A Book of the Seasons: Pigweed

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Observe all kinds of coincidences,

as what kinds of birds come with what flowers.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

They come with the storm the falling and driving snow – a flock of snowbirds. February 13, 1853

One of these pigweeds 

lasts the snow-birds all winter  –

after every storm.

February 13, 1855

February 6. Pigweed and Roman wormwood are ragged as ever on a larger scale, and the butterweed as stiffly upright.  February 6, 1857

February 10 I hear the faint metallic chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to time, or perchance the mew of a linaria. It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. It would be a pity to have these weeds burned in the fall. February 10, 1855

February 13 In the midst of the snow-storm on Sunday (to-day), I am called to window to see a dense flock of snow birds on and under the pigweed in the garden. February 13, 1853

February 13  One of these pigweeds in the yard lasts the snow-birds all winter, and after every new storm they re-visit it. How inexhaustible their granary! February 13, 1855

March 2 See a large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow. I stand near a flock in an open field. They are trotting about briskly over the snow amid the weeds, —apparently pigweed and Roman wormwood, —as it were to keep their toes warm, hopping up to the weeds. March 2, 1858

July 10.  The pigweed about seashore is remarkably white and mealy. July 10, 1855

July 19. In the cultivated ground the pigweed, butterweed, and Roman wormwood, and amaranth are now rank and conspicuous weeds. July 19, 1860

August 31. These weeds require cultivated ground, and Nature perseveres each year till she succeeds in producing a bountiful harvest by their seeds . . . Now that the potatoes are cared for, Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds. August 31, 1859  

September 26. The seeds of pigweed are yet apparently quite green. Maybe they are somewhat peculiar for hanging on all winter.  September 26, 1858

January 2. I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed, picking them from the snow,-- apparently flat on the snow, their legs so short, -- and, when I approach, alighting on the rail fence. They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. January 2, 1856 

January 6. I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds. January 6. 1858 

January 15. Speaking of Roman wormwood springing up abundantly when a field which has been in grass for twenty years or more is plowed, Rice says that, if you carefully examine such a field before it is plowed, you will find very short and stinted specimens of wormwood and pigweed there, and remarkably full of seed too! January 15, 1861

January 19 At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pigweed in the garden. January 19, 1855

January  20. I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow in the yard — and some are large and bushlike — for its seeds, their well-filled granary now. There are a few tracks reaching from weed to weed, where some have run, but under the larger plants the snow is entirely trodden and blackened, proving that a large flock has been there and flown. January 20, 1853

 See also:

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

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

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pigweed

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

A Book of the Seasons: January 8 (winter birds, January thaw, tracks in snow, 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

January 8

January 8, 2022

The light of the sun

on the snow-banks make them

glow almost yellow.

January 8, 1851

Almost every track

made yesterday in the snow --.

A dead leaf in it.

January 8, 1852

The sky reflected

in the open river-reach

now perfectly smooth.

 January 8, 1855

Along the pond side

a man’s tracks perhaps my own

like white stepping stones.

January 8, 1860

January 8, 2017

To-day it is very warm and pleasant. January 8, 1860

It is now a clear warm and sunny day. January 8, 1855

The streets are washed bare down to the ice. January 8, 1855

I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. January 8, 1860

Walden, which was covered with snow, is now covered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. January 8, 1860

The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected.  January 8, 1860 

The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day, and we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening, shores which skirt the great western continent of the night. January 8, 1854

Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. January 8, 1855

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. January 8, 1860

How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! January 8, 1860

After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. January 8, 1860

There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. January 8, 1855

You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind. January 8, 1860

All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. January 8, 1856

Many white pine cones had been eaten in the neighborhood. January 8, 1854

Walk up on the river a piece above the Holden Swamp, though there are very few places where I can get on to it, it has so melted along the shore and on the meadows. The ice over the channel looks dangerously dark and rotten in spots. January 8, 1855

The fine dry snow is driving over the fields like steam, if you look toward the sun. January 8, 1856

Can go across both rivers now. New routes are more practicable. January 8, 1854

Going through the swamp, the snow balled so as to raise me three inches higher than usual. January 8, 1858

I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow - perhaps ten inches deep - has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around. January 8, 1852

We see no fresh tracks. January 8, 1860

I see the great tracks of white rabbits that have run and frisked in the night along the pond-side. January 8, 1856

The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. January 8, 1860

The old 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. January 8, 1860

There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated . . . they look like white stepping-stones January 8, 1860

I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball. January 8, 1857

Black at the two ends 

and red-brown in the middle -- 

rolled into a ball.

January 8, 1857

I see various caterpillars and grubs on the snow and in one place a reddish ant about a third of an inch long walking off. In the swamps you see the mouths of squirrels’ holes in the snow, with dirt and leaves and perhaps pine scales about them. January 8, 1855

The surface of the snow on the pond is finely scored in many places by the oak leaves which have been blown across it. They have furrowed deeper than a mouses track and might puzzle a citizen. January 8, 1856

The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical buds. January 8, 1855

I see what are probably the anther cells distinctly in the large buds of the poplar, which for a long time have shown their wool one sixth of an inch long. January 8, 1853

Also similar cells in the alder catkins, but greener and less springlike. January 8, 1853

The birch ones are the yellowest. January 8, 1853

I see prying into the black fruit of the alder, along the pond-side, a single probably lesser redpoll yellowish breast and distinct white bar on wing. January 8, 1856

Hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias?] January 8, 1860

Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. How curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its hindhead! I ask why it is there, but no answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It looks behind as if it had on a black cassock open behind and showing a white undergarment between the shoulders and down the back. It is briskly and incessantly tapping all round the dead limbs, but rarely twice in a place, as if to sound the tree and so see if it has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tapping and inspecting it! He it is that scatters those fragments of bark and lichens about on the snow at the base of trees. What a lichenist he must be! Or rather, perhaps it is fungi makes his favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. How briskly he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his wings to another tree! January 8, 1854

I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off. January 8, 1855

And,  as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him. Then off they flap with their caw of various hoarseness. January 8, 1855

It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth. January 8, 1855

We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8, 1854

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks today make them glow almost yellow. January 8, 1851

Even as early as 3 o'clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor. January 8, 1852

When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly conforming to the outline of Wachusett. January 8, 1860

We love . . .morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. Our mood may then possess the whole landscape, or be in harmony with it, as the hue of twilight prevails over the whole scene. January 8 1854

Gilpin, in his essay on the "Art of Sketching Landscape," says: "When you have finished your sketch . . . tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue." . . . I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. January 8, 1854

We have a fine moonlight evening after, and . . . I am struck by the brighter sheen from the snow in the moonlight. January 8, 1860

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll

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

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

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Signs of Spring

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment

*****

January 8, 2024

September 18, 1858 ("Some long amber clouds in the horizon, all on fire with gold, were more glittering than any jewelry. . . .And when you looked with head inverted the effect was increased tenfold, till it seemed a world of enchantment.")

August 30, 1854("I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses and a river-reach shining in the sun, and to the mountains in the horizon.")

August 31, 1852 ("Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive.")
September 13, 1851 ("The morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and youthful, and its blush is soon gone.")
December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . . distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections.")
December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); January 2, 1855 ("Yesterday we saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of us.")
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.")

December 24, 1850 (" I notice  that the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up,')

December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them.")
January 4, 1860 (" In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox.")
January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.")

 January 6, 1854 ("There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin's pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard's skin.")

January 6, 1857 ("When I get home after that slumping walk on the river, I find that the slush has balled and frozen on my boots two or three inches thick, and can only be thawed off by the fire, it is so solid.")
January 7, 1857 ("Though the rest of the broad path is else perfectly unspotted white, each track of the fox has proved a trap which has caught from three or four to eight or ten leaves each, snugly packed; and thus it is reprinted.")
January 7, 1857 ("In the wood-path [the snow] is all scored with the tracks of leaves that have scurried over it. Some might not suspect the cause of these fine and delicate traces, for the cause is no longer obvious").
January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

January 7, 1855 ("Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note")

January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.")
January 9, 1860 ("After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring.")
January 10, 1859 ("I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset. . . .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 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. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side.")

January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")
January 13, 1855 ("Picked up a pitch pine cone which had evidently been cut off by a squirrel.")
January 14, 1854 ("The meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, contrasting with the white patches of snow still left")
January 15, 1856 ("Seeing the tracks where a leaf had blown along and then tacked and finally doubled and returned on its trail, I think it must be the tracks of some creature new to me.”)
January 16, 1855 ("Carried to Harris the worms -- brown, light-striped-and fuzzy black caterpillars (he calls the first also caterpillars); also two black beetles; all which I have found within a week or two on ice and snow; thickest in a thaw")
January 17, 1860 ("I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore")

January 19, 1852 ("The snow blowing far off in the sun . . .looks like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning.") 

January 20, 1857 ("Heard, in the Dennis swamp by the railroad this afternoon, the peculiar goldfinch-like mew — also like some canaries — of, I think, the lesser redpoll (?). Saw several. Heard the same a week or more ago.")
January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?")
January 22, 1856 (“At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the 11th, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been feeding on the pitch pine cones extensively.”)
January 22, 1859 ("Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas")
January 22, 1856 ("I find that many of those young pines are now full of unopened cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer, and these the squirrel now eats“)
January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weathercontinues. The ground has been bare since the 11th . . . The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")
January 23, 1860 ("When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe ")
January 24, 1858 (" I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars")

January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad.")
January 24, 1860 ("[Redpolls] are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast.")

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 25, 1856 (“A closed pitch pine cone gathered January 22d opened last night in my chamber.”)

January 26, 1853 ('There is now a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice."0

January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”)
January 31, 1859 ("The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.")
January 31, 1859 ("Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky?")
February 27, 1857 ("I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree.")

March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from?")
March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”)
March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter.")

1850 ('You have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape.')

January 8, 2023

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 

January 7  <<<<<<<< January 8 >>>>>>>> January 9

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

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 22 ( first ice, second snow, tracking, winter birds, ice fishing, the westering sun, fire on ice)

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 22

A sprinkling of snow

whitens the ice in the swamp –

I see rabbit tracks.

December 22, 1853

You cannot go out 

so early but you will find 

some wild creature's track

. December 22, 1852

Walden skimmed over

will probably freeze to-night

if this weather holds.

December 22, 1853

A narrow line of

yellow rushes lit up by

the westering sun.

December 22, 1859

December 22. 2018

Another fine winter day. December 22, 1859

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. December 22, 1850

A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter, just enough to spoil the skating, now ten days old, on the ponds. December 22, 1853

This evening and night, the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now. December 22, 1860

The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow. December 22, 1852

You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature. December 22, 1852

Last night's sprinkling of snow does not now whiten the ground, except that here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it. December 22, 1853

I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere. December 22, 1850

I see where a rabbit has hopped across [Walden] in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is. December 22, 1858

The squirrel nests, bunches of grass and leaves high in the trees, more conspicuous if not larger now, or the glimpse of a meadow (?) mouse, give occasion for a remark. December 22, 1852

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. December 22, 1850

I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow. December 22, 1859 

In a . . . nest on this island [ what I will call Sassafras Island, in Flint's Pond], ]I saw three cherry-stones, as if it had carried home this fruit to its young. It was, outside, of gnaphalium and saddled on a low limb. Could it have been a cherry-bird? December 22, 1859

What a reminiscence of summer, a fiery hangbird's nest dangling from an elm over the road when perhaps the thermometer is down to -20 (?), and the traveller goes beating his arms beneath it! December 22, 1859

It is a dark-aired winter day, yet I see the summer plants still peering above the snow. December 22, 1850

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. December 22, 1850

It is pleasant, cutting a path through the bushes in a swamp, to see the color of the different woods, – the yellowish dogwood, the green prinos (?), and, on the upland, the splendid yellow barberry. December 22, 1852

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. December 22, 1859

Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce swamp opposite J. Farmer's. December 22, 1853

It is remarkable how few inhabitants of Concord can těll a spruce from a fir, and probably not two a white from a black spruce, unless they are together. The woodchopper, even hereabouts, cuts down several kinds of trees without knowing what they are. Neither do the spruce trees know the villager. The villager doesn't know a black spruce tree when he sees it. How slender his relation to the spruce tree! The white has taken refuge in swamps from him. It is nothing but so much evergreen to him. December 22, 1853

Three men are fishing on Flint's Pond, where the ice is seven or eight inches thick. December 22, 1859

The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won't bite. December 22, 1859

However, the pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day. December 22, 1859

On what I will call Sassafras Island, in this pond, I notice the largest and handsomest high blueberry at the ground into four stems, all very large and the largest three inches in diameter (one way) at three feet high, and at the ground, where they seem to form one trunk (at least grown together), nine inches in diameter.  December 22, 1859

Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds. December 22, 1853

The pond is no more frozen than on the 20th. December 22, 1858

I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. December 22, 1858

Hear the well-known mew and watery twitter of the last and the drier chilt chilt of the former. December 22, 1858

These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow. December 22, 1858

There may be thirty goldfinches, very brisk and pretty tame. December 22, 1858

They hang head downwards on the weeds. December 22, 1858

I hear of their coming to pick sunflower seeds in Melvin’s garden these days. December 22, 1858

The cladium (?) retains its seeds over the ice, little conical, sharp-pointed, flat-based, dark-brown, shining seeds. December 22, 1859

I look back to the wharf rock shore and see that rush (cladium I have called it), the warmest object in the landscape, — a narrow line of warm yellow rushes — for they reflect the western light, — along the edge of the somewhat snowy pond and next the snow-clad and wooded shore. December 22, 1859

This rush, which is comparatively inconspicuous in the summer, becomes thus in the winter afternoons a conspicuous and interesting object, lit up by the westering sun. December 22, 1859

Returning home just after the sun had sunk below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a fire made by boys on the ice near the Red Bridge, which looked like a bright reflection of a setting sun from the water under the bridge, so clear, so little lurid, in this winter evening air. December 22, 1852

December 22, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus

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

A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-bird (cedar waxwing)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

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

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now

See also Winter Colors (The solstice) (posted December 21, 2020)

 *****

December 22, 2017

March 24, 1859 ("I see a flock of goldfinches, first of spring,")

May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now.)

June 1, 1860 ("This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here")

June 26, 1853 ("Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself.”)
August 31, 1858 ("The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.”)

November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”)

November 18, 1855 ("The snow is the great track-revealer.")

November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, . . . The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening.";

December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen. .. and whitened with snow , which was sprinkled on it this noon'")

December 8, 1855 ("Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected")

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

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

December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.")

December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day")

December 21, 1854 ("We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.")

December 21, 1854 "Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick")

December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.")
December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”)
December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday.")

December 21, 1857 ("Walden and Fair Haven . . . have only frozen just enough to bear me.")

December 21, 1859 ("A fine winter day")

 

December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon”); also Walden (("In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December”)

December 23, 1855 ("These are the colors of the earth now.")

December 23, 1859 ("The third fine, clear, bright, and rather mild winter day")

December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”)

December 24, 1859 ("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week")

December 24, 1859 ("I measure the blueberry bushes on Flint's Pond Island.")

December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, . . . This being the only pond hereabouts that is open.”)

December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")

December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here.")

December 28, 1856 (". . . if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i.e. a wilder experience than the town affords.")

December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.”)

December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”)

December 31, 1853 ("This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.")

January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.")

January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. . . that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

January 5, 1860 ("How much the snow reveals! ")

January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.") 

January 12, 1855 ("On Flint’s Pond I find Nat Rice fishing. He has not caught one. I asked him what he thought the best time to fish. He said, “When the wind first comes south after a cold spell, on a bright morning.”");

January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")

January 14, 1853 ("Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.")

January 22, 1854 ("No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first")

January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”)

January 26, 1860 ("To Eleazer Davis's Hill, and made a fire on the ice, merely to see the flame and smell the smoke.")

February 2, 1860  ("And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river.")

February 7, 1854 ("Made a fire on the snow-covered ice half a mile below Ball's Hill”)

February 16, 1854 ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall.")

February 16, 1854 ("Snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.")

February 20, 1854 ("Make a fire on the south side of the pond, using canoe birch bark and oak leaves for kindling.")

February 21, 1854 ("There is scarcely a track of any animal yet to be seen. You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.")

December 22, 2014

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 21  <<<<<<<<  December 22  >>>>>>>> December 23

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 22

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