I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape.

January 2. 

The trees are white with a hoar frost this morning, small leafets, a tenth of an inch long, on every side of the twigs. They look like ghosts of trees.

Took a walk on snow-shoes at 9 A. M. to Hubbard's Grove.

A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion.

P. M. - - Up Union Turnpike.

The tints of the sunset sky are never purer and ethereal than in the coldest winter days. This evening, though the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystalline and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very beautiful.

I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape.

We go about these days as if we had fetters on our feet. We walk in the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our predecessors.

I noticed yesterday that the damp snow, falling gently without wind on the top of front-yard posts, had quite changed the style of their architecture, -- to the dome style of the East, a four-sided base becoming a dome at top.

I observe other revelations made by the snow.

The team and driver have long since gone by, but I see the marks of his whip-lash on the snow, -- its re coil, — but alas ! these are not a complete tally of the strokes which fell upon the oxen's back. The unmerciful driver thought perchance that no one saw him, but unwittingly he recorded each blow on the unspotted snow behind his back as in the book of life. To more searching eyes the marks of his lash are in the air.

I paced partly through the pitch pine wood and partly the open field from the Turnpike by the Lee place to the railroad, from north to south, more than a quarter of a mile, measuring at every tenth pace. The average of sixty-five measurements, up hill and down, was nine teen inches; this after increasing those in the woods by one inch each (little enough) on account of the snow on the pines.

So that, apparently, it has settled about as much as the two last snows amount to. I think there has been but little over two feet at any one time.

I think that one would have to pace a mile on a north and south line, up and down hill, through woods and fields, to get a quite reliable result. The snow will drift sometimes the whole width of a field, and fill a road or valley beyond. So that it would be well that your measuring included several such driftings.

There is very little reliance to put on the usual estimates of the depth of snow. I have heard different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight inches.

My snow-shoes sank about four inches into the snow this morning, but more than twice as much the 29th.

On north side the railroad, above the red house crossing, the cars have cut through a drift about a quarter of a mile long and seven to nine feet high, straight up and down. It reminds me of the Highlands, the Pictured Rocks, the side of an iceberg, etc. Now that the sun has just sunk below the horizon, it is wonderful what an amount of soft light [ it ] appears to be absorbing. There appears to be more day just here by its side than anywhere. I can almost see into [ it ] six inches. It is made translucent, it is so saturated with light.

I have heard of one precious stone found in Concord, the cinnamon stone.  A geologist has spoken of it as found in this town, and a farmer has described to me one which he once found, perhaps the same referred to by the other.  He said it was as large as a brick, and as thick, and yet you could distinguish a pin through it, it was so transparent.

If not a mountain of light, it was a brickbatful, at any rate.


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

A flock of snow buntings. See January 2, 1856 ("They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.");  December 29, 1853 ("These are the true winter birds . . . these winged snowballs."); 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, 1859 (“They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape. See May 3, 1852 (“How cheering and glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence!”); December 31, 1854 ("How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!"); December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail."); December 9, 1856 ("A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape.”)

I have heard different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight inches. See January 12, 1856 ("Though the snow is only ten inches deep on a level, farmers affirm that it is two feet deep, confidently.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 2.

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

The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue.

February 27

 2 P. M. — Thermometer 50.

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2020

To Abner Buttrick' s Hill. 

The river has been breaking up for several days and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt's and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. 

For a week or more you could not go to Ball's Hill by the south side of the river. The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill [ Yes , and upward as far as Cardinal Shore, the reach above Hubbard 's Bridge being open; thence it is mackerelled up to the pond], except the masses of ice moving in it; but the ice generally rests on the bottom of the meadows, — such as was there before the water rose, — and the freshet is for the most part covered with a thin ice except where the wind has broke it up. 

The high wind for several days has prevented this water from freezing hard. 

There are many cranberries washed far on to a large cake of ice which stretches across the river at Hunt's Bridge. The wind subsiding leaves them conspicuous on the middle of the cake. 

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. 

Heywood says that when the ground is regularly descending from the north to the railroad, a low fence a quarter of a mile off has been found to answer perfectly; if it slopes upward, it must be very near the road. 

I walk down the river below Flint's on the north side. 

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now. 

I see, from far over the meadows, white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream, - a novel sight. They are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. 

For several days the earth generally has been bare. I see the tawny and brown earth, the fescue- and lichen-clad hills behind Dakin's and A. Buttrick's. 

Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle, - green in the midst of brown and decayed; and at the bottom of little hollows in pastures, now perhaps nearly covered with ice and water, you see some greener leafets of clover. 

I find myself cut off by that arm of our meadow sea which makes up toward A. Buttrick's. The walker now by the river valley is often compelled to go far round by the water, driven far toward the farmers' door-yards.

I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the water. 

Instead of a piece of ice I find it to be the breast of the sheldrake, which so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, steadily sailing this way and that with its companion, who is diving from time to time. They have chosen the opening farthest removed from all shores. As I look I see the ice drifting in upon them and contracting their water, till finally they have but a few square rods left, while there are forty or fifty acres near by. This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.

C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard's Close brook in woods to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1860

The river has been breaking up for several days . . .  The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill. Compare  February 27, 1856 ( the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.") and February 27, 1852 ("The main river is not yet open but in very few places, but the North Branch, which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial"). See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,  Ice out

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. See February 13, 1851 ("Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded. The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.");  February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 18, 1860   (“Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”); March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”); March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: the Skunk Cabbage

White cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. See March 1, 1855 ("Banks of snow by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling white due to the higher sun.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Days have grown Sensibly Longer

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. See February 12, 1860 ("Where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, [I see] the blue-black water. That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. . . .It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.") Compare March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. This great expanse of deep-blue water, deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my soul as of yore? It is hard to soften me now. The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. See March 1, 1856 ("Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening, which I had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen inches on a level. , , , Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air.

February 24

2 P.M. - Thermometer 42. 

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. 

February 24, 2024

The clouds reflecting a dazzling brightness from their edges, and though it is rather warm (the wind raw) there are many, finely divided, in a stream southwest to northeast all the afternoon, and some most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow. 

Some of the finest imaginable rippling, and some fine strings of clouds, narrow anteater skeletons, stretching from southwest to northeast, with the wind, looking like a little cotton caught on a crooked telegraph-wire, the spine is so distinct. 

A great part of the very finely divided cloud, one stratum above another, had the appearance of a woven web, the fibres crossing each other in a remarkable manner right overhead. 

The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1860

Thermometer 42. A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. See February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air."); February 24, 1857 ("A fine spring morning. . . It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced") See also January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”); February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike)."); February 12, 1856 ("The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°. . . .How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . .I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. "); February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°."); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring."); . February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

Most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. See note to January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown.")

The river risen and musquash begun to be killed. See March 5, 1860 ("George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.") See also October 29, 1857 ("Tthe river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash."); January 29, 1859 ("Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."); February 17, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats."); March 17, 1859 ("River risen still higher. . . . A great many musquash have been killed within a week. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

Such a spring-like day,

the sparkling light in the air,

clouds dazzling brightness.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A very spring-like day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

As I walk toward the sun, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets..

February 13

P. M. —— On ice to Fair Haven Pond. 

Yesterday there was no skating, unless you swept the snow from the ice; but to-day, though there has been no rain nor thaw, there is pretty good skating. Yesterday the water which had flowed, and was flowing, back over the ice on each side of the river and the meadows, a rod or two in width, was merely skimmed over, but last night it froze so that there is good skating there. Also the wind will generally lay bare some portion of the ice, unless the snow is very deep. 

This yellowish ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals very much like bits of asbestos, an inch or more long, sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; but where I broke in yesterday, and apparently wherever the water overflowed the thin ice late in the day, there are none. I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night. It is sprinkled like some kind of grain, and is in certain places much more thickly strewn, as where a little snow shows itself above the ice. 

The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate. Though I distinguish these colors everywhere toward the sun, they are so much more abundantly reflected to me from two particular directions that I see two distant rays, or arms, so to call them, of this rainbow-like dust, one on each side of the sun, stretching away from me and about half a dozen feet wide, the two arms including an angle of about sixty degrees. 

When I look from the sun, I see merely dazzling white points. I can easily see some of these dazzling grains fifteen or twenty rods distant on any side, though the facet which reflects this light cannot be more than a tenth or twelfth of an inch at most. 

Yet I might easily, and commonly do, overlook all this. 

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. Not till winter do we take possession of the whole of our territory. I have three great highways raying out from one centre, which is near my door. I may walk down the main river or up either of its two branches. Could any avenues be contrived more convenient? With this river I am not compelled to walk in the tracks of horses. 

Never is there so much light in the air as in one of these bright winter afternoons, when all the earth is covered with new-fallen snow and there is not a cloud in the sky. The sky is much the darkest side, like the bluish lining of an egg-shell. There seems nothing left to make night out of. With this white earth beneath and that spot[less] skimmed-milk sky above him, man is but a black speck inclosed in a white egg-shell. 

Sometimes in our prosaic moods, life appears to us but a certain number more of days like those which we have lived, to be cheered not by more friends and friendship but probably fewer and less. As, perchance, we anticipate the end of this day before it is done, close the shutters, and with a cheerless resignation commence the barren evening whose fruitless end we clearly see, we despondingly think that all of life that is left is only this experience repeated a certain number of times. And so it would be, if it were not for the faculty of imagination.

I see, under this ice an inch thick, a large bubble with three cracks across it, yet they are so fine — though quite distinct —— that they let no air up, and I release it with my knife. An air-bubble very soon makes the ice look whitish above it. It is whitest of all when it is fairly inclosed, with ice beneath it. When, by treading above it, I dislodge a bubble under this ice which formed only last night, I see that it leaves the outline of its form behind, the ice being a little thinner above it.

Here is the track of one who walked here yesterday. The age of the track is betrayed by a certain smoothness or shininess produced by the sun shining on the raw and disturbed edges and melting them. The fresh track is evidently made in a dry, powdery substance; that of yesterday, as if it were made in a slightly glutinous matter, or which possessed considerable tenacity. 

Then there is the wonderful stillness of a winter day. The sources of sound, as of water, are frozen up; scarcely a tinkling rill of it is to be heard. When we listen, we hear only that sound of the surf of our internal sea, rising and swelling in our ears as in two seashells. It is the sabbath of the year, stillness audible, or at most we hear the ice belching and crackling as if struggling for utterance. 

A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1859


As I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. See December 11, 1855 ("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle")

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. See February 13, 1851 ("The meadows were frozen just enough to bear."); February 13, 1856 ("A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences."); See also December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer.").  December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited, not having a boat in the summer."); January 24, 1856 ("The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer.");   February 8, 1852 ("I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 10, 1860 ("No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice"); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. “)

Sometimes in our prosaic moods, life appears to us but a certain number more of days . . .as, perchance, we anticipate the end of this day before it is done, See. July 30, 1852 (" After midsummer we have a belated feeling and are forward to see in each sight and hear in each sound some presage of the fall, just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life")

I see, under this ice an inch thick, a large bubble with three cracks across it, yet they are so fine — though quite distinct —— that they let no air up, and I release it with my knife. An air-bubble very soon makes the ice look whitish above it. See January 24, 1859 ("("When I cut through with my knife an inch or two to one of the latter kind, making a very slight opening, the confined air, pressed by the water, burst up with a considerable hissing sound, sometimes spurting a little water with it, and thus the bubble was contracted, almost annihilated")

A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination. See  May 12, 1857 ("Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.")

Sometimes life appears 

as but a certain number 

more of shorter days.

The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

November 17

November 17, 2015

November 17, 2018

The ground has remained frozen since the morning of the 12th. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The polypody on the rock is much shrivelled by the late cold. The edges are curled up, and it is not nearly so fair as it was ten days ago. 

I see a small botrychium in the swampy wood west of river, opposite Emerson’s field, quite fresh, not at all injured. 

The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. They dive off the round-backed, black mossy stones, which, when small and slightly exposed, look much like themselves. In swimming show commonly three parts with water between. One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on. 

Much Lycopodium complanatum did not shed pollen on the 3d, and the Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum sheds it only within a very few days  (was apparently in its prime yesterday). So it would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. It was coincident with this prominence. 

Leaving my boat, I walk through the low wood west of Dove Rock, toward the scarlet oak. The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. 

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm. 

Looking toward the sun now when an hour high, there being many small alders and birches between me and it for half a dozen rods, the light reflected from their with closely concentric lines, of which I see about one fourth, on account of the upward curve of the twigs on each side, and the light not being reflected to me at all from one side of the trees directly in front of me. The light is thus very pleasantly diffused. 

We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. 

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. It was quite like the sunlight reflected from grass and weeds covered with hoar frost. Yet in an ordinary light these are but dark or dusky looking twigs with scarcely a noticeable downiness. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. 

A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. 

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up from the weeds within a stone’s throw of my boat’s place. It drops its excrement from thirty feet in the air, and this falling, one part being heavier than another, takes the form of a snake, and suggests that this may be the origin of some of the stories of this bird swallowing a snake or eel which passed through it.

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. 

Winter is not all white and sere. Some trees are evergreen to cheer us, and on the forest floor our eyes do not fall on sere brown leaves alone, but some evergreen shrubs are placed there to relieve the eye. Mountain laurel, lambkill, checkerberry, Wintergreen, etc., etc., etc., and a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still. 

Aspidium spinulosum

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed). 
• Asplenium trichomanes. 
• A. ebeneum.  
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th. 
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond. 
• A. marginale (common). 
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1853 

The polypody on the rock. See November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock. ") See alss A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); May 23, 1853 ( Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”;  October 26, 1857 (“The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.”); 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.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”);   June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood”);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....The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. See November 13, 1858 ("Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight”)

The hundred silvery lights of November. See November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) See also October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); November 11, 1851 (" Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. . . . the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring.): November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.”); .November 14, 1853("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November"); November 15, 1859 ("I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light"); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”)

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern .there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. See December 7, 1857 (“I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.”)

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up. See September 20, 1855("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. “); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. See June 14, 1851 ("How moderate, deliberate, is Nature!"); January 26, 1858 ("Nature loves gradation.")

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody  [Polypodium virginianum — rock polypody] (though shrivelled by cold where exposed)
• Asplenium trichomanes [maidenhair spleenwort].
• A. ebeneum [or Asplenium platyneuron – ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort].
• Aspidium spinulosum (?) [or Dryopteris carthusiana or Polypodium spinulosum, –  spinulose shield fern, spinulose woodfern or toothed wood fern] large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?) [or Dryopteris cristata – crested wood fern], Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common) [or Dryopteris marginalis, – marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern]
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield)[or Polystichum acrostichoides, – Christmas fern]

See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."). See also August 30, 1853  ('I find at this time in fruit: (1) Polypodium vulgare,

. . .( 5 ) Asplenium Trichomanes ( dwarf spleenwort), also ( 6 ) A. ebeneum ( ebony spleenwort ),. . .(8) Dryopteris marginalis  marginal shield fern), (9) Polystichum acrostichoides (terminal shield fern). . . Nos . 1, 5 , 6 , and 8 common at Lee's Cliff . No.. . . 9 at Brister's Hill.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort

The last especially[ handsome], it has so thick a frond. See July 29, 1853 ("Brister's Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.")

Note: Did HDT observe Dryopteris intermedia? Although intermediate woodfern (Dryopteris intermedia) a/k/a "evergreen woodfern" is a common evergreen fern, Henry's only reference to “intermediate fern" is likely a mistranscription of "interrupted fern" (Osmunda claytoniana. The Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal. See May 13, 1860 (“The intermediate ferns and cinnamon, a foot and a half high, have just leafeted out.”) Compare May 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places."); May 23, 1860 (" Interrupted fern fruit probably a day or two, and cinnamon, say the same or just after."); May 26, 1855 ("Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day.")

November 17.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 17

November 17, 2015

The manifold ways

at this season that light is 

reflected to us.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531117

I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th.

August 13. 

This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. It would rain five minutes and be fair the next five, and so on, alternately, a whole afternoon. The farmers have not been able to get much of their hay. On the whole it has been rather cool. It has been still decidedly summer, with some reminiscences of autumn. The last week has been the heart of the huckleberry season. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries are now seen, not long, overhanging the side of the river, amid cornels and willows and button-bushes. They make a dull impression, yet held close in some lights they are glossy. The umbelled fruits —viburnums and cornels, aralias, etc. — have begun. 

As I am paddling up the north side above the Hemlocks, I am attracted by the singular shadows of the white lily pads on the rich-brown muddy bottom. It is remarkable how light tends to prevail over shadow there. It steals in under the densest curtain of pads and illustrates the bottom. The shadows of these pads, seen (now at 3 P. M.) a little one side, where the water is eighteen inches or two feet deep, are rarely orbicular or entire-edged or resembling the leaf, but are more or less perfect rosettes, generally of an oval form, with five to fifteen or more regularly rounded petals, open half-way to the centre. You cannot commonly refer the shadow to its substance but by touching the leaf with your paddle. 

Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself. While it is a regular and almost solid disk, the shadow is a rosette or palmate, as if the sun, in its haste [to] illustrate every nook, shone round the shortest corner. Often if you connect the extremities of the petals, you have the general outline and size of the leaf, and the shadow is less than the substance by the amount of the openings. These petals seem to depend for their existence on the some what scalloped, waved, or undulating edge of the pad, and the manner in which the light is reflected from it. Generally the two sharp angles of the pad are almost entirely eroded in the shadow. The shadows, too, have a slight halo about them. 

Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is protean and somewhat weird even. The shadow of the leaf might be mistaken for that of the flower. The sun playing with a lily leaf draws the outline of a lily on the bottom with its shadow. 

The broad-leaved helianthus on bank opposite Assabet Spring is not nearly out, though the H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th. 

I landed to get the wood pewee nest in the Lee Wood. Perhaps those woods might be called Mantatukwet’s, for he says he lived at the foot of Nawshawtuct about fifty years before 1684. 

Hypopytis abundantly out (how long ?), apparently a good while, in that long wood-path on the left side, under the oak wood, before you begin to rise, going from the river end. Very little indeed is yet erect, and that which is not is apparently as forward as the rest. Not generally quite so high as the Monotropa uniflora which grows with it. I see still in their midst the dry upright brown spikes of last year’s seed-vessels. The chimaphila is more of an umbel. 

Where that dense young birch grove, four to eight feet high, was burned over in the spring, — I am pretty sure it was early in May,— I see now a yet more dense green crop of Solidago altissima, three or four feet high and budded to bloom. Where did all the seed come from? I think the burning was too late for any seed to have blown on since. Did it, then, lie in the ground so low as to escape the fire? The seed may have come from plants which grow in the old path along the fence on the west side. 

It is a singular fact, at any rate, that a dense grove of young white birches, covering half a dozen acres, may be burned over in May, so as to kill nearly all, and now, amid the dead brown trees, you see [a] dense green crop of Solidago altissima covering the ground like grass, four feet high. Nature practices a rotation of crops, and always has has some seed ready in the ground. 

Young white maples below Dove Rock are an inch and a half high, and red maples elsewhere about one inch high. 

I come to get the now empty nests of the wood pewees found June 27th. 

In each case, on approaching the spot, I hear the sweet note of a pewee lingering about, and this alone would have guided me within four or five rods. I do not know why they should linger near the empty nest, but perhaps they have built again near there or intend to use the same nest again (?). Their full strain is pe-ah-ee' (perhaps repeated), rising on the last syllable and emphasizing that, then pe’-ee, emphasizing the first and falling on the last, all very sweet and rather plaintive, suggesting innocence and confidence in you. In this case the bird uttered only its last strain, regularly at intervals. 

These two pewee nests are remarkably alike in their position and composition and form, though half a mile apart. They are both placed on a horizontal branch of a young oak (one about fourteen, the other about eighteen, feet from ground) and three to five feet from main trunk, in a young oak wood. Both rest directly on a horizontal fork, and such is their form and composition that they have almost precisely the same color and aspect from below and from above. 

The first is on a dead limb, very much exposed, is three inches in diameter outside to outside, and two inches in diameter within, the rim being about a quarter of an inch thick, and it is now one inch deep within. Its framework is white pine needles, especially in the rim, and a very little fine grass stem, covered on the rim and all without closely with small bits of lichen (cetraria?), slate-colored without and blackish beneath, and some brown caterpillar (?) or cocoon (?) silk with small seed—vessels in it. They are both now thin and partially open at the bottom, so that I am not sure they contain all the original lining. This one has no distinct lining, unless it is a very little green usnea amid the loose pine needles. The lichens of the nest would readily be confounded with the lichens of the limb. Looking down on it, it is a remarkably round and neat nest. 

The second nest is rather more shallow now and half an inch wider without, is lined with much more usnea (the willow down which I saw in it June 27 is gone; perhaps they cast it out in warm weather !), and shows a little of some slender brown catkin (oak ?) beneath, without. 

These nests remind me of what I suppose to be the yellow-throat vireo’s and hummingbird’s. The lining of a nest is not in good condition — perhaps is partly gone — when the birds have done with it. 

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river, kept up down to the very junction, indicates a different geological region for their channels.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1858

The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries overhanging the side of the river. See August 27, 1856 ("Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull leadcolored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.")

The remarkable difference between the two branches of our river indicates a different geological region for their channels. See July 16, 1859 ("The stream is remarkably different from the [Concord]. It is not half so deep. It is considerably more rapid. The bottom is not muddy but sandy and occasionally stony. Though far shallower, it is less weedy than the other. ... This is owing, perhaps, not only to the greater swiftness of the current, but to the want of mud under the sand. You wonder what makes the difference between this stream and the other. It seems impossible that it should be a geological difference in the beds of the streams so near together. Is it not owing simply to the greater swiftness of this stream?"); July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections. It is a factory of soil, depositing sediment.")

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

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 © 2009-202

Wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath..

April 25.

Saturday. P. M. — Down Turnpike to Smith's Hill and return by Goose Pond. 

Saw a large old hollow log with the upper side [gone], which [made] me doubt if it was not a trough open at the ends, and suggested that the first trough was perhaps such a hollow log with one side split off and the ends closed. 

It is cool and windy this afternoon. 

Some sleet falls, but as we sit on the east side of Smith's chestnut grove, the wood, though so open and leafless, makes a perfect lee for us, apparently by breaking the force of the wind. A dense but bare grove of slender chestnut trunks a dozen rods wide is a perfect protection against this violent wind, and makes a perfectly calm lee. 

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark, at this season at least, when the sap is running, to carry a moss or other thing in safely. I have only to make three cuts and strip off a piece from a clear space some ten inches long, and then, rolling it up wrong side outward, as it naturally curls backward as soon as taken off (the dry side shrinking, the moist swelling) and so keeps its place, I bend or fold the ends back on it, as if it were paper, and so close them, and, if I please, tie it round with a string of the same bark. This is resilient or elastic, and stands out from a plant, and also is not injured by moisture like paper. When the incision is made now, the crystalline drops of sap follow the knife down the tree. This box dries yellow or straw-colored, with large clouds of green derived from the inner bark. 

The inner bark of the Betula populifolia just laid bare is green with a yellow tinge; that of the B. papyracea is buff. The undermost layer of the outer bark of the last, next to the inner bark, is straw-colored and exceedingly thin and delicate, and smoother to the lips than any artificial tissue. 

Bluets numerous and fully out at the Smith hillside between trough and Saw Mill Brook Falls. 

Got to-day unquestionable Salix humilis in the Britton hollow, north of his shanty, but all there that I saw (and elsewhere as yet) [are] pistillate. It is apparently now in prime, and apparently the next to bloom after the various larger and earlier ones, all which I must call as yet S. discolor. This S. humilis is small-catkined and loves a dry soil. 

A correspondent of the Tribune of April 24th, 1857, who signs "Lyndeborough, N. H., April 15, 1857. J. Herrick," says that he taps his sugar maples four feet from the ground so that cattle may not disturb the buckets, and that the sap will run as freely from the topmost branch as from a root. 

"Any one may learn this fact from the red squirrel, who, by the way, is a famous sugar maker, and knows when to tap a tree and where to do it. He performs his tapping in the highest perpendicular limbs or twigs, and leaves the sun and wind to do the evaporating, and in due season and pleasant weather you will see him come round and with great gusto gather his sirup into his stomach." 

The dense, green, rounded beds of mosses in springs and old water-troughs are very handsome now, — intensely cold green cushions. 

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet, with the curved lines of falling rain beneath. The wind is so strong that the thin drops fall on you in the sunshine when the cloud has drifted far to one side. 

The air is peculiarly clear, the light intense, and when the sun shines slanting under the dark scud, the willows, etc., rising above the dark flooded meadows, are lit with a fine straw-colored light like the spirits of trees. 

I see winkle fungi comparatively fresh, whose green and reddish-brown and pale-buff circles above turn to light and dark slate and white, and so finally fade all to white. 

The beds of fine mosses on bare yellow mouldy soil are now in fruit and very warmly red in the sun when seen a little from one side. 

No pages in my Journal are so suggestive as those which contain a rude sketch. 

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap and mix its bark with our bread, would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads, and our breath and persons exhale its sweet aroma? What sappy vigor there would be in our limbs! What sense we should have to explore the swamps with!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1857

I find that I can very easily make a convenient box of the birch bark . . . See April 13, 1857 ("I peeled a white birch, getting a piece of bark about ten inches long. I noticed that the birch sap was flowing. This bark at once curled back so as to present its yellow side outward. I . . . tied it round with a strip of birch bark, making a very nice and airy box for the creature, which would not be injured by moisture, far better than any paper, . . .")

Again we had, this afternoon at 2 o'clock, those wild, scudding wind-clouds in the north, spitting cold rain or sleet.  See December 14, 1859( "Snow-storms might be classified. .. . there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain.")

Suppose we were to drink only the yellow birch sap. See April 16, 1857 ("Get birch sap, — two bottles yellow birch and five of black birch. ")

Would not its yellow curls sprout from our foreheads. See  January 4, 1853 ("This is like a fair, flaxen haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets."); February 18, 1854 ("The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open."); January 26, 1858 ("The yellow birch . . .might be described as a tree whose trunk or bole was covered with golden and silver shavings glued all over it and dangling in curls. ")