Black ice, Hard walking

January 12

It still rains very finely. The ground is covered with a black glaze, wet and shiny like water, like an invisible armor, a quarter of an inch or more thick. 

Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots. Walking, or wading, very bad.

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. They pressed the snow down four or five inches, consolidated it, and now endure two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1854

Thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots.   January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs.") See alao A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct . . . two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. See January 8, 1860 (" Those [tracks] of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. . . .There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there . . . like white stepping-stones"); January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,").

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

a wet black glaze like

an invisible armor

shiny like water

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 © 2009-2022

Climate change

February 11

February 11, 2019

It now rains, - a drizzling rain mixed with mist, which ever and anon fills the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet.

Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate - at least that the snows are less deep than formerly - is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1852

It now rains. See February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on"); February 8, 1853 ("The warm rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice, the color of the water, only three or four inches thick"); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice."); 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 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night"); February 8, 1857 ("The last two days have been misty or rainy without sun.")

The snows are less deep than formerly. Compare February 11, 1856 ("Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter.”)

February 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 11

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/hdt520211