This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring.

February 14. 

February 14. 2014

P. M. — Down railroad. A moist, thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain.

The telegraph resounds at every post. It is a harp with one string, — the first strain from the American lyre. 

In Stow's wood, by the Deep Cut, hear the gnah gnah of the white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch. 

I went up the bank and stood by the fence. A little family of titmice gathered about me, searching for their food both on the ground and on the trees, with great industry and intentness, and now and then pursuing each other. 

There were two nuthatches at least, talking to each other. One hung with his head down on a large pitch pine, pecking the bark for a long time, — leaden blue above, with a black cap and white breast. It uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp quivet or creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to be answered by a baser and louder gnah gnah from the other. 

A downy woodpecker also, with the red spot on his hind head and his cassock open behind, showing his white robe, kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. 

All at once an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, a small, rather slender bird, with a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts to the bottom of a new tree and repeats the same movement, not resting long in one place or on one tree. 

These birds are all feeding and flitting along together, but the chickadees are the most numerous and the most confiding. I observe that three of the four thus associated, viz. the chickadee, nuthatch, and woodpecker, have black crowns, at least the first two, very conspicuous black caps. I cannot but think that this sprightly association and readiness to burst into song has to do with the prospect of spring, — more light and warmth and thawing weather. 

The titmice keep up an incessant faint tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a lively day day day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and springlike.

Beside this I heard the distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony  of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds. 

The chickadee has quite a variety of notes. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. 

I perceive that some of these pools by the Walden road which on the 9th looked so green have frozen blue. 

This greater liveliness of the birds methinks I have noticed commonly in warm, thawing days toward spring. 

F. Brown, who has been chasing a white rabbit this afternoon with a dog, says that they do not run off far, — often play round within the same swamp only, if it is large, and return to where they were started. Spoke of it as something unusual that one ran off so far that he could not hear the dogs, but he returned and was shot near where he started. He does not see their forms, nor marks where they have been feeding.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1854

There were two nuthatches talking to each other. One uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp quivet or creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to be answered by a baser and louder gnah gnah from the other. See . February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah"); March 5, 1859 ("Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, The Spring Note of the Nuthatch

A downy woodpecker, with the red spot on his hind head and his cassock open behind, showing his white robe, kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. See January 20, 1856 ("A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk. I stand within twelve feet"); February 2, 1854 (". I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are very confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

All at once an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, a small, rather slender bird, with a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts to the bottom of a new tree and repeats the same movement, not resting long in one place or on one tree. See November 26, 1859 (" I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course"); December 21, 1855 ("Scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company, from near the base of a small elm within three feet of me. The former dashes off with a loud rippling of the wing, and the creeper flits across the street to the base of another small elm, whither I follow. At first he hides behind the base, but ere long works his way upward and comes in sight. He is a gray-brown, a low curve from point of beak to end of tail, resting flat against the tree") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

Beside this I heard the distant crowing of cocks and the divine harmony of the telegraph, — all spring-promising sounds. See February 24, 1852 (" I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air. The cock-crowing and even the telegraph harp prophesy it, even though the ground is for the most part covered by snow"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: The crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows

The titmice keep up an incessant faint tinkling tchip; now and then one utters a lively day day day, and once or twice one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, startling, and springlike. The phebe one I did not hear to-day. See March 1, 1854 ("The sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the spring note of the chickadee

F. Brown, who has been chasing a white rabbit this afternoon with a dog. See  March 5, 1853  ("F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday."); March 8, 1853 ("Rode to Saxonville with F. Brown to look at a small place for sale . . . I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms ")

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

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/hdt541214

It is plain for miles without a tree . . . That solitude was sweet to me as a flower.

June 21. 

Sunday. 

June 21, 2020

About noon it cleared up, and after dinner I set out for Provincetown, straight across the country to the Bay where the new road strikes it, directly through the pine plantation about one mile from the lighthouse. The pines have apparently not done so well here as in some other places on the Cape. 

I observed a tuft of crow-berry, together with poverty-grass, about one mile west of the light. This part of Truro affords singularly interesting and cheering walks for me, with regular hollows or dimples shutting out the sea as completely as if in the midst of the continent, though when you stand on the plain you commonly see the sails of vessels standing up or down the coast on each side of you, though you may not see the water. At first you may take them for the roofs of barns or houses. 

It is plain for miles without a tree, where the new telegraph-wires are a godsend to the birds, affording them something to perch upon. That solitude was sweet to me as a flower. I sat down on the boundless level and enjoyed the solitude, drank it in, the medicine for which I had pined, worth more than the bear-berry so common on the Cape. 

As I was approaching the Bay through a sandy hollow a mile east of High Head, I found two or three arrow-points and a rude axe or hammer, a flattish stone from the beach with a deep groove chipped around it. 

The beach on the Bay Side was completely strewn with seaweed (the grassy kind), which does not grow on the Atlantic side, as if the Bay were a meadow compared with the Atlantic. The beach was harder than the Back Side, the hardest part being on the weed at high-water line. The skulls and backbones of black-fish, their vertebrae and spinal processes, and disk-shaped bones, five inches in diameter, from the spine were strewn all along. These looked like rough crackers. 

Also the ribs of whale (probably humpbacked), — they get humpback and finback and right whales, I heard, — six feet long, lay under the bank, hardly to be distinguished from their gray rails. Some of those whale ribs, ten inches wide, were from time to time set up in the sand, like mile stones (or bones); they seemed to answer that purpose along the new road. 

They had taken a whale in Provincetown Harbor on the previous 17th, and stripped off the blubber at one of the wharves. I saw many dogfish whose livers had been extracted. 

At East Harbor River, as I sat on the Truro end of the bridge, I saw a great flock of mackerel gulls, one hundred at least, on a sandy point, whitening the shore there like so many white stones on the shore and in the water, uttering all together their vibrating shrill note. They had black heads, light bluish-slate wings, and light rump and tail and beneath. From time to time all or most would rise and circle about with a clamor, then settle again on the same spot close together. 

Soon after crossing the bridge, I turned off and ascended Mt. Ararat. It exhibited a remarkable landscape: on the one side the desert, of smooth and spotless palest fawn-colored sand, slightly undulating, and beyond, the Atlantic; on the other, the west, side, a few valleys and hills, densely clothed with a short, almost moss-like (to look down at) growth of huckleberry, blueberry, bear-berry, josh-pear (which is so abundant in Provincetown), bayberry, rose, checkerberry, and other bushes, and beyond, the Bay. All these bushes formed an even and dense covering to the sand-hills, much as bear-berry alone might. It was a very strange scenery. You would think you might be in Labrador, or some other place you have imagined. The shrubbery at the very summit was swarming with mosquitoes, which troubled me when I sat down, but they did not rise above the level of the bushes. 

At the Pilgrim House, though it was not crowded, they put me into a small attic chamber which had two double beds in it, and only one window, high in a corner, twenty and a half inches by twenty-five and a half, in the alcove when it was swung open, and it required a chair to look out conveniently. Fortunately it was not  a cold night and the window could be kept open, though at the risk of being visited by the cats, which appear to swarm on the roofs of Provincetown like the mosquitoes on the summits of its hills. 

I have spent four memorable nights there in as many different years, and have added considerable thereby to my knowledge of the natural history of the cat and the bedbug. Sleep was out of the question. A night in one of the attics of Provincetown! to say nothing of what is to be learned in entomology. It would be worth the while to send a professor there, one who was also skilled in entomology. Such is your Pilgerruhe or Pilgrims'-Rest. Every now and then one of these animals on its travels leaped from a neighboring roof on to mine, with such a noise as if a six-pounder had fallen within two feet of my head, — the discharge of a catapult, — a twelve-pounder discharged by a catapult, — and then followed such a scrambling as banished sleep for a long season, while I watched lest they came in at the open window. A kind of foretaste, methought, of the infernal regions. I didn't wonder they gave quit claim deeds of their land here. My experience is that you fare best at private houses. The barroom may be defined a place to spit. 

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The cats take up the wondrous tale."

At still midnight, when, half awake, half asleep, you seem to be weltering in your own blood on a battle field, you hear the stealthy tread of padded feet belonging to some animal of the cat tribe, perambulating the roof within a few inches of your head. 

I had already this evening called on Mr. Atwood, the Representative of the town and one of the commissioners appointed by the legislature to superintend the experiments in the artificial breeding of fishes. He said that he knew (I think) eighty-two kinds of fishes there. 

When Mr. Pool, the Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, — if that is his name and title, — who makes out a list of the Representatives and their professions, asked him his business, he answered, "Fisherman." At which Pool was disturbed and said that no representative had ever called himself a fisherman before. It would not do to print it so. And so Atwood is put down as "Master Mariner"! ! So much for American democracy. I reminded him that Fisherman had been a title of honor with a large party ever since the Christian Era at least. When next we have occasion to speak of the apostles I suppose we should call them "Master Mariners"! 

Atwood said that his brother here took the bone shark recently which I read was thirty feet long. 

Fog again at night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 21, 1857

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years . . . and about one third the days were foggy

June 20.

Saturday. Fog still.

June 20, 2017

A man working on the lighthouse, who lives at the Pond Village, says that he raised potatoes and pumpkins there where a vessel once anchored. That was when they let the salt water into the pond. Says the flags there now are barrel flags; that the chair flag is smaller, partly three-sided, and has no bur; perhaps now all gone. 

Speaking of the effect of oil on the water, this man said that a boat's crew came ashore safely from their vessel on the Bay Side of Truro some time ago in a storm, when the wind blowed square on to the land, only by heaving over oil. The spectators did not think they would reach the shore without being upset. 


When I expressed some doubt of the efficacy of this, he observed in the presence of Small and others, "We always take a bottle of oil when looking for sea clams, and, pouring out a few drops, can look down six or seven feet." 

We dined on halibut caught on the ledges some three miles off the Back Side. 

There was a carpenter who worked on the lighthouse boarding at Small's, who had lived sixteen years on the extremity of Cape Ann. When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock, perhaps fifty yards long and a dozen feet high, about two miles from the shore at Sandy Bay, outside Avery's Rock. That he and all the inhabitants of the Cape always called it " Selvaygias." Did not know but it had some thing to do with salvage for wrecks. 

This man, who is familiar with the shore of New England north of Cape Cod, thought that there was no beach equal to this for grandeur. He thought August the most foggy month. 

Small thought that the shore at the mouth of Pamet River about held its own. 

I saw an extract in a Cape (Yarmouth Register) paper from a promised History of the Cape by Dr. Dix, an Englishman, who was owing Small for board, etc. (page 136 of it). There was also advertised "The Annals of Barnstable County and its several Towns," etc., by Frederick Freeman, to be in two volumes, 8vo, $4.00. This will probably be out first. 

A child asked concerning a bobolink, "What makes he sing so sweet, Mother? Do he eat flowers? " 

Talked with an old lady who thought that the beach plums were better than cherries. 

Visited the telegraph station, tended by one Hall, just north of the light. He has a small volume called the "Boston Harbor Signal Book," containing the names of some three thousand vessels, their owners, etc., and a code of signals. There were also the private signals of more than a hundred merchants on a large sheet on the wall. There was also a large volume called "The Universal Code of Signals," Marryat (Richardson, London), 1854, containing the names of some twenty thousand vessels of all nations, but chiefly English, and an extensive system of signalling, by which he could [carry on] a long conversation with a vessel on almost any subject. He said that he could make out the name seven miles off and the signal sometimes twenty miles. [The man at Hull July 24, 1851, said they could tell the kind of vessel thirty miles off, the number at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on hull six or seven miles.]

Thought there would be a fog as long as the wind was southwest. "How is it in Boston ?" I asked. "I will ask," said he. Tick tick tick — "Wind northeast and cloudy." (Here it was southwest and thick fog.) 

He thought that there [were] more vessels to be seen passing this point than any other in the United States. One day when telegraphing the passing vessels he put in "a fox passing," for there was one running between the station and the edge of the bank. 

I observed the name of the brig Leader displayed on  a flag for me. The report was, "Brig Leader in." It may be a month before the vessel reaches Boston. 

The operator said that last winter the wind between his station and the bank blew him three rods through the air, and he was considerably hurt when he fell. A boy was blown head over heels. The fences were blown up, post and rail. There was no wind just this side the edge of the bank, but if you lay down there and extended your hand over the edge of the bank it would be blown suddenly upward, or if you cast off a large piece of wood it would be blown up thirty or forty feet high. Both boys and men often amuse them selves by running and trying to jump off the bank with their jackets spread, and being blown back. (Small confirmed this.) 

Hall said that he could not possibly jump off. Sometimes and in some places, pebbles as big as chestnuts are blown far over the bank. 

Hall said that he saw very large flocks of geese; had counted as many as six hundred go by at once, reaching three miles; and sometimes alight on the water. 

Talked with Uncle Sam, who was picking goose berries on the bank, — for the sun shone a short time. He showed me some fossil shells imbedded in stone which he had picked up on the high bank, just south of the light, and laid on his pile of driftwood. He wanted to know something about them. Said that a lecturer down at Pamet River had said, as he was told, that the Norwegians who formerly came to this country cemented them together. He had come down to watch a piece of driftwood, perhaps a stump, which had been lodged on a bar for a day or two. He was trying to make out what it was. There is something picked up on the shore of the Cape and advertised in every paper. 

This was the third foggy day. It cleared up the next day noon, but the night after and the next day was foggy again. It is a serious objection to visiting or living on the Cape that you lose so many days by fog.

Small said that a week of fog at this season would be nothing remarkable. You can see that the fog is local and of no great thickness. From time to time the sun almost or quite shines, and you can see half a mile, or to Provincetown even, and then, against all your rules, it thickens up again. An inlander would think [it] was going to clear up twenty times when it may last a week. Small said that they were very common with southerly winds, being blown up from Nantucket Shoals; that they were good for almost everything but corn, yet there was probably less rain there at this season than on the mainland. 

I have now visited the Cape four times in as many different years, once in October, twice in June, and once in July, having spent in all about one month there, and about one third the days were foggy, with or without rain. According to Alden (in Massachusetts Historical Collections, vol. v, First Series, page 57), Nantucket was discovered by a famous old Indian giant named Maushop, who waded the sea to it, and there filling his pipe with "poke," his smoke made fog. Whence that island is so much in the fog, and the aborigines on the opposite portion of the Cape, seeing a fog over the water at a distance, would say, "There comes old Maushop's smoke." The Gloucester carpenter thought August the worst month for fog on the coast. 

The fog lasted this time, with the exception of one afternoon and one or two slight breakings away, five days, or from Thursday morning till I reached Minot's Ledge, Monday noon. How much longer it continued on the Cape I do not know. The Cape people with whom I talked very generally denied that it [was] a phenomenon in any degree peculiar to the Cape. They said that it was just such weather at Boston. Indeed, some denied that it was fog at all. They said with some asperity that it was rain. Yet more rain would have fallen in a smart shower in the country in twenty minutes than in these five days on the Cape. When I got home I found that there had been an abundance [of] cloudy weather and rain within a week, but not one foggy day in Concord. 

Small thought that Lieutenant Davis might have misunderstood him. He meant to say that the offshore current (three miles off) set down the Cape, and wrecks in it went down the coast, the inshore one sets up. 

I noticed several lengths of fence hereabouts made chiefly of oars, very long ones.

A Cape Cod house is low, unpainted, shingled on the sides. They have many windows, even under the roofs to light the closets there, and as the chambers can only be lighted at one end, there are commonly two windows there. Once I saw a triangular blind under the peak, though there was no window beneath it. The windows commonly afford a view of the bay or ocean, though the house may be sheltered by some hill, or they are very snugly placed in a hollow, apparently as secluded as among the New Hampshire hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 20, 1857

When I asked him about Salvages, he said it was a large bare rock....:  The Dry Salvages are located about two miles north-east of Rockport, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. They are “dry” even at high tide, in contrast to an adjacent, lower reef, the Little Salvages, which are submerged at high tide. ~ The Dry Salvages by Vladimir Brezina

June 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 20

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 © 2009-2021

Lightning strikes the telegraph battery.

July 30

See the lightning on the telegraph battery and hear the shock about sundown from our window -- an intensely bright white light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 30, 1855

See the lightning on the telegraph battery and hear the shock.  See June 27,1852 ("All the phenomena of nature need be seen from the point of view of wonder and awe, like lightning; and, on the other hand, the lightning itself needs to be regarded with serenity, as the most familiar and innocent phenomena are.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

JJuly 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 30

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

In the evening some lightning in the horizon – soon a gentle rain. (An irresistible necessity for mud turtles.)

August 26. 

August 26, 2016

I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it.  

I hear part of a phoebe's strain, as I go over the railroad bridge. It is the voice of dying summer. 

I think I hear a red-eye. 

Rudbeckia, — the small one, — still fresh. 

Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. Its eyes are open. It puts out its head, stretches forth its claws, and liberates its tail. With its great head it has already the ugliness of the full-grown, and is already a hieroglyphic of snappishness. 

If Iliads are not composed in our day, snapping turtles are hatched and arrive at maturity. It already thrusts forth its tremendous head, — for the first time in this sphere, — and slowly moves from side to side, — opening its small glistening eyes for the first time to the light, — expressive of dull rage, as if it had endured the trials of this world for a century. 

When I behold this monster thus steadily advancing toward maturity, all nature abetting, I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. With what tenacity Nature sticks to her idea!

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain ...

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1854

There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it .) See August 25, 1854 ("Many refer all this to smoke . . . This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light."") See also note to August 31, 1854 ("There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.")

I hear part of a phoebe's [sic] strain . . . It is the voice of dying summer. See  April 14, 1852 ("I do not hear those peculiar tender die-away notes from the pewee yet. Is it another pewee, or a later note?"); August 20, 1854 ("The pewees sit still on their perch a long time . . . It often utters a continous pe-e-e. ");  August 21, 1853 ("The peawai still,"); August 22, 1853 ("Hear a peawai whose note is more like singing — as if it were still incubating — than any other.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Wood-Pewee

I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles. See September 11, 1852 ("Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head."); September 11, 1854 ("It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. "); September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest . . . At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water."); April 1, 1858 ("I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year . . . Talk of great heads, look at this one!"). See also August 28, 1856 ("I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th,\ and find a young turtle partly out of his shell. . . .What's a summer? Time for a turtle's eggs to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. "); September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.”)

Hear by telegraph that it rains in Portland and New York. See May 31, 1856 ("It has been very cold for two or three days, and to-night a frost is feared. The telegraph says it snowed in Bangor to-day"); October 20, 1859 ("I learn the next day that snow fell to-day in northern New York and New Hampshire . . . We feel the cold of it here as soon as the telegraph can inform us.")

In the evening, some lightning in the horizon, and soon after a little gentle rain See  March 25, 1860 (" The first lightning is seen in the horizon by one who is out in the evening"); June 16, 1852 (“Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager.”); July 23, 1854 ("As so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind. ") July 29, 1857 ("Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. ")

August 26.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 26

 In the evening some

 lightning in the horizon –

 soon a gentle rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, lightning in the horizon

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-540826

A dark-colored spear-head

July 5.

Another very hot night, and scarcely any dew this morning.  

P.M. -- To White Pond. One hundred and nine swallows on telegraph-wire at bridge within eight rods, and others flying about. 

On Lupine Knoll pick up a dark-colored spear-head three and a half inches long, lying on the bare sand; so hot that I can not long hold it tight in my hand.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1854

One hundred and nine swallows on telegraph-wire See July 29, 1858 ("I see nowadays . . . young swallows on the telegraph wire.")

On Lupine Knoll pick up a dark-colored spear-head. See July 5, 1857 ("At Clamshell I found three arrowheads and a small Indian chisel for my guests.")

Blue harp

January 18.

January 18, 2012

The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue. 

While the snow is falling, the telegraph harp is resounding across the fields. 


To-day, again, I see some of the blue in the crevices of the snow. It is snowing, but not a moist snow. Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue. There is no blue to be seen overhead, as if it has taken refuge in the chinks and crevices in the snow.


What is like the peep or whistle of a bird in the midst of a winter storm?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1852


The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.  See also note to February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish.")   See also January 11, 1855 ("Air so thick with snowflakes that . . .single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon."); January 21, 1855 ("The snow is turning to rain through a fine hail. Pines and oaks seen at a distance — say two miles off — are considerably blended and make one harmonious impression. The former, if you attend, are seen to be of a blue or misty black. . .");  January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); January 18, 1859 ("When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.").

Perhaps the snow in the air, as well as on the ground, takes up the white rays and reflects the blue. See January 9, 1852 ("Apparently the snow absorbs the other rays and reflects the blue. . . ."); January 14, 1852 ("There is no blueness in the ruts and crevices in the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? . . . It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter."); January 5, 1854 ("Some blueness now in the snow . . . more distinct after sunset."); January 19, 1855 ("I never saw the blue in snow so bright as this damp, dark, stormy morning ."); January 20, 1856 ("I see the blue between the cakes of snow cast out in making a path, in the triangular recesses, though it is pretty cold, but the sky is completely overcast")

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 18

No blue overhead–

it has taken refuge in

the chinks in the snow.