The forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

February 8. 

2 p. m. — Up river to Fair Haven Hill. Thermometer 43. 

40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring. February may be called earine (springlike). 

There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. 

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.

Walking over Hubbard's broad meadow on the softened ice, I admire the markings in it. The more interesting and prevailing ones now appearing ingrained and giving it a more or less marbled look, — one, what you may call checkered marbling (?), consisting of small polygonal figures three quarters [of an inch in] diameter, bounded by whitish lines more or less curved within the ice, and apparently covered with an entire thin surface ice, and so on for rods (these when five or six inches wide make a mackerel-sky ice); the other apparently passing from this into a sort of fibrous structure of waving lines, hair-like or rather flame-like, — call it phlogistic : — only far more regular and beautiful than I can draw. 

Sometimes like perhaps a cassowary's feathers, the branches being very long and fine. This fibrous or phlogistic structure is evidently connected with the flow of the surface water, for I see some old holes, now smoothly frozen over, where these rays have flowed from all sides into the hole in the midst of the checked ice, making a circular figure which reminded me of a jellyfish:  only far more beautiful than  this. 

The whitish lines which bound these figures and form  the parallel fibres are apparently lines of fine bubbles more dense than elsewhere. I am not sure that these markings always imply a double or triple ice, i. e. a thinner surface ice, which contains them. 

The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both. The mackerel spotted or marked ice is very common, and also reminds me of the reticulations of the pickerel. 

I see some quite thin ice which had formed on puddles on the ice, now soaked through, and in these are very interesting figures bounded by straight and crinkled particularly white lines. I find, on turning the ice over, that these lines correspond to the raised edges of and between bubbles which have occupied a place in the ice, i. e. upward [?] in it. 

Then there is occasionally, where puddles on the ice have frozen, that triangular rib-work of crystals, — a beautiful casting in alto-relievo of low crystaling as to form triangular and other figures. Shining splinters in the sun. Giving a rough hold to the feet.

One would think that the forms of ice-crystals must include all others.

I see hundreds of oak leaves which have sunk deep into the ice. Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Its stem and lobes and all their bristly points are just as sharply cut there as is the leaf itself, fitting the mould closely and tightly, and, there being a small hole or two in the leaf, the ice stands up through them half an inch high, like so many sharp tacks. 

Indeed, the leaf is sculptured thus in bas-relief, as it were, as sharply and exactly as it could be done by the most perfect tools in any material. But as time has elapsed since it first began to sink into the ice, the upper part of this mould is enlarged by melting more or less, and often shows the outline of the leaf exaggerated and less sharp and perfect. 

You see these leaves at various depths in the ice, — many quite concealed by new ice formed over them, for water flows into the mould and thus a cast of it is made in ice. 

So fragments of rushes and sedge and cranberry leaves have on all sides sunk into the ice in like manner. 

The smallest and lightest-colored object that falls on the ice begins thus at once to sink through it, the sun as it were driving it; and a great many, no doubt, go quite through.This is especially common after a long warm spell like this. 

I see, even, that those colored ridges of froth which have bounded the water that overflowed the ice, since they contain most of the impurities or coloring matter, sink into the ice accordingly, making rough furrows an inch or more deep often. The proper color of water is perhaps best seen when it overflows white ice. Pliny could express a natural wonder. 

About an old boat frozen in, I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1860



40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. See January 25, 1860 ("Above 40° is warm for winter.") ; 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 (" To-day it is 53° at 2, yet cold, such a difference is there in our feelings.What we should have called a warm day in March is a cold one at this date in April.”)

February may be called earine (springlike). There is a peculiarity in the air at this season, which makes sounds more clear and pervading.. . .It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard. See February 8, 1857("Music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it in the softened air of these warm February days which have broken the back of the winter") See also  February 9, 1854 (" There is a peculiar softness and luminousness in the air this morning, perhaps the light being diffused by vapor. It is such a warm, moist, or softened, sunlit air as we are wont to hear the first bluebird's warble in. . . .The voices of the school-children sound like spring. . . . February belongs to the spring; it is a snowy March"); February 24, 1857 ("[A]s I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Change in the Air

A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck  See   February 16, 1855 ("Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”); February 24, 1852 ("I now hear at a distance the sound of the laborer's sledge on the rails. The very sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.”)

Here is a scarlet oak leaf which has sunk one inch into the ice, and the leaf still rests at the bottom of this mould. Compare February 2, 1860 (" Oak leaves, absorbing the heat of the sun, have sunk into the ice an inch in depth and afterward been blown out, leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole and lobes sharply cut, with perfectly upright sides, so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it.")

I see a great many little gyrinus-shaped bugs swimming about in the water above the ice. See February 10, 1860 ("Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold,. . .That is, in a thaw in the winter some water-insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun."); February 28. 1860 ("Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water-bug even on the river, so forward is the season.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

Keeping a journal.

January 25. 

In keeping a journal of one's walks and thoughts it seems to be worth the while to record those phenomena which are most interesting to us at the time. Such is the weather. 

It makes a material difference whether it is foul or fair, affecting surely our mood and thoughts. Then there are various degrees and kinds of foulness and fairness. 

It may be cloudless, or there may be sailing clouds which threaten no storm, or it may be partially overcast. 

On the other hand it may rain, or snow, or hail, with various degrees of intensity. It may be a transient thunder-storm, or a shower, or a flurry of snow, or it may be a prolonged storm of rain or snow. Or the sky may be overcast or rain-threatening. 

So with regard to temperature. It may be warm or cold. Above 40° is warm for winter. One day, at 38 even, I walk dry and it is good sleighing; the next day it may have risen to 48, and the snow is rapidly changed to slosh. 

It may be calm or windy. 

The finest winter day is a cold but clear and glittering one. There is a remarkable life in the air then, and birds and other creatures appear to feel it, to be excited and invigorated by it. 

Also warm and melting days in winter are inspiring, though less characteristic. 

I will call the weather fair, if it does not threaten rain or snow or hail; foul, if it rains or snows or hails, or is so overcast that we expect one or the other from hour to hour. 

To-day it is fair, though the sky is slightly overcast, but there are sailing clouds in the southwest. 

The river is considerably broken up by the recent thaw and rain, but the Assabet much the most, probably because it is swifter and, owing to mills, more fluctuating. When the river begins to break up, it becomes clouded like a mackerel sky, but in this case the blue portions are where the current, clearing away the ice beneath, begins to show dark. The current of the water, striking the ice, breaks it up at last into portions of the same form with those which the wind gives to vapor. First, all those open places which I measured lately much enlarge themselves each way. 

Saw A. Hosmer approaching in his pung. He calculated so that we should meet just when he reached the bare planking of the causeway bridge, so that his horse might as it were stop of his own accord and no other excuse would be needed for a talk. 

He says that he has seen that little bird (evidently the shrike) with mice in its claws. Wonders what has got all the rabbits this winter. Last winter there were  hundreds near his house; this winter he sees none.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1860

In keeping a journal of one's walks and thoughts it seems to be worth the while to record those phenomena which are most interesting to us at the time. See February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.") See also Do not tread on the heels your experience.

The river is considerably broken up by the recent thaw and rain. See January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon . . . I am surprised to see Flint's Pond a quarter part open."); February 12, 1860 ("I see . . . here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, 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?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Like the mackerel sky

February 28. 

To Cambridge and Boston. 

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

Saw a mackerel in the market. The upper half of its sides is mottled blue and white like the mackerel sky, as stated January 19th, 1858 [sic].

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1859

See January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)

A mackerel sky.

January 19. 

Wednesday. P. M. —To Great Meadows 'via Sleepy Hollow. 

It is a remarkably warm, still, and pleasant afternoon for winter, and the wind, as I discover by my handkerchief, southwesterly. 

I noticed last night, just after sunset, a sheet of mackerel sky far in the west horizon, very finely imbricated and reflecting a coppery glow, and again I saw still more of it in the east this morning at sunrise, and now, at 3.30 P. M., looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky. 

January 15, 2014 2:57 P.M.

This indicates a peculiar state of the atmosphere. The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. 

Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. Is not the peculiar propriety of this term lost sight of by the meteorologists? 

It is a luxury for the eye to rest on it. What curtains, what tapestry to our halls! Directly overhead, of course, the scales or cloudlets appear large and coarse, while far on one side toward the horizon they appear very fine. It is as if we were marching to battle with a shield, a testudo, over our heads. 

I thus see a flock of small clouds, like sheep, some twenty miles in diameter, distributed with wonderful regularity. But they are being steadily driven to some new pasture, for when I look up an hour afterward not one is to be seen and [the] sky is beautifully clear. 

The form of these cloudlets is, by the way, like or akin to that of waves, of ripple-marks on sand, of small drifts, wave-like, on the surface of snow, and to the first small openings in the ice of the midstream. 

I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak. 

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. 

By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, chiefly in the snow, two or more inches deep, on a broad frozen ditch where mud has been taken out. The perpendicular sides of the ditch expose a foot or two of dark, sooty mud which had attracted the crows, and I see where they have walked along beneath it and peeked it. Even here also they have alighted on any bare spot where a foot of stubble was visible, or even a rock. 

Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday. 

The same crow, or one of the same, has come again to-day, and, the snow being sticky this warm weather, has left a very distinct track. The width of the whole track is about two and three quarters inches, length of pace about seven inches, length of true track some two inches (not including the nails), but the mark made in setting down the foot and withdrawing it is in each case some fifteen or eighteen inches long, for its hind toe makes a sharp scratch four or five inches long before it settles, and when it lifts its foot again, it makes two other fine scratches with its middle and outer toe on each side, the first some nine inches long, the second six. 

The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. It must be that they require but little and glean that very assiduously. 

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. 

Walking along the river eastward, I notice that the twigs of the black willow, many of which were broken off by the late glaze, only break at base, and only an inch higher up bend without breaking. 

I look down the whole length of the meadows to Ball’s Hill, etc. In a still, warm winter day like this, what warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun. 

At this season we do not want any more color. 

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. I know him (looking with my glass) by the axe over his shoulder, with basket of fish and fish-lines hung on it, and the tin pail of minnows in his hand. The pail shines brightly more than a mile off, reflecting the setting sun. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. 

To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all. 

The water (where open) is also green. 

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening. At least such were the two evenings on which I saw it this winter.

Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1859

Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet [in] diameter at three feet from ground. Compare November 9, 1860 ("To Inches’ Woods in Boxboro . . .the trees which I measured were (all at three feet from ground except when otherwise stated) : a black oak, ten feet circumference,. . .scarlet oak, seven feet three inches, by Guggins Brook.")

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. See November 27, 1858 (“I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak”); September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Scarlet Oak

There is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”);  Compare February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”) See also  January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. See January 14, 1860 ("Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.");   January 17, 1858 ("I see a large downy owl's feather adhering to a sweet-fern twig.."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

At this season we do not want any more color. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau Winter Colors

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. See December 23, 1859 ("Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home.. . . In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun. See 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.”); December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); Decemberr 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); "January 1, 1855 ("We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us")

I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view . . . than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. See December 3, 1856 (“The pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.”); 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."); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.");; 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."). See also May 8, 1853 ("The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

A mackerel sky

far in the west horizon

just after sunset

.

The pyramidal

tops of a white pine forest

in the horizon.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A mackerel sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590119

Circle round the moon.

October 30

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day.

P. M. — Near the island, in my boat, I scare up a bittern (Ardea minor), and afterward half a dozen ducks, probably summer ducks.

Saw a large flock of blackbirds yesterday. 

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky. You see no mist within it, large as it is, nor even a star. 

I find thousands of ants now apparently gone into winter quarters in my stumps, large black ones, red in the middle, partly dormant even this warm weather, yet with white grubs or young. Some are winged. . . . 

The clintonia was perfectly at home there [in the Maine woods]. Its leaves were just as handsomely formed and green and disposed commonly in triangles about its stem, and its berries were just as blue and glossy as if they grew by some botanist's favorite walk in Concord. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1857

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening. . . See February 27, 1852 ("To-night a circle round the moon.”)

After the storm a new world

January 20.

January 20, 2015

A fine, clear day, not very cold. There was a high wind last night, which relieved the trees of their burden almost entirely, but I may still see the drifts. There is nothing hackneyed where a new snow can come and cover all the landscape.

The surface of the snow everywhere in the fields, where it is hard blown, has a fine grain with low shelves, like a slate stone that does not split well. We cross the fields behind Hubbard‘s and suddenly slump into dry ditches concealed by the snow, up to the middle, and flounder out again.

How new all things seem! Here is a broad, shallow pool in the fields now converted into a soft, white, fleecy snow ice,  It is like the beginning of the world. 

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only, perchance, a faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. 

The snow still adheres conspicuously to the north west sides of the stems of the trees quite up to their summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that direction, — It would be about as good as a compass to steer  by in a cloudy day or by night.

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky and also at the neighboring wood so suddenly relieved of its snowy burden. 

The pines — mostly white — have at this season a warm brown or yellowish tinge, and the oaks— chiefly young white ones — are comparatively red. The black oak I see is more yellowish. You have these colors of the evergreens and oaks in winter for warmth and contrast with the snow. 

Seeds are still left on the birches, which, after each new snow, are sprinkled over its surface, apparently to keep the birds supplied with food. 

You see where yesterday’s snowy billows have broken at last in the sun or by their own weight, their curling edges fallen and crumbled on the snow beneath. 

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed,—johnswort and coarse grasses, -—whose oat-like seed-scales or hulls they have scattered about. It is surprising they did not sink deeper in the light snow. Often the impression is so faint that they seem to have been supported by their wings. 

The pines and oaks in the deepest hollows in the woods still support some snow, but especially the low swamps are half filled with snow to the height of ten feet, resting on the bent underwood, as if affording covert to wolves.

Very musical and even sweet now, like a horn, is the hounding of a foxhound heard now in some distant wood, while I stand listening in some far solitary and silent field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1855

The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard. See January 20, 1856 (" I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower.") See also  December 31, 1855 (“It is one of the mornings of creation .”); January 7, 1858 ("The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings . . . true mornings of creation, original and poetic days. "); January 26, 1853 (“There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew.”)

I sit looking up at the mackerel sky . See January 19, 1859 (“The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. ”)

I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed. See January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden"); January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

The solid crystalline sky under our feet.

February 12. 

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, 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? When I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. 

It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and crossing Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow-patches are a most beautiful crystalline purple.

I thus find myself returning over a smooth green sea, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower. It would not be more enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of the sunset sky.

Here the clouds are these patches of snow, and the ice is the solid crystalline sky under our feet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1860

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds See February 8, 1860 ("The ice is thus marked under my feet somewhat as the heavens overhead; there is both the mackerel sky and the fibrous flame or asbestos-like form in both.")

It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. See February 20, 1855  ("I see from my window the bright-blue water here and there between the ice and on the meadow.");  March 5, 1854 ("And for the first time I see the water looking blue on the meadows.") See also A Book of the Seasons,    by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green. See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); January 27, 1854 ("Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance.”)

The ice is the solid crystalline sky under our feet. See December 13, 1859 ("Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also.”);

February 12.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

***

In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. 

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky- blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, 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. Those are peculiar portions of the river which have thus always opened first, — been open latest and longest. 

In winter not only some creatures, but the very earth is partially dormant; vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some extent, cease to flow. Therefore, when I see the water exposed in midwinter, it is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. 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. But to return to my walk.

***  

Amid purple clouds 

ice the solid crystalline 

sky under our feet.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026