Who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?

December 14. Tuesday.

P. M. – To Assabet Stone Bridge.

We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. 

December 14. 2021

The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls and the long sharp red capsules of the small ( ? ) hypericum, etc., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs.

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. Ah, what isles those western clouds! in what a sea! 

Just after sunset there is a broad pillar of light for many minutes in the west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 14, 1852

The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls. See December 14, 1851 ("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.") 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")

The long sharp red capsules of the small hypericum, etc., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs. See September 19, 1852 ("The red capsules of the sarothra."); December 3, 1856 ("Pinweed (or sarothra) is quite concealed." ); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow. "); 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. . . . What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! . . .Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); 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")

Who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? See December 14, 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.") See also  December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); December 8, 1854 (“There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm”); December 9, 1856 ("A slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame. Such is a winter eve."); 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. Thus, methinks, it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer"); December 11, 1854 ("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.The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely"); December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.")

 Night comes on early.

Pine tree tops outlined against

the cold western sky,

December 12, 1859

December 18, 1853 ("The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky. "); December 19, 1851 (".Now the sun sets suddenly without a cloud– & with scarcely any redness following so pure is the atmosphere – only a faint rosy blush along the horizon."); December 20, 1851 ("The sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon."); 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.")

The icy water

reflecting the warm colors

of the sunset sky.

December 20, 1855

December 21 1851 (Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west."); December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle!"); December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 23, 1851 (“Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun.”); December 23, 1851 ("The evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon."); December 24, 1851 (“When I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border.”); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

 Western sky full of

soft pure light after sunset,

the outlines of pines.

December 25, 1858

December 27, 1851("Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight."); December 27, 1853 (" It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon")

The evening star seen

shining brightly before the

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853

January 5, 1853 ("A fine rosy sky in the west after sunset; and later an amber-colored horizon."); January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky")

To look over pines

so rich and distinct, into

the soft western sky.

January 9, 1859

January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun."); January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset."); January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east."); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. . . .As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind.")

The unclouded mind,

serene, pure, ineffable

like the western sky.

January 17, 1852

 January 24, 1852 ("A single elm by Hayden's stands in relief against the amber and golden, deepening into dusky but soon to be red horizon."); January 17, 1860 ("When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset.)"); January 26, 1852. ("Would you see your mind, look at the sky.")

See also July 23, 1852  ("As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.")

December 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 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 © 2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt521214

A Book of the Seasons: December 5 (clear cold winter weather, a pause in boating, ice snow and solitude, winter birds, winter colors, winter sky)

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 5

I love best to have 

each thing in season only

and then do without.

December 5, 1856

There is a bright light

on the pines and on their stems –

the lichens on their bark. 

December 5, 1850

Many winter birds
have a sharp note like tinkling 
glass or icicles.
December 5, 1853

Now for the short days.

Sun behind a low cloud and

the world is darkened.

December 5, 1853

Pale blue winter sky

simple, perfectly cloudless –

a white moon half full.

December 5, 1856

To be born into

the most estimable place

in the nick of time.

December 5, 1856

December 5, 2020

Very cold last night. December 5, 1854

What a contrast between this week and last. December 5, 1856

The ground has been frozen more or less about a week. December 5, 1853

Suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter. December 5, 1859

Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep. December 5, 1858

Clear, cold winter weather. December 5, 1856

Probably river skimmed over in some places. December 5, 1854

The river is well skimmed over in most places. December 5, 1856

The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow, which was sprinkled on it this noon. December 5, 1853

Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over. December 5, 1853

Got my boat in. December 5, 1853

I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in. December 5, 1856

I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. December 5, 1856

I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. December 5, 1856

The damp snow with water beneath . . . is frozen solid, making a crust which bears well. December 5, 1854

There are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has scattered many over the snow-crust. December 5, 1856

It would be easier gathering them now than ever. December 5, 1856

Some fine straw-colored grasses . . . still rise above this crusted snow, and even a recess is melted around them. December 5, 1856

The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow. December 5, 1856

As I walk along the side of the Hill, a pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut, flying low in mid- course and then ascending to the tree. December 5, 1856

I hear one's faint tut tut or gnah gnah — no doubt heard a good way by its mate now flown into the next tree .December 5, 1856

It is a chubby bird, white, slate-color, and black. December 5, 1856

Saw and heard a downy woodpecker on an apple tree.  December 5, 1853

Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? December 5, 1853

The chip of the tree sparrow, also, and the whistle of the shrike, are they not wintry in the same way ? December 5, 1853

The partridge is budding on the apple tree and bursts away from the path-side. December 5, 1853

Four quails running across the Turnpike. December 5, 1859

At noon a few flakes fall. December 5, 1857

Rather hard walking in the snow. December 5, 1859

There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves December 5, 1859

The perfect silence, as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled (her axle). December 5, 1859

The stillness (motionlessness) of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses, as if they were sculptured out of marble. December 5, 1859

A fine mizzle falling and freezing to the twigs and stubble, so that there is quite a glaze. December 5, 1858

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters. December 5, 1858

These humble withered plants, which have not of late attracted your attention, now arrest it by their very stiffness and exaggerated size. December 5, 1858

Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow. December 5, 1858

The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms. December 5, 1858

It is surprising how the slenderest grasses can support such a weight, but the culm is buttressed by an other icy culm or column, and the load gradually taken on. December 5, 1858

In the woods the drooping pines compel you to stoop. December 5, 1858

In all directions they are bowed down, hanging their heads. December 5, 1858

Several small white oak trees full of stiffened leaves by the roadside, strangely interesting and beautiful. December 5, 1859

The evergreens are greener than ever. There is a peculiar bright light on the pines and on their stems. The lichens on their bark reflect it. December 5, 1850

Some sugar maples, both large and small, have still, like the larger oaks, a few leaves about the larger limbs near the trunk. December 5, 1858

The large yellowish leaves of the black oak (young trees) are peculiarly conspicuous, rich and warm, in the midst of this ice and snow December 5, 1858

And on the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. December 5, 1858

The birches are still upright, and their numerous parallel white ice-rods remind me of the recent gossamer-like gleams which they reflected. December 5, 1858

Half a mile off, a tall and slender pitch pine against the dull-gray mist, peculiarly monumental. December 5, 1859

Many living leaves are very dark red now. . .  the checkerberry, andromeda, low cedar, and more or less lambkill. December 5, 1853

Now for the short days and early twilight, in which I hear the sound of woodchopping. December 5, 1853

The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened. December 5,1853

It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. December 5, 1856

A white moon, half full, in the pale or dull blue heaven and a whiteness like the reflection of the snow, extending up from the horizon all around a quarter the way up to the zenith. December 5, 1856 (This at 4 p. m. December 5, 1856)

The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky. December 5, 1856

Before I got home the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow yellowish light equally diffused, so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon cloud, fifteen minutes before. December 5, 1853

In the horizon I see a succession of the brows of hills, - the eyebrows of the recumbent earth - separated by long valleys filled with vapory haze.   December 5, 1850

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

I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold. December 5, 1856

December 5, 2014

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in Boat out

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines  

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  the Osier in Winter and early Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Anthropic Principle

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

*****

December 5, 2023

February 19, 1854 ("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”)
April 13, 1852 ("The imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts.”)
April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season").
August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe.")
August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.")
August 22, 1854 ("There is, no doubt, a particular season of the year when each place may be visited with most profit and pleasure, and it may be worth the while to consider what that season is in each case.")
August 23, 1853 ("Live in each season as it passes.")
August 23, 1853 ("Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end")
September 9, 1854 ("The earth is the mother of all creatures.")

November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.")

November 20, 1857 ("I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.")

 November 26, 1860 ("I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off.")

November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.") 

December 1, 1857 ("I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me on a pine. I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter")

December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat,")

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, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river.")
December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.")
December 4, 1856 ("Each day at present, the wriggling river nibbles off the edges of the trap which have advanced in the night.")

December 7, 1856 (The winters come now as fast as snowflakes. It was summer, and now again it is winter."")

December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond . . .The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick.”)

December 8, 1850 ("The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)

December 8, 1859 ("The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree.")
December 9, 1855 ("At 8.30 a fine snow begins to fall, increasing very gradually, perfectly straight down, till in fifteen minutes the ground is white . . . But in a few minutes it turns to rain, and so the wintry landscape is postponed for the present.”)

December 9, 1856 ("Fair Haven was so solidly frozen on the 6th that there was fishing on it,")
December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden.")

December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)
December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, is not an evil to be corrected. It is as it was designed and made to be,")
December 16, 1857 ("Begins to snow about 8 A. M., and in fifteen minutes the ground is white, but it soon stops.")

December 21, 1851 ("How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle! ")

December 24, 1854 ("A slight glaze, the first of the winter. This gives the woods a hoary aspect and increases the stillness by making the leaves immovable even in considerable wind.")
December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.")

December 26, 1855 ("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are.")

December 5, 2020

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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 4 <<<<<<<< December 5  >>>>>>>> December 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 5 

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

A red screech owl.

December 26

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. This is now generally made the same with the nævia, but, while some consider the red the old, others consider the red the young. 

This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown" like a hazelnut or dried hazel bur (not hazel). It is twenty-three inches alar extent by about eleven long. Feet extend one inch beyond tail.

Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the young.

How well fitted these and other owls to withstand the winter! a mere core in the midst of such a muff of feathers! Then the feet of this are feathered finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in winter; hawks, scarce.


It is no worse, I allow, than almost every other practice which custom has sanctioned, but that is the worst of it, for it shows how bad the rest are. To such a pass our civilization and division of labor has come that A, a professional huckleberry - picker, has hired B’s field and, we will suppose, is now gathering the crop, perhaps with the aid of a patented machine; C, a professed cook, is superintending the cooking of a pudding made of some of the berries; while Professor D, for whom the pudding is intended, sits in his library writing a book, a work on the Vaccinieæ, of course. And now the result of this downward course will be seen in that book, which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckleberry field and account for the existence of the two professors who come between D and A.

It will be worthless. There will be none of the spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a homely illustration, this is to save at the spile but waste at the bung.

I believe in a different kind of division of labor, and that Professor D should divide himself between the library and the huckleberry-field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1860

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect  Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, - not at all gray. See May 7, 1855 ("I looked in, and, to my great surprise, there squatted, filling the hole, which was about six inches deep and five to six wide, a salmon-brown bird not so big as a partridge, seemingly asleep within three inches of the top and close to my face."); May 12, 1855 ("One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs .. . .Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio) , — with which this apparently corresponds , and not with the mottled, though my egg is not " pure white, ” – that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.");,February 5, 1861 ("Horace Mann brings me a screech owl . . . This is a decidedly gray owl, with none of the reddish or nut brown of the specimen of December 26, though it is about the same size, and answers exactly to Wilson's mottled owl.") Also   J. J. Audubon  ("The Red Owl of Wilson and other naturalists is merely the young of the bird called by the same authors the Mottled Owl,"))

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds.

December 22.

The apples are now thawed. This is their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and uneatable are now filled with a rich, sweet cider which I am better acquainted with than with wine.

And others, which have more substance, are a sweet and luscious food, — in my opinion of more worth than the pineapples which are imported from the torrid zone. Those which a month ago I tasted and repented of it, which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the shrub oak.

It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first solid as stones, and then the sun or a warm winter day for it takes but little heat — to thaw them, and they to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang.

I find when I get home that they have thawed in my pocket and the ice is turned to cider. But I suspect that after the second freezing and thawing they will not be so good. I bend to drink the cup and save my lappets.

What are the half-ripe fruits of the torrid south, to this fruit matured by the cold of the frigid north. There are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face to tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them, and grow more social with their wine.

Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not dislodge it? It is a fruit never brought to market that I am aware of, quite distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider.

It is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. It is a dark-aired winter day, yet I see the summer plants still peering above the snow.

There are but few tracks in all this snow. It is the Yellow Knife River or the Saskatchewan.

The large leafy lichens on the white pines, especially on the outside of the wood, look almost a golden yellow in the light reflected from the snow, while deeper in the wood they are ash-colored.

In the swamps the dry, yellowish-colored fruit of the poison dogwood hangs like jewelry on long, drooping stems. It is pleasant to meet it, it has so much character relatively to man.

Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree. Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that they contained an almond before the naturalist did. He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets.

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1850

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere. See December 22, 1853 ("Here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it.") 

Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree. See December 22, 1859  ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow.")

Ash-colored lichens

look golden yellow in light

reflected from snow. 

Now the abundance of dead weeds.

 

October 21.

Thursday P.M. To Second Division Brook and Ministerial Swamp.

Cerastium.

Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them.

Saw that the side flowering skull-cap was killed by the frost. If they grow in some nook out of the way of frosts they last so much the longer. Methinks the frost puts a period to a large class.

The goldenrods, being dead, are now a dingy white along the brooks (white fuzz dark brown leaves), together with rusty, fuzzy trumpet-weeds and asters in the same condition.

This is a remarkable feature in the landscape now the abundance of dead weeds. The frosts have done it. Winter comes on gradually.

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first.

All the country over the frosts have come and seared the tenderer herbs along all brook sides. How unobserved this change until it has taken place.

The birds that fly at the approach of winter are come from the north.

Some time since I might have said some birds are leaving us, others, like ducks, are just arriving from the north, the herbs are withering along the brooks, the humming insects are going into winter quarters.

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year from June 1st to October 1st perhaps.

Polygonum articulaium lingers still.

Silvery cinquefoil, hedge-mustard, and clover.

I find caddis cases with worms in Second Division Brook.

And what mean those little piles of yellow sand on dark colored stones at the bottom of the swift running water kept together and in place by some kind of gluten and looking as if sprinkled on the stones one eighteenth of an inch in diameter.

These caddis worms just build a little case around themselves and sometimes attach a few dead leaves to disguise it and then fasten it slightly to some swaying grass stem or blade at the bottom in swift water and these are their quarters till next spring .

This reminds me that winter does not put his rude fingers in the bottom of the brooks.

When you look into the brooks you see various dead leaves floating or resting on the bottom and you do not suspect that some are the disguises which the caddis worms have borrowed.

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's.

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders.

Gilpin speaks of floats of timber on the river Wey in 1775 as picturesque objects. Thus in the oldest settled and civilized country there is a resemblance or reminiscence still of the primitive new country, and more or less timber never ceases to grow on the head waters of its streams and perchance the wild muskrat still perforates its banks. England may endure as long as she grows oaks for her navy. Timber rafts still annually come down the Rhine, like the Mississippi and St Lawrence. But the forests of England are thin for Gilpin says of the Isle of Wight in Charles II's time, "There were woods in the island so complete and extensive that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several parts many leagues together on the tops of the trees."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1852

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders. See September 22, 1852 ("Large woolly aphides are now clustered close together on the alder stems") See also June 14, 1853 ("I observed the cotton of aphides on the alders yesterday and to-day. ");  October 29, 1855 ("I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders."); May 19, 1856 ("Woolly aphides on alder. "); November 10, 1858 ("Aphides on alder."); June 4, 1860 (Aphides on alders, which dirty your clothes with their wool as you walk."")

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first. See October 21, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day.")

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year. See October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.")

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

October 13.

October 13, 2021

Drizzling, misty showers still, with a little misty sunshine at intervals.

The trees have lost many of their leaves in the last twenty-four hours.

The sun has got so low that it will do to let his rays in on the earth; the cattle do not need their shade now, nor men. Warmth is more desirable now than shade.

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

• In summer the animal and vegetable in him are perfected as in a torrid zone; he lives in his senses mainly.
• In winter cold reason and not warm passion has her sway; he lives in thought and reflection; he lives a more spiritual, a less sensual, life.
• If he has passed a merely sensual summer, he passes his winter in a torpid state like some reptiles and other animals.
• The mind of man in the two seasons is like the atmosphere of summer compared with the atmosphere of winter.
• He depends more on himself in winter, — on his own resources, — less on outward aid.
• Insects, it is true, disappear for the most part, and those animals which depend upon them; but the nobler animals abide with man the severity of winter.
• He migrates into his mind, to perpetual summer.
• And to the healthy man the winter of his discontent never comes.

Mr. Pratt told me that Jonas? Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately near Beck Stow's swamp with twenty-five pounds of honey in it, in the top of a maple tree which was blown down.

There is now a large swarm in the meeting-house chimney, in a flue not used.

Many swarms have gone off that have not been heard from.


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

Man in winter. See December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); October 27, 1851 ("The cold numbs my fingers. Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think."); January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer ") April 1, 1852 ("We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with."); January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars."); December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be.")

Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees,. . .. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey."); September 30, 1852 ("custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

October 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

We live and walk on solidified fluids.

February 12

Return on green ice

to walk amid purple clouds

of the sunset sky. 

February 12, 1860

February 12, 2020

Sunday. 2 p. m., 22°. Walk up river to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy, — northwest.

About a quarter of an inch of snow fell last evening. This scarcely colors that part of the ground that was bare, and on all icy surfaces which are exposed to the sweep of the wind it is already distributed very regularly in thin drifts. It lies on the ice in waving lines or in lunar or semicircular, often spread-eagle, patches with very regular intervals, quite like the openings lately seen in the river when breaking up. The whole surface of the icy field is thus watered. That is, it is not collected in one place more than another, but very evenly distributed in these patches over the whole surface. 

I speak of what lies on the open ice. It comes flowing like a vapor from the northwest, low over the ice and much faster than a man walks, and a part is ever catching and lodging here and there and building a low drift, the northwest side of which will be abrupt with a sharp, beetling edge an inch or a half-inch high. No doubt these drifts are constantly changing their ground or rolling over. 

I see now that this vapor-like snow-dust is really sometimes blown up six or eight feet into the air, though for the most part it merely slides low over the ice. 

The greater part of this snow is lodged a foot deep amid the button-bushes, and there it continues to accumulate as long as the wind blows strong. 

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

Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky- blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. At a distance in several directions I see the tawny earth streaked or spotted with white where the bank or hills and fields appear, or else the green-black evergreen forests, or the brown, or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here and there, where the agitated surface of the river is exposed, the blue-black water.

That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. Those are peculiar portions of the river which have thus always opened first, — been open latest and longest.

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

It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. 

All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.

But to return to my walk. I proceed over the sky- blue ice, winding amid the flat drifts as if amid the clouds, now and then treading on that thin white ice (much marked) of absorbed puddles (of the surface), which crackles somewhat like dry hard biscuit. Call it biscuit ice. Some of it is full of internal eyes like bird's-eye maple, little bubbles that were open above, and elsewhere I tread on ice in which are traced all kinds of characters, Coptic and Syriac, etc.

How curious those crinkled lines in ice that has been partly rotted, reaching down half an inch per pendicularly, or else at an angle with the surface, and with a channel that may be felt above! 

There are places (a few), like that at Hubbard's Grove, commonly thin or open, leading to the shore, with the ice puffed up, as if kept open by a musquash, where apparently a spring comes in. Only betrayed by its being slow to freeze, or by the rottenness of the ice there. 

This is the least observed of all tributaries, the first evidence of a tributary. 

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. 

How unexpected is one season by another! Off Pleasant Meadow I walk amid the tops of bayonet rushes frozen in, as if the summer had been overtaken by the winter.

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green, and a rose-color to be reflected from the  low snow-patches. I see the color from the snow first where there is some shade, as where the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or twilight, then, is necessary, umbra mixed with the reflected sun. 

Off Holden Wood, where the low rays fall on the river from between the fringe of the wood, the snow-patches are not rose-color, but a very dark purple like a grape, and thus there are all degrees from pure white to black. 

When crossing Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow-patches are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cranberry juice. It is quite a faery scene, surprising and wonderful, as if you walked amid those rosy and purple clouds that you see float in the evening sky. What need to visit the crimson cliffs of Beverly? 

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. 

The hunter may be said to invent his game, as Neptune did the horse, and Ceres corn. 

It is twenty above at 5.30, when I get home. 

I walk over a smooth green sea, or aequor, the sun just disappearing in the cloudless horizon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple as the petals of a flower. It would not be more enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of the sunset sky. 

And, by the way, this is but a sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth. 

You have seen those purple fortunate isles in the sunset heavens, and that green and amber sky between them. Would you believe that you could ever walk amid those isles? You can on many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times. The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet. 

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. 

Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon they, as it were, meet and are seen to be one. 

I have walked in such a place and found it hard as marble. Not only the earth but the heavens are made our footstool.

That is what the phenomenon of ice means. The earth is annually inverted and we walk upon the sky. The ice reflects the blue of the sky. The waters become solid and make a sky below. The clouds grow heavy and fall to earth, and we walk on them. We live and walk on solidified fluids. 

We have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us. How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double! The one is on the earth around us, the other in the horizon. 

These snow-clad hills answer to the rosy isles in the west. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky. The ice is a solid sky on which we walk. It is the inverted year. 

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is for ever blue. In winter we are purified and translated. The earth does not absorb our thoughts. It becomes a Valhalla. 

Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow. 

North of the Warm Woodside (returning) is Bulrush Lagoon, — off Grindstone Meadow, — a good place for lilies; then Nut Meadow Mouth; Clamshell Bend, or Indian Bend; Sunset Reach, where the river flows nearly from west to east and is a fine sparkling scene from the hills eastward at sunset; then Hubbard's Bathing-Place, and the swift place, and Lily Bay, or Willow Bay.

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

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

It is as if I saw a skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if the woodchuck unrolled himself and snuffed the air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. See Walden ("I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.")

Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green . . . See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.")

On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast. 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. [I]t has been the prevailing bird here this winter."); January 8, 1860 ("See a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. . . .When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch!"); 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 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. "); ; See also A Book of the Seasons, the Lesser Redpoll

Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him. See Walking ("I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is, —I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the 'woods?") See also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.")

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term See January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .") March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race.")

The phenomenon of ice . . . We live and walk on solidified fluids. See January 31, 1859 ("Surely the ice is a great and absorbing phenomenon. Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies, how much attention it monopolizes! We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")

There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue. See September 9, 1851 (" Even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of night into the distant atmosphere of day"); February 3. 1852 ("Is not the sky unusually blue to-night? dark blue? Is it not always bluer when the ground is covered with snow in the winter than in summer?"); February 4, 1852 ("The sky is the most glorious blue I ever beheld, even a light blue on some sides, as if I actually saw into day.); February 5, 1852 ("The sky last night was a deeper, more cerulean blue than the far lighter and whiter sky of to-day."). See also May 11, 1853 ("Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night."); January 21, 1853 ("The blueness of the sky at night — the color it wears by day — is an everlasting surprise to me, suggesting the constant presence and prevalence of light in the firmament, that we see through the veil of night to the constant blue, as by day.") and  Night and Moonlight (first published in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1863) ("Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are reveling.")

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

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