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions. Your life may be out-of-doors now mainly.

Rattlesnake grass is ripe.

The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down.

The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well over, many small flowers blossom now in the low grounds, having just reached their summer.  It is now dry enough, and they feel the heat their tenderness required.

The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters, and johnswort, — though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign.

The tansy is already getting stale; it is perhaps the first conspicuous yellow flower that passes from the stage.

In Hubbard's Swamp, where the blueberries, dangle berries, and especially the pyrus or choke-berries were so abundant last summer, there is now perhaps not one (unless a blueberry) to be found. Where the choke berries held on all last winter, the black and the red.

The common skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata), quite a handsome and middling - large blue flower.

Lobelia pallida still.

Pointed cleavers or clivers (Galium asprellum).

Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow? 

Did I find the dwarf tree-primrose in Hubbard's meadow to-day?

Stachys aspera, hedge-nettle or wound wort, a rather handsome purplish flower.

The capsules of the Iris versicolor, or blue flag, are now ready for humming [?].

Elderberries are ripe.

H. D. Thoreeau, Journal, August 24, 1851

The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down. See July 16, 1851 ("The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch. I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed (Asclepias pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger, black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and one of equal size, reddish copper-colored.");  August 14, 1853 ("Methinks the reign of the milkweeds is over"); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds")

The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well over, many small flowers blossom now. See June 17, 1854 (“Already the season of small fruits has arrived. .”) July 6, 1851 ("June, the month for grass and flowers, is now past. . . . Now grass is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits."); July 7, 1852 ("And now that there is an interregnum in the blossoming of flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds."); July 13, 1854 ("If there is an interregnum in the flowers, it is when berries begin");  August 6, 1852 ("Methinks there are few new flowers of late. An abundance of small fruits takes their place. Summer gets to be an old story. Birds leave off singing, as flowers blossoming."); August 9, 1853 ("This is the season of small fruits".); August 18, 1853 (“The season of flowers or of promise may be said to be over, and now is the season of fruits?”);


You have now forgotten winter.  See July 5, 1852 ("We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity."); August 6, 1852 (" Summer gets to be an old story.")

Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard's meadow? See August 24, 1852 ("The Viburnum nudum shows now rich, variegated clusters amid its handsome, firm leaves, bright rosy-cheeked ones mingled with dark-purple.  All do not appear to turn purple.") See also note to September 11, 1851 ("The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod.")

Elderberries are ripe. See August 11, 1856 ("Elder-berries in a day or two."); August 15, 1852 ("Elder-berry ripe."); August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous."); August 29, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush."); August 31, 1853 ("Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.")September 1, 1859 ("The elder-berry cyme, held erect, is of very regular form, four principal divisions drooping toward each quarter around an upright central one.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Elder-berries

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season.

January 30.  

Buda  January 30 2021

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. 

Sorrel is also very common, and johnswort, and the purplish gnaphaliums. There is also the early crowfoot in some places, strawberry, mullein, and thistle leaves, and hawkweeds, etc., etc.

On Cliffs.

The westering sun is yet high above the horizon, but, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays like the frame of a tent, to which clouds perchance are the canvas, under which a whole country rests. 

BTV February 1, 2023

The northern and southern rays appear very much slanted and long; those between us and the west, steeper and shorter.

What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle, frequently with discolored, mould-like spots.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1853

The most common and conspicuous green leaf on the ground when the snow is off at this season, as at present, is that of the buttercup. See November 8, 1858 ("The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence."); January 9, 1853 ("On the face of the Cliff the crowfoot buds lie unexpanded just beneath the surface"); January 25, 1853 ("The buttercup leaves appear everywhere when the ground is bare.);  February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and . . . I step excited over the moist mossy ground, dotted with the green stars of thistles, crowfoot, etc., the outsides of which are withered."); February 23, 1860 ("I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup"); February 28, 1857 ("At the Cliff, the tower-mustard, early crowfoot, and perhaps buttercup appear to have started of late.")

The westering sun, concealed by clouds, shoots down to earth on every side vast misty rays. See August 9, 1851 ("It was a splendid sunset that day, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people went to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky. . . We were in the westernmost edge of the shower at the moment the sun was setting, and its rays shone through the cloud and the falling rain. We were, in fact, in a rainbow.")

The shrub oak leaf is the firmest and best preserved. The white oak is the most sere and curled and brittle. See October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples.");  October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red, with grayish, withered, apparently white oak leaves intermixed."); November 3, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is all withered."); May 14, 1855 ("All the oak leaves off the shrub oak plain, except apparently a few white oaks.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

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

Gray goldenrod at Hosmer's secluded turtle field near the bridge,

September 2. 

P . M . – To Annursnack. 

Solidago nemoralis apparently in prime, and S. stricta  The former covers A. Hosmer's secluded turtle field near the bridge, together with johnswort, now merely lingering.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1860

Solidago nemoralis [Gray Goldenrod] apparently in prime. See August 18, 1854 ("The solidago nemoralis is now abundantly out on the Great Fields.”); September 1, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant."); September 6, 1858 ("Solidago nemoralis is apparently in prime on Lupine Hill; some of it past. It is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it"); September 7, 1858 ("It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun"); September 12, 1859 ("The golden-rod on the top and the slope of the hill are the Solidago nemoralis . . . Many a dry field now, like that of Sted Buttrick's on the Great Fields, is one dense mass of the bright golden recurved wands of the Solidago nemoralis, waving in the wind and turning upward to the light hundreds, if not a thousand, flowerets each. It is the greatest mass of conspicuous flowers in the year, uniformly from one to two feet high, just rising above the withered grass all over the largest fields, now when pumpkins and other yellow fruits begin to gleam, now before the woods are noticeably changed.")   See also September 27, 1857 ("Solidago nemoralis nearly done"); October 6, 1858 ("Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost."); October 8, 1856 ("Asters and goldenrods are now scarce; no longer that crowd along the low roadsides. . . S. nemoralis, done, many hoary, though a very few flowers linger."); October 23, 1853 (" I notice these flowers still along the railroad causeway: fresh sprouts from the root of the Solidago nemoralis in bloom"); November 10, 1858 ("Some very handsome Solidago nemoralis in bloom on Fair Haven Hill. (Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost.)")

A. Hosmer's secluded turtle field near the bridge, See October 10, 1858 (" . . .the turtle field of A. Hosmer’s by Eddy Bridge.");  See also  May 1, 1859 ("Over Hosmer's meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers on the brown pieces of meadow which rise above the water. . . .There is to-day a general resurrection of them, and there they bask in the sun. It is their sabbath. ") [ Hosmer Flat Meadow is a Sudbury River meadow just northeast of Clamshell Hill.~ Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts compiled by Ray Angelo]



<<<<< September 1, 1860: ("Cherries are especially birds' food, and . . . I shall think the birds have the best right to them..")

September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”) >>>>

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,

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

The age of poetry.

December 19. 

December 19, 2019

Yarrow too is full of seed now, and the common johnswort has some seed in it still.

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs, — mink, musquash, and fox. Says that Stow is as good a town for mink as any, but none of them have more musquash than Concord. He, however, saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year.

When a man is young and his constitution and body have not acquired firmness, i. e., before he has arrived at middle age, he is not an assured inhabitant of the earth, and his compensation is that he is not quite earthy, there is something peculiarly tender and divine about him. His sentiments and his weakness, nay, his very sickness and the greater uncertainty of his fate, seem to ally him to a noble race of beings, to whom he in part belongs, or with whom he is in communication. 

The young man is a demigod; the grown man, alas! is commonly a mere mortal. He is but half here, he knows not the men of this world, the powers that be. They know him not. 

Prompted by the reminiscence of that other sphere from which he so lately arrived, his actions are unintelligible to his seniors. He bathes in light. He is interesting as a stranger from another sphere. 

He really thinks and talks about a larger sphere of existence than this world. It takes him forty years to accommodate himself to the carapax of this world. This is the age of poetry. 

Afterward he may be the president of a bank, and go the way of all flesh. But a man of settled views, whose thoughts are few and hardened like his bones, is truly mortal, and his only resource is to say his prayers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1859

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs. See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”); November 27, 1855 ("I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit")

 Yarrow too is full of seed now. See November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."

Born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time.

December 5

Clear, cold winter weather. What a contrast between this week and last, when I talked of setting out apple trees! 

December 5,  2020

P. M. — Walked over the Hill. 

The Indians have at length got a regular load of wood. It is odd to see a pile of good oak wood beside their thin cotton tents in the snow, the wood-pile which is to be burnt within is so much more substantial than the house. Yet they do not appear to mind the cold, though one side the tent is partly open, and all are flapping in the wind, and there is a sick child in one. The children play in the snow in front, as before more substantial houses. 

The river is well skimmed over in most places, though it will not bear, — wherever there is least current, as in broad places, or where there is least wind, as by the bridges. The ice trap was sprung last night. 

As I walk along the side of the Hill, a pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut, flying low in mid- course and then ascending to the tree. I hear one's faint tut tut or gnah gnah — no doubt heard a good way by its mate now flown into the next tree — as it is ascending the trunk or branch of a walnut in a zigzag manner, hitching along, prying into the crevices of the bark; and now it has found a savory morsel, which it pauses to devour, then flits to a new bough. It is a chubby bird, white, slate-color, and black. 

It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. A white moon, half full, in the pale or dull blue heaven and a whiteness like the reflection of the snow, extending up from the horizon all around a quarter the way up to the zenith. I can imagine that I see it shooting up like an aurora. This at 4 p. m. About the sun it is only whiter than elsewhere, or there is only the faintest possible tinge of yellow there. 

There are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has scattered many over the snow-crust. It would be easier gathering them now than ever. 

The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow. Some fine straw-colored grasses, as delicate as the down on a young man's cheek, still rise above this crusted snow, and even a recess is melted around them, so gently has it been deposited. 

The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky. 

This morning I saw Riordan's cock thrust out the window on to the snow to seek his sustenance, and now, as I go by at night, he is waiting on the front door-step to be let in. 

My themes shall not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures. Friends ! Society! It seems to me that I have an abundance of it, there is so much that I rejoice and sympathize with, and men, too, that I never speak to but only know and think of. 

What you call bareness and poverty is to me simplicity. God could not be unkind to me if he should try. 

I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources. 

I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in. I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. This is an advantage in point of abstinence and moderation compared with the seaside boating, where the boat ever lies on the shore.  I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. 

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. I find it invariably true, the poorer I am, the richer I am. What you consider my disadvantage, I consider my advantage. While you are pleased to get knowledge and culture in many ways, I am delighted to think that I am getting rid of them. 

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

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1856



The ice trap was sprung last night. See December 4, 1856 ("Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night. ") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating. See December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat."); December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in Boat out.

I love best to have each thing in its season only. See August 23, 1853 ("Live in each season as it passes."); November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.");  August 22, 1854 ("There is, no doubt, a particular season of the year when each place may be visited with most profit and pleasure, and it may be worth the while to consider what that season is in each case."); April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season").

A pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut. See November 26, 1860 ("I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off.");   December 1, 1857  ("I  thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. A white moon, half full,  See January 1, 1852 ("Moon little more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky.") April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December  Moonlight

I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures. Compare October 18, 1856 ("Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes.")

I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold. See December 8, 1850 ("The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”);  April 13, 1852 ("The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts.”)

I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too. See Henry Thoreau, A Week (Wednesday) ("I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources."); August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe."); August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); August 23, 1853 ("Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end"); February 19, 1854 ("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”) Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength."); September 9, 1854 ("The earth is the mother of all creatures."); December 11, 1855 ("The-winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

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

A half full white moon

in a cloudless and simple 

pale blue winter sky.

To be born into

the most estimable place

in the nick of time.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Born into the most estimable place in the nick of time.

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/HDT561205

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups

April 22.

5.30 A. M. — To Assabet stone bridge. 

Tree sparrows still. See a song sparrow getting its breakfast in the water on the meadow like a wader. 

Red maple yesterday, — an early one by further stone bridge. Balm-of-Gilead probably to-morrow.

The black currant is just begun to expand leaf — probably yesterday elsewhere -a little earlier than the red. 

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. 

The grass is now become rapidly green by the sides of the road, promising dandelions and buttercups. 

P. M. — To Lee’s Cliff. 

Fair, but windy. 

Tree sparrows about with their buntingish head and faint chirp. 

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. 

The yellow willow catkins pushing out begin to give the trees a misty, downy appearance, dimming them. 

The bluish band on the breast of the kingfisher leaves the pure white beneath in the form of a heart. 

The blossoms of the sweet-gale are now on fire over the brooks, contorted like caterpillars. The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male. 

I first noticed my little mud turtles in the cellar out of their [sic], one of them, some eight days ago. I suspect those in the river begin to stir about that time? 

Antennaria probably yesterday, Skull-cap Meadow Ditch. 

Many yellow redpolls on the willows now. They jerk their tails constantly like phoebes, but I hear only a faint chip. Could that have been a female with them, with an ash head and merely a yellow spot on each side of body, white beneath, and forked tail?

Red stemmed moss now. 

Goosanders, male and female. They rise and fly, the female leading. They afterward show that they can get out of sight about as well by diving as by flying. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side. 

Getting over the wall under the middle Conantum Cliff, I hear a loud and piercing sharp whistle of two notes, — phe phe, like a peep somewhat. Could it  be a wood-chuck? Hear afterward under Lee’s Cliff a similar fainter one, which at one time appears to come from a pigeon woodpecker. 

Cowbirds on an apple tree. 

Crowfoot on Cliff. Johnswort radical leaves have grown several inches and angelica shows. Elder leaves have grown one and a half inches, and thimble-berry is forward under rocks. Meadow sweet in some places begins to open to-day; also barberry under Cliffs and a moss rose to-morrow. 

Say earliest gooseberry, then elder, raspberry, thimble berry, and low blackberry (the last two under rocks), then wild red cherry, then black currant (yesterday), then meadow sweet, and barberry under Cliff, to-day. A moss rose to-morrow and hazel under Cliffs to-morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1855

The female flowers also out like the hazel, with more stigmas,—out at same time with the male.. . .Hazel under Cliffs to morrow. See March 27, 1853 ("The hazel is fully out. The 23d was perhaps full early to date them. It is in some respects the most interesting flower yet, so minute that only an observer of nature, or one who looked for them, would notice it."); March 31, 1853 ("The catkins of the hazel are now trembling in the wind and much lengthened, showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen.”); and April 7, 1854 ("The hazel stigmas are well out and the catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. “); April 9, 1854 (" The beaked hazel stigmas out; put it just after the common."'); April 11, 1856 ("The hazel sheds pollen to-day; some elsewhere possibly yesterday.”);April 13, 1855 ("The common hazel just out. It is perhaps the prettiest flower of the shrubs that have opened. . . .half a dozen catkins, one and three quarters inches long, trembling in the wind, shedding golden pollen . . . . They know when to trust themselves to the weather.");  April 18, 1857 ("The beaked hazel, if that is one just below the little pine at Blackberry Steep, is considerably later than the common, for I cannot get a whole twig fully out, though the common is too far gone to gather there. The catkins, too, are shorter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons: the Hazel.

Though my hands are cold this morning I have not worn gloves for a few mornings past, — a week or . ten days. See April 10, 1855 ("The morning of the 6th, when I found the skunk cabbage out, it was so cold I suffered from numbed fingers, having left my gloves behind. Since April came in, however, you have needed gloves only in the morning. Under some high bare bank sloping to the south on the edge of a meadow, where many springs, issuing from the bank, melt the snow early, — there you find the first skunk-cabbage in bloom.")

The leaves of the skunk-cabbage, unfolding in the meadows, make more show than any green yet. See April 22, 1857 ("At the Cliff Brook I see the skunk-cabbage leaves not yet unrolled, with their points gnawed off. ") See also April 7, 1855  ("At six this morn to Clamshell. The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage

Goosanders, male and female. At a distance you see only the male, alternately diving and sailing, when the female may be all the while by his side.  See March 16, 1855 (“Returning, scare up two large ducks just above the bridge. One very large; white beneath, breast and neck; black head and wings and aft. The other much smaller and dark. Apparently male and female. They alight more than a hundred rods south of the bridge, and I view them with glass. The larger sails about on the watch, while the smaller, dark one dives repeatedly. I think it the goosander or sheldrake”); March 27, 1858 ("They are now pairing. . . .At first we see only a male and female quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, tacking back and forth and looking every way. They keep close together, headed one way, and when one turns the other also turns quickly. The male appears to take the lead."); March 30, 1859 ("See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and female, as is common. So they have for some time paired. They are a hundred rods off. The male the larger, with his black head and white breast, the female with a red head.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A warm sunny walk

through acres and acres of

fragrant spring beauties.

~ Zphx April 22, 2025

I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground.

March 4. 

A dull, cloudy day. P. M. — To Walden via Hubbard's Wood and foot of Cliff Hill. 

The snow has melted very rapidly the past week. There is much bare ground.

The checkerberries are revealed, — somewhat shrivelled many of them.  In Hubbard's maple swamp I see the evergreen leaves of the gold-thread as well as the mitchella and large pyrola. I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground.

In the meadow beyond I see  everywhere the green and reddish radical leaves of the golden senecio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me back or forward to an incredible season. Who would believe that under the snow and ice lie still — or in midwinter — some green leaves which, bruised, yield the same odor that they do when their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June? Nothing so realizes the summer to me now.

In the dry pasture under the Cliff Hill, the radical leaves of the johnswort are now revealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on the ground, with leaves recurved, reddish above, green beneath, and covered with dewy drops.

I can no longer get on to the river ice. 

The ice of Walden has melted or softened so much that I sink an inch or more at every step. The upper side is white and rotten and saturated with water for four or five inches. It is now fifteen and a half inches thick, having lost about an inch and a half.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 4, 1854

The checkerberries are revealed, — somewhat shrivelled many of them. See March 10, 1855 ("Those reddening leaves, as the checkerberry, lambkill, etc., etc., which at the beginning of winter were greenish, are now a deeper red, when the snow goes off.”) Also note to May 21, 1857 (“I find checkerberries still fresh and abundant. ”)

I begin to sniff the air and smell the ground. See February 18, 1857 (“I was surprised to find how sweet the whole ground smelled when I lay flat and applied my nose to it”); March 18,1853 ("To-day first I smelled the earth.”); April 2, 1856 ("I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare ground above the Cliff, to feel its warmth in my back, and smell the earth and the dry leaves.”); May 4, 1859 ("I draw near to the land; I begin to lie down and stretch myself on it. After my winter voyage I begin to smell the land.”); May 16, 1852 ("The whole earth is fragrant as a bouquet held to your nose.")

March 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 4

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Already we begin to anticipate spring (a crossroad in the year of light).

February 2

Another warm, melting day, like yesterday. You can see some softening and relenting in the sky. 

We go up the Corner road and take the ice at Potter's Meadow. The Cliff Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you hear the rush of melted snow down its side in one place. 

The shade of pines on the snow is in some lights quite blue. 

The ice is about eighteen inches thick on Fair Haven. Saw some pickerel just caught there, with a fine lustre to them. 

Went to the pond in the woods which has an old ditch dug from it near Clematis Brook.  The red twigs of the cornels and the yellow ones of the sallows surrounding it are interesting at this season. We prize the least color now. 

The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.

I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you , perhaps. 

As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the pond and meadows. 

We stop awhile under Bittern Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm. There are a few greenish radical leaves to be seen, — primrose and johnswort, strawberry, etc., and spleenwort still green in the clefts. 

The winter gnat is seen in the warm air. 

February 2, 2014

Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. We begin to say that the day is springlike. 

Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1854

Saw some pickerel just caught there, with a fine lustre to them. See January 29, 1853 ("Pickerel of at least three different forms and colors were lying on the ice of Walden this afternoon:") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. See February 12, 1854 ("the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A downy woodpecker was pecking . . .he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. See December 14, 1855 ("I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas. See January 30, 1860 ("The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. . . .It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. ."); February 11, 1854 ("Snow-fleas lie in black patches on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Snow-flea

The winter gnat is seen in the warm air.  See January 6, 1854 ("A winter (?) gnat out on the bark of a pine");  March 2, 1860 ("We see one or two gnats in the 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)

We begin to say that the day is springlike. See March 2, 1859 (“We thus commonly antedate the spring more than any other season, for we look forward to it with more longing. We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet”);  March 20, 1855 ("It is remarkable by what a gradation of days which we call pleasant and warm, beginning in the last of February, we come at last to real summer warmth. At first a sunny, calm, serene winter day is pronounced spring, or reminds us of it; and then the first pleasant spring day perhaps we walk with our greatcoat buttoned up and gloves on.”); April 26, 1860 ("What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

February 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 2

A true winter sound

wholly without sentiment –

the scream of the jay.

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

Already we begin to anticipate spring. 

This crossroad of light

in the gulfstream of winter

near the shores of spring.

Last night the snow was perfect for walking and fresh enough but not too fresh to reveal the abundance of life in the woods. So many tracks.  Out there in the dark I feel --  I think for the first time -- the hidden vital presence of all the woodland creatures.

Groundhog day is a crossroad in the year of light -- and one can feel it.  These earlier mornings and later nights, the memory of the dark is tugging. i could have survived worse. But the coming light and spring is inevitable.

these late winter days

the light is early

the snow, the cold, the dark

no longer a threat

now the deep solitude of winter

is a parting friend

winter lingers

one last wet kiss.

20120224

I am inspired to revisit my "Seasons" project. My book begins in early February and ends in late February because February is both spring and winter.

I have also spent part of the weekend on my quantum physics study, making a spreadsheet of dates and discoveries. And going back to reread Einstein's 1905  paper "On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light":

The wave theory of light, with continuous spatial functions, leads to contradictions when applied to the phenomena of the emmission and transformation of light

According to the assumption considered here, in the propagation of a light ray emitted from a point source, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever increasing volumes of space, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta localized at points of space that move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as complete units.

Still no one understands it. Here is Freeman Dyson in a recent blog :

Unfortunately, people writing about quantum mechanics often use the phrase “collapse of the wave-function” to describe what happens when an object is observed. This phrase gives a misleading idea that the wave-function itself is a physical object. A physical object can collapse when it bumps into an obstacle. But a wave-function cannot be a physical object. A wave-function is a description of a probability, and a probability is a statement of ignorance. Ignorance is not a physical object, and neither is a wave-function. When new knowledge displaces ignorance, the wave-function does not collapse; it merely becomes irrelevant.

It seems age 24 or 26 is the cutoff for making any discoveries in physics.  I am going to read more biographies but so far the story is over by chapter 3 and the rest is just a question of how and when will he die / loose integrity.

zphx

February 2, 2014

tinyurl.com/hdt18540204