What miracles, what beauty surrounds us!

January 30. 

January 30, 2022, 7:00AM

2 p. m. — To Nut Meadow and White Pond road. 

Thermometer 45°. Fair with a few cumuli of indefinite outline in the north and south, and dusky under sides. A gentle west wind and a blue haze. Thaws. 

The river has opened to an unusual extent, owing to the very long warm spell, — almost all this month. Even from Hubbard's Bridge up and down it is breaking up, is all mackerelled, with lunar-shaped openings  and some like a thick bow. * They [are] from one to twelve feet long. 

Yesterday's slight snow is all gone, leaving the ice, old snow, and bare ground; and as I walk up the river side, there is a brilliant sheen from the wet ice toward the sun, instead of the crystalline rainbow of yesterday. 

Think of that (of yesterday), — to have constantly before you, receding as fast as you advance, a bow formed of a myriad crystalline mirrors on the surface of the snow! ! What miracles, what beauty surrounds us! 

Then, another day, to do all your walking knee-deep in perfect six-rayed crystals of surpassing beauty but of ephemeral duration, which have fallen from the sky. 

The ice has so melted on the meadows that I see where the musquash has left his clamshells in a heap near the riverside, where there was a hollow in the bank. 

The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook. 

It is pleasant also to see the very distinct ripple-marks in the sand at its bottom, of late so rare a sight. 

I go through the piny field northwest of M. Miles's. There are no more beautiful natural parks than these pastures in which the white pines have sprung up spontaneously, standing at handsome intervals, where the wind chanced to let the seed lie at last, and the grass and blackberry vines have not yet been killed by them. 

There are certain sounds invariably heard in warm and thawing days in winter, such as the crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and sometimes the gobbling of turkeys. 

The crow, flying high, touches the tympanum of the sky for us, and reveals the tone of it. What does it avail to look at a thermometer or barometer compared with listening to his note? He informs me that Nature is in the tenderest mood possible, and I hear the very flutterings of her heart. Crows have singular wild and suspicious ways. You will [see] a couple flying high, as if about their business, but lo, they turn and circle and caw over your head again and again for a mile; and this is their business, — as if a mile and an afternoon were nothing for them to throw away. This even in winter, when they have no nests to be anxious about. 

But it is affecting to hear them cawing about their ancient seat (as at F. Wheeler's wood) which the choppers are laying low. 

I saw the other day (apparently) mouse(?)-tracks which had been made in slosh  on the Andromeda Ponds and then frozen, — little gutters about two inches wide and nearly one deep, looking very artificial with the nicks on the sides. 

I sit on the high hilltop south of Nut Meadow, near the pond. This hazy day even Nobscot is so blue that it looks like a mighty mountain. 

See how man has cleared commonly the most level ground, and left the woods to grow on the more uneven and rocky, or in the swamps.

I see, when I look over our landscape from any eminence as far as the horizon, certain rounded hills, amid the plains and ridges and cliffs, which have a marked family likeness, like eggs that belong to one nest though scattered. They suggest a relation geologically. Such are, for instance, Nashoba, Annursnack, Nawshawtuct, and Ponkawtasset, all which have Indian names, as if the Indian, too, had regarded them as peculiarly distinct. 

There is also Round Hill in Sudbury, and perhaps a hill in Acton. Perhaps one in Chelmsford. They are not apparently rocky. 

The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. That thaw which merely excites the cock to sound his clarion as it were calls to life the snow-flea.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1860

The crystalline rainbow of yesterday. See January 29, 1860 ("that conical rainbow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections, from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, . . . as I walk toward the sun, — always a little in advance of me")

The small water-bugs are gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook.  See January 17, 1860 ("See In the spring-hole ditches of the Close I see many little water-bugs (Gyrinus) gyrating, and some under water. It must be a common phenomenon there in mild weather in the winter. "); January 24, 1858 (" At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and  Skaters (Hydrometridae)

It is pleasant also to see the very distinct ripple-marks in the sand at its bottom, of late so rare a sight. See July 30, 1852 ("The ripple-marks on the east shore of Flint's are nearly parallel firm ridges in the white sand, one inch or more apart. They are very distinctly felt by the naked feet of the wader."); March 10, 1853 ("At Nut Meadow Brook . . . gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom [and].the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom,"); April 3, 1859 ("The water being quite shallow on [White Pond], it is very handsomely and freshly ripple-marked for a rod or more in width, the ripples only two or three inches apart and very regular and parallel.") August 1, 1859 ("The [river] bottom is occasionally — though quite rarely in Concord — of soft shifting sand, ripple-marked, in which the paddle sinks, under four or five feet of water (as below the ash tree hole)")

There are certain sounds invariably heard in warm and thawing days in winter, such as the crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and sometimes the gobbling of turkeys. See 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. "); March 16, 1858 (" The crowing of cocks and the cawing of crows tell the same story. The ice is soggy and dangerous to be walked on.")

But lo, they turn and circle and caw over your head again and again for a mile. See May 11, 1855 ("You can hardly walk in a thick pine wood now, especially a swamp, but presently you will have a crow or two over your head, either silently flitting over, to spy what you would be at and if its nest is in danger, or angrily cawing.") September 18, 1852 ("The crows congregate and pursue me through the half-covered woodland path, cawing loud and angrily above me, and when they cease, I hear the winnowing sound of their wings."); October 9, 1858 (" Crows fly over and caw at you now."); November 18, 1857 (" Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me.")

Mouse-tracks which had been made in slosh on the Andromeda Ponds and then frozen, — little gutters about two inches wide and nearly one deep. See December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice"); January 15, 1857 ("And for a week, or fortnight even, of pretty still weather the tracks will remain, to tell of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse")

This hazy day even Nobscot is so blue that it looks like a mighty mountain. Compare June 26, 1853 ("Nobscot has lost all its blue, and the northwest mountains are too . . .firmly defined to be mistaken for clouds.")

The snow-flea is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. See January 22, 1860 ("This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow."). See also A Book of the Seasons: The snow-flea

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 30

Beauty surrounds us!

Crystalline mirrors on the

surface of the snow.

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

The sounds of a glorious winter afternoon (the scream of a jay–cold, hard, tense, frozen music –like the winter sky)

February 12. 

February 12, 2023

I am not aware till I come out how pleasant a day it is. 

It was very cold this morning, and I have been putting on wood in vain to warm my chamber, and lo! I come forth, and am surprised to find it warm and pleasant. There is very little wind, here under Fair Haven especially. I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.

This is a glorious winter afternoon. The clearness of a winter day is not impaired, while the air is still and you feel a direct heat from the sun. It is not like the relenting of a thaw with a southerly wind. There is a bright sheen from the snow, and the ice booms a little from time to time. 

To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, little or no wind; and the warmth must come directly from the sun. 

It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant if bare.

You hear the lisping tinkle of chickadees from time to time and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold; hard, tense, frozen music, like the winter sky itself; in the blue livery of winter's band. It is like a flourish of trumpets to the winter sky. There is no hint of incubation in the jay's scream. Like the creak of a cart-wheel. 

There is no cushion for sounds now. They tear our ears. 

The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering, for it feels scarcely perceptible changes in the weather. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should, as surely as the buds expand in the spring. 

For the earth is all alive and covered with feelers of sensation, papillae. The hardest and largest rock, the broadest ocean, is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. 

Though you may perceive no difference in the weather, the pond does.

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

I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens. See January 25, 1855 ("It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . .You dispense with gloves. "); March 18, 1853 ("This the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer”) Compare February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer."); February 3, 1852 ("See if a man can think his summer thoughts now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring: Walking without Gloves

This is a glorious winter afternoon. See December 10, 1856 ("A warm, clear, glorious winter day."); December 20, 1854 (“It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice.”)

The unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay. See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The pond does not thunder every night. See January 1, 1853 ("I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature"); January 6, 1853 ("There are thirty or forty of these [ bubbles], at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop.");. January 8, 1853 ("I inferred, therefore, that all those infinite minute bubbles I had seen first on the under side of the ice were now frozen in with it, and . . . probably it is the expanding and shrinking of the air in them, as well as in the water, which cracks the ice and makes the whooping sound."); January 29, 1853 ("Melvin thinks that the "thundering" of the pond scares the pickerel."); December 25, 1853 ('About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. "); December 27, 1853 ("I went to hear the pond whoop, but did not hear much. "); March 1,1856 ("At Flint’s I find half a dozen fishing. The pond cracks a very little while I am there, say at half past ten. I think I never saw the ice so thick. It measures just two feet thick"); December 7, 1856 ("I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow, just as so many winters before . . . I hear, too, the familiar belching voice of the pond. "); January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side, which is first in the shade, for I hear it cracking there, though it is still in the sun around me. It is not so sonorous and like the dumping of frogs as I have heard it, but more like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. Most shivering, splintery, screeching cracks these are, as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. Methinks my weight sinks it and helps to crack sometimes."); January 23, 1858 ("I go near enough to Flint's Pond, about 4 P. M., to hear it thundering. In summer I should not have suspected its presence an eighth of a mile off through the woods, but in such a winter day as this it speaks and betrays itself. "); January 28, 1858 ("The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated"); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”); December 23, 1859 ("You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset . . . Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy ligh, . . . These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. ")  See also Walden (“The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should”)

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

Dreaming of summer

this warm and pleasant day – I

take off my mittens.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Sounds of a glorious winter afternoon

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/hdt540212