Why was it made that man should be thrilled to his inmost being by the vibrating of a wire?

January 3, 2022

January 3. 

Oak-apples are a winter fruit. The leaves being gone, they are now conspicuous and shine in the sun. Some trees are quite full of them.
Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life? 

The ground has been bare for some days, and the weather warm.

The river has risen, and now the meadows are frozen so as to bear, a dark, thin, but rather opaque ice, as if covered with steam, -- and I see now travelling, sweeping, coursing over it, in long winrows, fine pellets of snow, like cotton, fine, round, and dry, which I do not detect in the air before they fall.

They lodge against a rail and make a small drift. So once more the skating will be spoiled.

A spirit sweeps the string of the telegraph harp, and strains of music are drawn out endlessly like the wire itself.  We have no need to refer music and poetry to Greece for an origin now. What becomes of the story of a tortoise-shell on the seashore now? The world is young, and music is its infant voice.

I do not despair of such a world where you have only to stretch an ordinary wire from tree to tree to hear such strains drawn from it by New England breezes as make Greece and all antiquity seem poor in melody. Why was it made that man should be thrilled to his inmost being by the vibrating of a wire? 

Are not inspiration and ecstasy a more rapid vibration of the nerves swept by the in rushing excited spirit, whether zephyral or boreal in its character.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 3, 1852

Oak-apples are a winter fruit . . . Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life?  See September 4, 1854 ("Is not Art itself a gall? Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea. If the gall was anticipated when the oak was made, so was the canoe when the birch was made. Genius stings Nature, and she grows according to its idea.")

Fne pellets of snow, like cotton, fine, round, and dry. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . . Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot."); November 24, 1860 (“ The first spitting of snow. . .consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind . . . T he air was so filled with these snow pellets that for an hour we could not see a hill half a mile off”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The telegraph harp . . .t o hear such strains drawn from it by New England breezes as make Greece and all antiquity seem poor. September 22, 1851 ("How much the ancients would have made of it! To have a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude,")

To read that the ancients stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and news of peace , and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate so that it emitted a harp like and æolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention . Yet this is fact, and we have yet attributed the invention to no god.

September 22, 1851. See also September 3, 1851 ("As I went under the new telegraph - wire , I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead . It was as the sound of a far - off glorious life , a supernal life , which came down to us , and vibrated the lattice - work of this life of ours."); September 12, 1851 ("As I was entering the Deep Cut, the wind, which was conveying a message to me from heaven, dropped it on the wire of the telegraph which it vibrated as it passed."); September 23, 1851 ("The telegraph harp sounds strongly to-day, in the midst of the rain. I put my ear to the trees and I hear it working terribly within, and anon it swells into a clear tone, which seems to concentrate in the core of the tree, for all the sound seems to proceed from the wood. It is if you had entered some world - famous cathedral, resounding to some vast organ."); October 14, 1851 ("There was but little wind this morning, yet I heard the telegraph harp. It does not require a strong wind to wake its strings . . . A gentle but steady breeze will often call forth its finest strains");  December 29, 1851 ("The artist is at work in the Deep Cut . The telegraph harp sounds . "); January 18, 1852 (" While the snow is falling, the telegraph harp is resounding across the fields. "); March 12, 1852 ("The telegraph harp has spoken to me more distinctly and effectually than any man ever did.")

And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

The Eolian Harp 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 3

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

A Book of the Seasons: December 6 (walking on ice, tracking, buds and pinweed)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

 December 6

I see boys skating

but know not when the ice froze.

So busy writing.

December 6, 1854

The mist is so thick

even the reflected mist

now veils the hillsides.

December 6, 1859

Some plants are now seen

more simply and distinctly

and to advantage.

December 6, 1856

December 6, 2024

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 6, 1858

Though foul weather yesterday, this is the warmest and pleasantest day yet. December 6, 1852

Cows are turned out to pasture again. December 6, 1852

On the Corner causeway fine cobwebs glimmer in the air, covering the willow twigs and the road, and sometimes stretching from side to side above my head. December 6, 1852

I see many little gnat-like insects in the air there. December 6, 1852

Tansy still fresh, and I saw autumnal dandelion a few days since. December 6, 1852

A great slate-colored hawk sails away from the Cliffs. December 6, 1852

To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. December 6, 1859

It is somewhat of a lichen day . . .What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. . . .How naturally they adorn our works of art! December 6, 1859

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. December 6, 1859

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. December 6, 1859

You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. December 6, 1859

The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. December 6, 1859

Go out at 9 A. M. to see the glaze. December 6, 1858

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. December 6, 1859

It is already half fallen, melting off. December 6, 1858

The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. December 6, 1858

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. 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 6, 1858

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. December 6, 1859

I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture. December 6, 1854

Skating is fairly begun. December 6, 1856

The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. December 6, 1856

Much of the ice in the middle is dark and thin, having been formed last night, and when you stamp you see the water trembling in spots here and there. December 6, 1856

I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca. December 6, 1856

I feel an affection for the rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda growing about the swamp, hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. December 6, 1856

The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray. December 6, 1856

How handsome every one of these leaves that are blown about the snow-crust or lie neglected beneath, soon to turn to mould! December 6, 1856

Though so many oak leaves hang on all winter, you will be surprised on going into the woods at any time, only a short time after a fall of snow, to see how many have lately fallen on it and are driven about over it, so that you would think there could be none left till spring. December 6, 1856

Far the greater part of the shrub oak leaves are fallen. December 6, 1856

Against this swamp I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. December 6, 1856

White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday. December 6, 1856

On the meadows, where this overflow was so deep that it did not freeze solid, it cracks from time to time with a threatening squeak. December 6, 1856

Where I crossed the river on the roughish white ice, there were coarse ripple-marks two or three feet apart and convex to the south or up-stream, extending quite across, and many spots of black ice a foot wide, more or less in the midst of the white, where probably was water yesterday. December 6, 1856

The water, apparently, had been blown southerly on to the ice already formed, and hence the ripple-marks. December 6, 1856

I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy, leading from the springy shore to the then open middle, — the faintest possible vestiges, which are only seen in a favorable light. December 6, 1856

I see also what I take to be rabbit's tracks made in that slosh, shaped like a horse's track, only rather longer and larger. December 6, 1856

Flannery tells me he is cutting in Holbrook's Swamp, in the Great Meadows, a lonely place. He sees a fox repeatedly there, and also a white weasel,--once with a mouse in its mouth, in the swamp. December 6, 1857

Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter, made undoubtedly December 3d, when this snow ice was mere slosh. It had come up through a hole (now black ice) by the stem of a button-bush, and, apparently, pushed its way through the slosh, as through snow on land, leaving a track eight inches wide, more or less, with the now frozen snow shoved up two inches high on each side, i. e. two inches above the general level. December 6, 1856

Where the ice was firmer are seen only the tracks of its feet. It had crossed the open middle (now thin black ice) and continued its singular trail to the opposite shore, as if a narrow sled had been drawn bottom upward. December 6, 1856

At Bittern Cliff I saw where they had been playing, sliding, or fishing, apparently to-day, on the snow- covered rocks, on which, for a rod upward and as much in width, the snow was trodden and worn quite smooth, as if twenty had trodden and slid there for several hours. Their droppings are a mass of fishes' scales and bones, — loose, scaly black masses. December 6, 1856

At this point the black ice approached within three or four feet of the rock, and there was an open space just there, a foot or two across, which appeared to have been kept open by them. December 6, 1856

I continued along up that side and crossed on white ice just below the pond. December 6, 1856

The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. December 6, 1856

Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks. December 6, 1856

I saw one place where there was a zigzag piece of black ice two rods long and one foot wide in the midst of the white, which I was surprised to find had been made by an otter pushing his way through the slosh. December 6, 1856

In many places the otters appeared to have gone floundering along in the sloshy ice and water. December 6, 1856

These very conspicuous tracks generally commenced and terminated at some button-bush or willow, where a black ice now masked the hole of that date. December 6, 1856

When I speak of the otter to our oldest village doctor, who should be ex officio our naturalist, he is greatly surprised, not knowing that such an animal is found in these parts, December 6, 1856

It is surprising that our hunters know no more about them. December 6, 1856

On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits. December 6, 1856

Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides. December 6, 1856

What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! December 6, 1856

They are never more interesting than now on Lechea Plain, since they are perfectly relieved, brown on white. December 6, 1856

You were not aware before how extensive these grain-fields. December 6, 1856

Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage. December 6, 1856

The pinweeds, etc., have been for the most part confounded with the russet or brown earth beneath them, being seen against a background of the same color, but now, being seen against a pure white background, they are as distinct as if held up to the sky. December 6, 1856

Some plants seen, then, in their prime or perfection, when supporting an icy burden in their empty chalices. December 6, 1856

Our eyes go searching along the stems for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters. December 6, 1856

For we are hunters pursuing the summer on snow-shoes and skates, all winter long. There is really but one season in our hearts. December 6, 1856

In the evening I see the spearer's light on the river. December 6, 1852

10 P. M. — Hear geese going over. December 6, 1855

*****

A Book of the Seasons: First Ice

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

*****

April 6, 1855 ("It reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.")

November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.")

November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character.")

November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm")

November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering") 

November 20, 1858  ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields.")

November 24, 1858 ("It is lichen day.")

November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow,. . .. Now see . . .the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.")

December 1, 1852 ('' At this season I observe the form of the buds which hare prepare for spring.")
December 3, 1856 ("Fewer weeds now rise above the snow. Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed.")

December 4, 1856 ("Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night.")

December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See 

December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth.")

December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too ") 

December 5, 1856 ("The ice trap was sprung last night.")

December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.")

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")

The dripping trees and

falling ice will wet you through

like rain in the woods.

Here or there one or

another rainbow color –

a small point of light.

December 6, 1858

December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”)

December 8, 1850 ("A week ago I saw cows being driven home from pasture. Now they are kept at home.")

December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year.")

December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day.") 

December 13, 1852 (" About the base of the larger pin-weed, the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem.")

December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.")

December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds.") 

December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

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.")
December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”)
December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”)
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.")
January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”)

January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran.")

January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it.")

January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.")

January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”)

January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.”)

January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.")

February 5, 1852 ("The stems of the white pines also are quite gray at this distance, with their lichens”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

 February 6, 1857 ("Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.")

February 7. 1859("They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")

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.”)

February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”)

February 20, 1856 ("See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday.. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”)

February 21, 1855 ("How plain, wholesome, and earthy are the colors of quadrupeds generally! . . . The white of the polar bear, ermine weasel, etc., answers to the snow; . . .There are few or no bluish animals.")

February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”)

February 22, 1855 ("Farmer showed me an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or four weeks ago . . . All white but the tip of the tail.")

We are hunters 

pursuing the summer

on snow-shoes and skates

 all winter long.

 

There is but 

one season 

in our hearts. 

December 6, 1856

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

December 5 <<<<<<<< December 6 >>>>>>>> December 7

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

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

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

tinyurl.com/HDT06DEC

Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself.

February 13

Skated to Sudbury. A beautiful, summer-like day.

The meadows were frozen just enough to bear.

Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon, which I do not remember to have seen.

I should say that when the water was frozen about as thick as paste board, a violent gust had here and there broken it up, and while the wind and waves held it up on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were for the most part turned one way; i. e. standing on one side, you saw only their edges, on another the northeast or southwest their sides.

They were for the most part of a triangular form, like a shoulder-of - mutton sail, slightly scalloped, like shells. They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind had reduced them to the thinness of writing-paper, and they fluttered and rustled and tinkled merrily.

I skated through them and strewed their wrecks around.

They appear to have been elevated expressly to reflect the sun like mirrors, to adorn the river and attract the eye of the skater. Who will say that their principal end is not answered when they excite the admiration of the skater? Every half-mile or mile, as you skate up the river, you see these crystal fleets.

Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself.

She wastes her wonders on the town. It impresses me as one superiority in her art, if art it may be called, that she does not require that man appreciate her, takes no steps to attract his attention.

The trouble is in getting on and off the ice; when you are once on you can go well enough. It melts round the edges.

Again I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians. When within a dozen rods, I distinguished the foundation of a lodge, and merely passing over it, I saw many fragments of the arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished these localities half a mile, gone forward, and picked up arrowheads.

Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.

The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.

Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will pass for the blossom.

As for antiquities, one of our old deserted country roads, marked only by the parallel fences and cellar - hole with its bricks where the last inhabitant died, the victim of intemperance, fifty years ago, with its bare and exhausted fields stretching around, suggests to me an antiquity greater and more remote from the America of the newspapers than the tombs of Etruria. I insert the rise and fall of Rome in the interval. This is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

It is important to observe not only the subject of our pure and unalloyed joys, but also the secret of any dissatisfaction one may feel.

In society, in the best institutions of men, I remark a certain precocity. When we should be growing children, we are already little men. Infants as we are, we make haste to be weaned from our great mother's breast, and cultivate our parts by intercourse with one another.

I have not much faith in the method of restoring impoverished soils which relies on manuring mainly and does not add some virgin soil or muck.

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late to study, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

I would not have every man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated. Some must be preparing a mould by the annual decay of the forests which they sustain.

Saw half a dozen cows let out and standing about in a retired meadow as in a cow-yard.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1851

Skated to Sudbury. See January 31, 1855 ("Skated up the river to explore further than I had been . . .  up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles,")

Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand . . .They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze. See February 12, 1851 ("I saw to-day something new to me. . . thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appearance to the river, — where for a dozen rods the flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats")

Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself. Compare October 14, 1857 ("I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that I should find traces of the Indians. See August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.”); see also note to February 4, 1858 (" It is a remarkable fact that, in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery.") 

The first flower of the season. See February 18, 1851 ("See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); April 2, 1856 ("This year, at least, the cabbage is the first flower; and perhaps it is always earlier than I have thought, if you seek it in a favorable place."); and note to March 21, 1858 ("The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. It is evident that the date of its flowering is very fluctuating,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Skunk Cabbage and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

Mosses, mingled red and green See February 18, 1852 ("The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes.");  February 27, 1852 ("The mosses now are in fruit - or have sent up their filaments with calyptrae."); March 10, 1859 ("Fine red-stemmed mosses have begun to push and bud on Clamshell bank")

Mosses now in fruit

are warmly red in the sun

when seen from one side.

April 25, 1857

See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau., signs of spring: mosses bright green

Pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.

December 14

December 14, 2021

The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.

As for the weather, all seasons are pretty much alike to one who is actively at work in the woods. I should say that there were two or three remarkably warm days and as many cold ones in the course of a year, but the rest are all alike in respect to temperature. This is my answer to my acquaintances who ask me if I have not found it very cold being out all day.

McKean tells me of hardy horses left to multiply on the Isle of Sable. His father had one (for the shipwrecked to eat). Can they be descendants of those beasts Champlain or Lescarbot refers to? 

I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood on Fair Haven, doomed to be cut this winter.

The chickadees remind me of Hudson's Bay for some reason. I look on them as natives of a more northern latitude.

The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. Where lately was a delicate blue flower, now all the winter are held up these dry chalices. What mementos to stand above the snow! 

The fresh young spruces in the swamp are free from moss, but it adheres especially to the bare and dead masts of spruce trees oftentimes half destitute of bark. They look like slanting may-poles with drooping or withered garlands and festoons hanging to them. For an emblem of stillness, a spruce swamp with hanging moss now or at any season.

I notice that hornets' nests are hardly deserted by the insects than they look as if a truant boy had fired a charge of shot through them, -- all ragged and full of holes. It is the work either of the insects themselves or else of other insects or birds.

It is the andromeda (panicled?) that has the fine barked stem and the green wood, in the swamps.

Why not live out more yet, and have my friends and relations altogether in nature, only my acquaintances among the villagers? That way diverges from this I follow, not at a sharp but a very wide angle.

Ah, nature is serene and immortal! Am I not one of the Zincali? 

December 14, 2024

There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.

I hear the ice along the edge of the river cracking as the water settles. It has settled about two feet, leaving ice for the most part without water on the meadows, all uneven and cracked over the hummocks, so that you cannot run straight for sliding.

The ice takes the least hint of a core to eke out a perfect plant; the wrecks of bulrushes and meadow grass are expanded into palm leaves and other luxuriant foliage. I see delicate-looking green pads frozen into the ice, and, here and there, where some tender and still green weeds from the warm bottom of the river have lately been cast up on to the ice.

There are certain places where the river will always be open, where perchance warmer springs come in. There are such places in every character, genial and open in the coldest seasons.

I come from contact with certain acquaintances, whom even I am disposed to look toward as possible friends. It oftenest happens that I come from them wounded. Only they can wound me seriously, and that perhaps without their knowing it.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1851

The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice. See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.")

I hear the small woodpecker whistle as he flies toward the leafless wood. See December 5, 1853 ("Saw and heard a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?"); December 10, 1854 ("Hear the small woodpecker’s whistle; not much else. ") See also December 14, 1855 ("A little further I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping a pitch pine in a little grove, and saw him inclining to dodge behind the stem.") ;August 28, 1858 ("The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring."); September 17, 1852 ("I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

The now dry and empty but clean-washed cups of the blue-curls spot the half snow-covered grain-fields. See December 14, 1852 ("The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls."):  See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character. “); November 30, 1856 (“Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.”); December 1, 1856 (“The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.”); December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?. . .They were not observed against the dark ground, but the first snow comes and reveals them"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

Deserted hornets' nests. See  October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone”); October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); December 29, 1856 (“I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”); December 29, 1858 ("A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.”) ; December 31, 1857 ("Under and attached to one of the lowermost branches of a white pine sapling in my old potato-field, I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground.")

It is the andromeda (panicled?) that has the fine barked stem and the green wood, in the swamps. See note to November 24, 1857 ("Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. . . .These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years ago, — I knew not why") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The andromeda phenomenon

Ah, nature is serene and immortal! See November 10, 1854 ("Nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.");March 23, 1856 (""The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset. See   December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”) See also  December 9, 1859 (" I observe at mid-afternoon, the air being very quiet and serene, that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .[T]here is just enough invisible vapor, perhaps from the snow, to soften the blue, giving it a slight greenish tinge.");  December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem."); December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, —with the green tint of a large mass of glass."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, . . . is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

There are certain places where the river will always be open, where perchance warmer springs come in.  See December 30, 1855 ("The places which are slowest to freeze in our river are, first, on account of warmth as well as motion, where a brook comes in, and also probably where are springs in banks and under bridges.")

It oftenest happens that I come from them wounded. See November 24, 1850 ("I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally, but I commonly part from them early with a certain bitter-sweet sentiment"); November 16, 1851 ("I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them.")

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

Pure greenish-blue sky 

under clouds in the southwest

just before sunset.

That pure greenish-blue 

sky southwest under the clouds

just before sunset.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Greenish-blue sky under the clouds 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-511214

I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready.

March 3

2 P. M. — 50°; overcast and somewhat rain-threatening; wind southwest.

To Abner Buttrick and Tarbell Hills.

See a flock of large ducks in a line, — maybe black? - over Great Meadows; also a few sheldrakes.

It was pleasant to hear the tinkling of very coarse brash — broken honeycombed dark ice — rattling one piece against another along the northeast shores, to which it has drifted. Scarcely any ice now about river except what rests on the bottom of the meadows, dirty with sediment.

The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.

When I read Topsell’s account of the ichneumon eating his way out of the crocodile, I think that, though it be not true in fact, it is very true in fancy, and it is no small gift to be able to give it so good a setting-forth. What a pity that our modern naturalists cannot tell their truths with half this zest and spirit!

Nowadays we have rain, and then high wind directly after it.

C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. 

I saw this afternoon a meadow below Flint’s willow row still frozen over (at 3 P. M.), — frozen last night, — and the frozen part corresponded generally to the anchor ice on the bottom, while there was an open canal all around and beyond the edge of the anchor ice; but when I returned two hours later, the wind had broken up and dissipated every vestige of this surface ice; i. e., it was an ice formed last night which it took the whole day with a strong wind to break up in this rather sheltered place.

Our muddiest and wettest walking thus far was the last week of February.

I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready.

The last skating was on Walden the 26th February. The next day it was soft. Sleighing ended February 22d, and there had not been much a long time before.

I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1860

Topsell’s account of the ichneumon eating his way out of the crocodile. See Topsell’s The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (1658). According to Strabo ( 64 or 63 BC – c. 24 AD) : " The ichneumons. . . lie in wait for the crocodiles, when the latter are basking in the sun with their mouths open; they then drop into their jaws, and eating through their intestines and belly, issue out of the dead body."^[4]

The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. See March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -"); March 10, 1852 (" See a sparrow, perhaps a song sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the ground is covered with snow.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside. ") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

C. says that Walden began to be hard to get on to the first of March. See. Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) ("This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. It commonly opens about the first of April," [In Thoreau’s records, ice out occurred as early as March 15 and as late as April 18]); March 7, 1855 ("It is now difficult getting on and off Walden.");  March 11, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick,"); March 11, 1861 ("C. says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, so that the lines on my map would not strike any ice, but that there is ice in the deep cove. It will be open then the 12th or 13th. This is earlier than I ever knew it to open.");… Walden, Chapter 17 (Spring) (".On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. . . .. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.");  March 14, 1860 (" I am surprised to find Walden open. No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out

I should have launched my boat ere this if it had been ready. See February 24, 1857 ("Get my boat out the cellar."); February 26, 1857  ("Paint the bottom of my boat"); March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it."); March 9, 1855("Painted the bottom of my boat.");  March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat."); March 16, 1859 ("Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill"); March 16, 1860 ("As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been debarred for three months and a half.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon. See February 22, 1856 ("I see those slender grayish-winged insects creeping with closed wings over the snow-clad ice, — Perla (?) on all parts of  the river. Have seen none before, this winter. ") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of the Spring, Perla-like insects appear . See also  March 3, 1855 ("I see a dirty-white miller fluttering about over the winter-rye patch next to Hubbard’s Grove  and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring (millers, perla, shad-flies or ephemera)

March 3.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau March 3

Some weeds rustle,

a mouse amid the stubble? –

  

The first song sparrow

inconspicuous and shy

amid the stubble.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I should have launched my boat ere this 

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