Kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox.

February 2. 

6° below at about 8 a. m. Clock has stopped. Teams squeak. 

2 p. m. — To Fair Haven Pond. 

The river, which was breaking up, is frozen over again. The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized. This new ice for forty rods together is thickly covered with these rosettes, often as thick as snow, an inch deep, and sometimes in ridges like frozen froth three inches high. Sometimes they are in a straight line along a crack. The frozen breath of the river at a myriad breathing-holes. 

A thaw began the 7th of January, and it was mild and thawing most of the time for the rest of that month; but with February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. 

It blowed considerably yesterday, though it is very still to-day, and the light, dry snow, especially on the meadow ice and the river, was remarkably plowed and drifted by it, and now presents a very wild and arctic scene. Indeed, no part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now, though the snow was only some three inches deep on a level. It is cold and perfectly still, and you walk over a level snowy tract. 

It is a sea of white waves of nearly uniform shape and size. Each drift is a low, sharp promontory directed toward the northwest, and showing which way the wind blowed with occasional small patches of bare ice amid them. It is exactly as if you walked over a solid sea where the waves rose about two feet high. These promontories have a general resemblance to one another. Many of them are perfect tongues of snow more or less curving and sharp.  

Commonly the wind has made a little hollow in the snow directly behind this tongue, it may be to the ice, spoon-shaped or like a tray, — if small, a cradle in the snow. Again it is a complete canoe, the tongue being its bows.

The many distinct firm ridges on a slope of the drift — as if the edges of so many distinct layers cropped out — form undulating parallel lines of great interest. Sometimes yet smaller hollows or cradles, not reaching to the ice and at right angles with the low ridges of the drift, remind you of panelling. Again these oval hollows produce a regular reticulation. 

One hour you have bare ice; the next, a level counter pane of snow; and the next, the wind has tossed and sculptured it into these endless and varied forms. It is such a scene as Boothia Felix may present, — if that is any wilder than Concord. 

I go sliding over the few bare spots, getting a foothold for my run on the very thin sloping and ridged snow. The snow is not thus drifted in fields and meadows generally, but chiefly where there was an icy foundation on which it slid readily. The whole of the snow has evidently shifted, perhaps several times, and you cannot tell whether some slight ridges an inch high are the foundation of a drift just laid or the relics of one removed. 

Behind a tuft of bushes it is collected deep. I forgot to say that all the ice between the rosettes was thinly sprinkled with very slender grain like spiculae, sometimes two together. 

The sky was all overcast, but the sun's place quite distinct. The cloud about the sun had a cold, dry, windy look, as if the cloud, elsewhere homogeneous cold slaty, were there electrified and arranged like iron-filings about the sun, its fibres, so to speak, more or less raying from the sun as a centre. 

About 3 p. m. I noticed a distinct fragment of rainbow, about as long as wide, on each side of the sun, one north and the other south and at the same height above the horizon with the sun, all in a line parallel with the horizon; and, as I thought, there was a slight appearance of a bow. 

The sun-dogs, if that is their name, were not so distinctly bright as an ordinary rainbow, but were plainly orange-yellow and a peculiar light violet-blue, the last color looking like a hole in the cloud, or a thinness through which you saw the sky. This lasted perhaps half an hour, and then a bow about the sun became quite distinct, but only those parts where the sun-dogs were were distinctly rainbow-tinted, the rest being merely reddish-brown and the clouds within finely raying from the sun more or less. But higher up, so that its centre would have been in the zenith or apparently about in the zenith, was an arc of a distinct rainbow. A rainbow right overhead. Is this what is called a parhelion? 

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows, which in the fall is one of the least noticeable colors, should, now that the landscape is mostly covered with snow, be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color, and an agreeable contrast to the snow. 

I frequently see where 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. Sometimes these moulds have been evenly filled with snow while the ice is dark, and you have the figure of the leaf in white. 

I see where some meadow mouse — if not mole — just came to the surface of the snow enough to break it with his back for three or four inches, then put his head out and at once withdrew it. 

We walked, as usual, on the fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river. He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button-bushes and willows, smelling in the snow. 

Not appearing to regard us much, he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus, half-way round it; at Pleasant Meadow, evidently looking for mice (or moles?) in the grass of the bank, smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble, often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots. He was eagerly searching for food, intent on finding some mouse to help fill his empty stomach. 

He had a blackish tail and blackish feet. Looked lean and stood high. The tail peculiarly large for any creature to carry round. He stepped daintily about, softly, and is more to the manor born than a dog. It was a very arctic scene this cold day, and I suppose he would hardly have ventured out in a warm one.

The fox seems to get his living by industry and perseverance. He runs smelling for miles along the most favorable routes, especially the edge of rivers and ponds, until he smells the track of a mouse beneath the snow or the fresh track of a partridge, and then follows it till he comes upon his game. After exploring thus a great many quarters, after hours of fruitless search, he succeeds. 

There may be a dozen partridges resting in the snow within a square mile, and his work is simply to find them with the aid of his nose. Compared with the dog, he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to a noble family which has seen its best days, — a younger son.

Now and then he starts, and turns and doubles on his track, as if he heard or scented danger. (I watch him through my glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of only sixty rods. I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably he has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. 

I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years. 

I have seen a good many of those snails left on the ice during the late thaw, as the  caterpillars, etc., were.

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

6° below at about 8 a. m. Clock has stopped. See February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")

The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized. See December 28, 1852 ("The rosettes in the ice, as Channing calls them, now and for some time have attracted me."); December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow . . . I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice."); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter"); February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"); December 29, 1859 ("On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes.")

With February we have genuine winter again. Almost all the openings in the river are closed again, and the new ice is covered with rosettes. See February 1, 1855 ("The river falling all day, no water has burst out through the ice next the shore, and it is now one uninterrupted level white blanket of snow quite to the shore on every side.");  The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. I have walked much on the river this winter, but, ever since it froze over, it has been on a snow-clad river, or pond. They have been river walks because the snow was shallowest there. February 5, 1856 ("The weather is still clear, cold, and unrelenting. I have walked much on the river this winter, but, ever since it froze over, it has been on a snow-clad river, or pond. They have been river walks because the snow was shallowest there.") See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

No part of our scenery is ever more arctic than the river and its meadows now. See February 3, 1852 (The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic.")

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows. . . should . . . be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color, and an agreeable contrast to the snow.  See  February 13, 1860 ("The principal charm of a winter walk over ice is perhaps the peculiar and pure colors exhibited . . .The yellow of the sun and the morning and evening sky, and of the sedge (or straw-color, bright when lit on edge of ice at evening), and all three in hoar frost crystals."); February 12, 1860 ("I thus find myself returning over a green sea, winding amid purple islets, and the low sedge of the meadow on one side is really a burning yellow."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

The sun-dogs, if that is their name. See February 13, 1860 ("It is surprising what a variety of distinct colors the winter can show us . . .There is the red of the sunset sky, and of the snow at evening, and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in sun-dogs.")

We saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button-bushes and willows, smelling in the snow. See January 21, 1857 (“It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. ”); December 24, 1856 ("Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes, one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path"); February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. . . . “); November 25, 1857 ("Returning, I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst"); May 20, 1858 (“[J]ust before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. . .It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. . . . I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. . . . I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. . . .It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The fresh track of a fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark of two toe nails in front separate from the track of the foot in very thin snow. See February 5, 1854 ("The tracks were about two inches long, or a little less, by one and a half wide, shaped thus where the snow was only half an inch deep on ice")

 

February 2, 2014

Perhaps he seizes them through the snow. See January 7, 1860 ("It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him!")

I had a transient vision of one mouse this winter, and that the first for a number of years.  See January 4, 1860 ("The woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen."); February 20, 1855 ("Once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

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

Walk as usual 

on the fresh track of a fox

in very thin snow . . .

kindling a fire on

the pond by the island –

see the fox himself.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

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

tinyurl.com/hdt18600202

Welcome the apple tree.

January 29

Colder than before, and not a cloud in the sky to-day. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond and return via Andromeda Ponds and railroad.

Half an inch or more of snow fell last night, the ground being half bare before. It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. 

As usual, I now see, walking on the river and river-meadow ice, thus thinly covered with the fresh snow, that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, i. e., as I walk toward the sun, — always a little in advance of me, of course, angle of reflection being equal to that of incidence. 

The rainbow-colored
reflections from myriad
crystals of the snow.
January 29, 1860

To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. 

Not only the Indian, but many wild birds and quadrupeds and insects, welcomed the apple tree to these shores. 

• As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, kingbird, and many more came with a rush and built their nests in it, and so became orchard-birds. 

• The woodpecker found such a savory morsel under its bark that he perforated it in a ring quite round the tree, a thing he had never done before.

•  It did not take the partridge long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter day she flew and still flies from the wood to pluck them, much to the farmer's sorrow. 

• The rabbit too was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark.

•  The owl crept into the first one that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him. He settled down into it, and has remained there ever since.

•  The lackey caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed, and it has since divided her affections with the wild cherry; and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it.

•  And when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half carried, half rolled, it to his hole, and even the musquash crept up the bank and greedily devoured it; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and jay did not disdain to peck it.

•  And the beautiful wood duck, having made up her mind to stay a while longer with us, has concluded that there is no better place for her too..

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1860 

It was a snow of small flakes not star-shaped. See  December 30, 1859 ("little slender spiculae about one tenth of an inch long, little dry splinters, sometimes two forking, united at one end, or two or three lying across one another, quite dry and fine "); Compare December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . . I remember the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six (?)-rayed wheel. ");  ls with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw."); January 14, 1853 ("Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels");   January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail.");. January 27, 1855 ("

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain")

A parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow as I walk toward the sun. See December 6, 1858 ("Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light."); December 11, 1855 ("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle");  January 12, 1860 ("Going from the sun, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over its surface, — little mirror-like facets, . . .which has fallen in the proper position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun. Such is the glitter or sparkle on the surface of a snow freshly fallen when the sun comes out and you walk from it, the points of light constantly changing."); February 3, 1852 (“This snow . . . is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface.”);  February 8, 1856 ("At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors.");  February 13, 1859 ("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."). 

A flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see chain-like tracks, two parallel lines. See March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter. ”); 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. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous"); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances."); January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. . . .They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse"); January 27, 1860 ("Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's.");See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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

Sunset rainbow.

August 7. 

When I think of the thorough drilling to which young men are subjected in the English universities, acquiring a minute knowledge of Latin prosody and of Greek particles and accents, so that they can not only turn a passage of Homer into English prose or verse, but readily a passage of Shakespeare into Latin hexameters or elegiacs, — that this and the like of this is to be liberally educated, — I am reminded how different was the education of the actual Homer and Shakespeare. The worthies of the world and liberally educated have always, in this sense, got along with little Latin and less Greek. 

At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green. The rich and moist English grass land looks very green after the rain, as if it were a second spring. 

If I were to choose a time for a friend to make a passing visit to this world for the first time, in the full possession of all his faculties, perchance it would be at a moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky. 

Would he be likely to think this a vulgar place to live [sic], where one would weary of existence, and be compelled to devote his life to frivolity and dissipation? If a man travelling from world to world were to pass through this world at such a moment, would he not be tempted to take up his abode here? 

We see the rainbow apparently when we are on the edge of the rain, just as the sun is setting. If we are too deep in the rain, then it will appear dim. Sometimes it is so near that I see a portion of its arch this side of the woods in the horizon, tingeing them. Sometimes we are completely within it, enveloped by it, and experience the realization of the child's wish. The obvious colors are red and green. 

Why green? It is astonishing how brilliant the red may be. What is the difference between that red and the ordinary red of the evening sky? Who does not feel that here is a phenomenon which natural philosophy alone is inadequate to explain? The use of the rainbow, who has described it?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 7, 1852



At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring. See note to August 4, 1853 ("The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring."). See also August 4, 1852 ("The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. . . . A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still."); August 4, 1854 ("A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.")


A moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west, his light reflected far and wide through the clarified air after a rain, and a brilliant rainbow, as now, o'erarching the eastern sky. See  August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world, - Kosmos, or beauty");  August 9, 1851 ("It is a splendid sunset, a celestial light on all the land, so that all people come to their doors and windows to look on the grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, as the sun’s rays shine through the cloud and the falling rain we are, in fact, in a rainbow."); June 22, 1852 ("Thunder-showers to day and at sunset a rainbow. "); March 15. 1859 ("Two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year.");

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.

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze.

December 6

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze. 

It is already half fallen, melting off. The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. 

It is now perfect only on the north sides of woods which the sun has not touched or affected. Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light. 

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it.

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

To see the glaze. See December 5, 1858 ("Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing . . . so that there is quite a glaze."); December 5, 1859 ("There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves"); December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produces a slight glaze, the first of the winter. "); December 26, 1855 ("After snow, rain, and hail yesterday and last night, we have this morning quite a glaze, there being at last an inch or two of crusted snow on the ground, the most we have had."); February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one."); February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.”) See also Yesterday's ice storm today and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Days

Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")

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

Here or there one or

another rainbow color –

a small point of light.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Go out to see the glaze.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

tinyurl.com/HDT581206

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts.

October 27

P. M. — Sail to Fair Haven Pond. 

A moderate northerly wind and pleasant, clear day. 

There is a slight rustle from the withered pontederia.

The Scirpus lacustris, which was all conspicuously green on the 16th, has changed to a dull or brownish yellow. 

The bayonet rush also has partly changed, and now, the river being perhaps lower than before this season, shows its rainbow colors, though dull. It depends, then, on the river being low at an earlier period, say a month ago at least, when this juncus is in its full vigor, — though then, of course, you would not get the yellow!——that the colors may be bright. 

I distinguish four colors now, perfectly horizontal and parallel bars, as it were, six or eight inches wide as you look at the side of a dense patch along the shallow shore. The lowest is a dull red, the next clear green, then dull yellowish, and then dark brown. These colors, though never brilliant, are yet noticeable, and, when you look at a long and dense patch, have a rainbow-like effect. 

The red (or pinkish) is that part which has been recently submerged; the green, that which has not withered; the yellowish, what has changed; and the brown, the withered extremity, since it dies downward gradually from the tip to the bottom. The amount of it is that it decays gradually, beginning at the top, and throughout a large patch one keeps pace with another, and different parts of the plant being in different stages or states at the same time and, moreover, the whole being of a uniform height, a particular color in one plant corresponds exactly to the same in another, and so, though a single stalk would not attract attention, when seen in the mass they have this singular effect. 

I call it, therefore, the rainbow rush. When, moreover, you see it reflected in the water, the effect is very much increased. 

The leaves of the Salix cordata are now generally withered and many more fallen. They are light-brown, and many remain on the twigs, so many that this willow and the tristis I think must be peculiar in this respect as well as its  turning scarlet. Some others, as the sericea, are still yellow and greenish and have not been touched by frost. They must be tougher. 

At the east shore of Fair Haven Pond I see that clams have been moving close to the water’s edge. They have just moved a few feet toward the deeper water, but they came round a little, like a single wheel on its edge. 

Alders are fallen without any noticeable change of color. 

The leaves of young oaks are now generally withered, but many leaves of large oaks are greenish or alive yet. Many of them fall before withering. I see some now three quarters bare, with many living leaves left. Is it not because on larger trees they are raised above the effect of frost? 

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts. 

Not only the leaves of trees and shrubs and flowers have been changing and withering, but almost countless sedges and grasses. They become pale-brown and bleached after the frost has killed them, and give that peculiar light, almost silvery, sheen to the fields in November. 

The colors of the fields make haste to harmonize with the snowy mantle which is soon to invest them and with the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year. 

They become more and more the color of the frost which rests on them. 

Think of the interminable forest of grasses which dies down to the ground every autumn! What a more than Xerxean army of wool-grasses and sedges without fame lie down to an ignominious death, as the mowers esteem it, in our river meadows each year, and become “old fog” to trouble the mowers, lodging as they fall, that might have been the straw beds of horses and cattle, tucked under them every night! The fine-culmed purple grass, which lately we admired so much, is now bleached as light as any of them.

Culms and leaves robbed of their color and withered by cold. This is what makes November—and the light reflected from the bleached culms of grasses and the bare twigs of trees! When many hard frosts have formed and melted on the fields and stiffened grass, they leave them almost as silvery as themselves. There is hardly a surface to absorb the light. 

It is remarkable that the autumnal change of our woods has left no deeper impression on our literature yet. There is no record of it in English poetry, apparently because, according to all accounts, the trees acquire but few bright colors there. Neither do I know any adequate notice of it in our own youthful literature, nor in the traditions of the Indians. One would say it was the very phenomenon to have caught a savage eye, so devoted to bright colors. In our poetry and science there are many references to this phenomenon, but it has received no such particular attention as it deserves. High-colored as are most political speeches, I do not detect any reflection, even, from the autumnal tints in them. They are as colorless and lifeless as the herbage in November. The year, with these dazzling colors on its margin, lies spread open like an illustrated volume. The preacher does not utter the essence of its teaching. 

A great many, indeed, have never seen this, the flower, or rather ripe fruit, of the year, — many who have spent their lives in towns and never chanced to come into the country at this season. I remember riding with one such citizen, who, though a fortnight too late for the most brilliant tints, was taken by surprise, and would not believe that the tints had been any brighter. He had never heard of this phenomenon before. 

October has not colored our poetry yet. 

Not only many have never witnessed this phenomenon, but it is scarcely remembered by the majority from year to year.

It is impossible to describe the infinite variety of hues, tints, and shades, for the language affords no names for them, and we must apply the same term monotonously to twenty different things. If I could exhibit so many different trees, or only leaves, the effect would be different. When the tints are the same they differ so much in purity and delicacy that language, to describe them truly, would have not only to be greatly enriched, but as it were dyed to the same colors herself, and speak to the eye as well as to the ear. And it is these subtle diflerences which especially attract and charm our eyes. Where else will you study color under such advantages? What other school of design can vie with this?

To describe these colored leaves you must use colored words. How tame and ineffectual must be the words with which we attempt to describe that subtle difference of tint, which so charms the eye? Who will undertake to describe in words the difference in tint between two neighboring leaves on the same tree? or of two thousand? — for by so many the eye is addressed in a glance. 

In describing the richly spotted leaves, for instance, how often we find ourselves using ineffectually words which merely indicate faintly our good intentions, giving them in our despair a terminal twist toward our mark, — such as reddish, yellowish, purplish, etc. We cannot make a hue of words, for they are not to be compounded like colors, and hence we are obliged to use such ineffectual expressions as reddish brown, etc. They need to be ground together.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1858

The leaves of the Salix cordata are now generally withered and many more fallen. They are light-brown, and many remain on the twigs, so many that this willow and the tristis I think must be peculiar in this respect as well as its turning scarlet. See October 16, 1858 ("It is remarkable among our willows for turning scarlet, and I can distinguish this species now by this,. . .. It is as distinctly scarlet as the gooseberry, though it may be lighter.")

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts. See October 24, 1858 ("October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight.") October 25, 1858 ("Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 18, 1857 (“The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight.”)

The cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year. See August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.”); October 24, 1858 (“the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight."); ;November 2, 1853("We come home in the autumn twilight . . . clear white light, which penetrates the woods”); November 14, 1853 ("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets

  A cool white sunset,

Novemberish – no redness

to warm our thoughts.

The cool white twilight

of that season which is the

twilight of the year.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A cool white sunset

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581027

Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them.

October 7. 

October 7, 2017

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

Little chincapin oaks are partly turned, dull scarlet or yellow as it may happen, nearly in prime, not fallen. Some of their leaves (as well as of the white oak) are gnawed into lace regularly about the edges. 

Hornbeam generally green still, but becoming yellowish brown and falling. Black alder still green. Elder is greenish-yellow. 

I see some panicled andromeda dark red or crimson. Swamp-pink a dark reddish purple where exposed. Beach plum begins to turn a clear pale yellow in dry places. Sage willow is fairly yellowing and some even falling. 

Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there. 

I go across Bartonia Meadow direct to Bear Garden Hill-side. Approaching the sand-slide, I see, some fifty rods off, looking toward the sun, the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, - a strip, apparently twenty rods long and ten feet deep, of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill, which makes the firm foreground or lower frame to the picture, the depth of this brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the whole of the concealed valley is filled with such color.

As usual, there is one tree-top of an especially brilliant scarlet, with which the others contrast. 

One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not see what the Puritans did at that season when the maples blazed out in scarlet. They certainly could not have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is what they built meeting-houses and surrounded them with horse-sheds for. No wonder we must have our annual cattle-show and fall training and perhaps Cornwallis, our September courts, etc.

Nature holds her annual fair and gala days in October in every hollow and on every hill side. 

Look into that hollow all aglow, where the trees are clothed in their vestures of most dazzling tints. Does it not suggest a thousand gypsies beneath, rows of booths, and that man’s spirits should rise as high, that the routine of his life should be interrupted by an analogous festivity and rejoicing?

It is the reign of crickets now. You see them gliding busily about over all sunny surfaces. They sometimes get into my shoes; but oftener I have to empty out the seeds of various shrubs and weeds which I have been compelled to transport. 

Looking toward the sun from Lupine Bank, I see bloody patches of blackberry vines amid the fine hoary and sheeny grass of the pasture. Since the frosts such pastures are already a hoary russet. Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish. 

When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view. 

It is always incredibly fair, but ordinarily we are mere objects in it, and not witnesses of it. 

I see, through the bright October air, a valley extending southwest and northeast and some two miles across, – so far I can see distinctly, — with a broad, yellow meadow tinged with brown at the bottom, and a blue river winding slowly through it northward, with a regular edging of low bushes on the brink, of the same color with the meadow. Skirting the meadow are straggling lines, and occasionally large masses a quarter of a mile wide, of brilliant scarlet and yellow and crimson trees, backed by and mingled with green forests and green and hoary russet fields and hills; and on the hills around shoot up a million scarlet and orange and yellow and crimson fires amid the green; and here and there amid the trees, often beneath the largest and most graceful of those which have brown-yellow dome-like tops, are bright white or gray houses; and beyond stretches a forest, wreath upon wreath, and between each two wreaths I know lies a similar vale; and far beyond all, on the verge of the horizon, are half a dozen dark-blue mountain-summits. 

Large birds of a brilliant blue and white plumage are darting and screaming amid the glowing foliage a quarter of a mile below, while smaller blue birds warble faintly but sweetly around me. 

Such is the dwelling-place of man; but go to a caucus in the village to-night or to a church to-morrow, and see if there is anything said to suggest that the inhabitants of those houses know what kind of world they live in. But hark! I hear the tolling of a distant funeral bell, and they are conveying a corpse to the churchyard from one of the houses that I see, and its serious sound is more in harmony with this scenery than any ordinary bustle could be. It suggests that a man must die to his present life before he can appreciate his opportunities and the beauty of the abode that is appointed him. 

I do not know how to entertain one who can’t take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse to draw them, and that brings us at once into contact with stablers and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long time. I give up my forenoon to them and get along pretty well, the very elasticity of the air and promise of the day abetting me, but they are as heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can’t walk, why won’t they take an honest nap and let me go in the afternoon? But, come two o'clock, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian-summer afternoon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wearing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of the lapse of time.

As I sat on the high bank at the east end of Walden this afternoon, at five o’clock, I saw, by a peculiar intention or dividing of the eye, a very striking subaqueous rainbow-like phenomenon. A passer-by might, perhaps would, have noticed that the bright-tinted shrubs about the high shore on the sunny side were reflected from the water; but, unless on the alert for such effects, he would have failed to perceive the full beauty of the phenomenon. 

Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them. Those brilliant shrubs, which were from three to a dozen feet in height, were all reflected, dimly so far as the details of leaves, etc., were concerned, but brightly as to color, and, of course, in the order in which they stood, - scarlet, yellow, green, etc.; but, there being a slight ripple on the surface, these reflections were not true to their height though true to their breadth, but were extended downward with mathematical perpendicularity, three or four times too far, forming sharp pyramids of the several colors, gradually reduced to mere dusky points. The effect of this prolongation of the reflection was a very pleasing softening and blending of the colors, especially when a small bush of one bright tint stood directly before another of a contrary and equally bright tint. It was just as if you were to brush firmly aside with your hand or a brush a fresh line of paint of various colors, or so many lumps of friable colored powders. There was, accordingly, a sort of belt, as wide as the whole height of the hill, extending downward along the whole north or sunny side of the pond, composed of exceedingly short and narrow inverted pyramids of the most brilliant colors intermixed. I have seen, indeed, similar inverted pyramids in the old drawings of tattooing about the waists of the aborigines of this country. 

Walden, too, like an Indian maiden, wears this broad rainbow-like belt of brilliant colored points or cones round her waist in October. The color seems to be reflected and re-reflected from ripple to ripple, losing brightness each time by the softest possible gradation, and tapering toward the beholder, since he occupies a mere point of view. This is one of the prettiest effects of the autumnal change.

The harvest of leaves is at hand in some valleys, and generally the young deciduous trees on hillsides have the brilliant tint of ripe fruits. Already many windfalls strew the ground under the maples and elms, etc. I see one or two maple shrubs quite bare, while many large maples are still quite green. 

In that rainbow belt we have color, which is commonly so rare and precious and confined to precious stones, in the utmost profusion. The ripples convey the reflection toward us, till all the color is winnowed out and spilled between them and only the dusky points reach near to this side where we stand. It is as if a broad belt (or waist-cloth) of sharp and narrow inverted cones or pyramids of bright colors, softly blended like fairy worsted work, their bases rising to a line mathematically level about the waist of the pond. That fall river Indian, like the Almouchicois generally, wore a belt of hollow tubes. 

It was strange that only the funeral bell was in harmony with that scene, while other sounds were too frivolous and trivial, as if only through the gate of death would man come to appreciate his opportunities and the beauty of the world he has abused. In proportion as death is more earnest than life, it is better than life. 

The sun set just before I reached the railroad causeway on my return, but then there was not a cloud to be seen in the horizon. Coming through the Irish field, the mountains were purple, much redder than a grape. 

. . . 

[July 24, 1857 Moosehead Lake "he commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet musical chant, in his own language" ] That simple and mild nasal chant affected me like the dawn of civilization to the wilderness. I thought of “Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind,” etc. There is always a slight haze or mist on the brow of the Indian. The white man’s brow is clear and distinct. It is eleven o’clock in the forenoon with him. It is four o'clock in the morning with the Indian.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1857

I see looking toward the sun the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the hill, - a strip of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. See October 7, 1852 (“Now is the time to behold the maple swamps, one mass of red and yellow, all on fire, as it were; ”)

When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape. . . I think that Concord affords no better view.  See  May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”); May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised  thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”);  March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. “);.July 21, 1856 ("This has been a peculiarly fine afternoon. When I looked about casually, was surprised at the fairness of the landscape") See also   February 21, 1855 (“I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests”)

We take an afternoon walk to the view and return via the double chair not stopping there. It rained earlier. We hear crickets the whole time if we listen. At the view the sound of jay’s screaming and, just as we leave, a raven in a nearby tree. The sky is cloudy and it looks like twilight all afternoon. Just before we leave the whole lake to the south is illuminated yellow. There are no fresh leaves on the trail and generally there is no color in the woods or overlooking the valley. It seems late this year. Hiking to the double chair the understory of striped maples is bright yellow; a single branch of a red small red maple is in full color. An owl hoots beyond the middle pond. We arrive at the lower view just as the sun sets  to the south in the trees– the air is full of moisture and is glowing orange over Shelburne pond and beyond. 

Zphx 20171007

https://tinyurl.com/HDT571007