We have had no thaw yet

January 15 .

More snow last night, and still the first that fell remains on the ground.

Rice thinks that it is two feet deep on a level now.

We have had no thaw yet.

Rice tells me that he baits the "seedees" and the jays and crows to his door nowadays with corn.

He thinks he has seen one of these jays stow away some where, without swallowing, as many as a dozen grains of corn, for, after picking it up, it will fly up into a tree near by and deposit so many successively in different crevices before it descends.

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!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1861

The downy and cottony fruits of November.

November 24. 

The river has risen considerably, at last, owing to the rain of the 22d. Had been very low before. 

See, on the railroad-slope by the pond, and also some days ago, a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. 

At Spanish Brook Path, the witch-hazel (one flower) lingers. 

I observe that ferns grow especially where there is an abrupt or broken bank, as where, in the woods, sand has been anciently dug out of a hillside to make a dam with and the semicircular scar has been covered with a sod and shrubs again. The shelter and steepness are favorable when there is shade and moisture. 

How pretty amid the downy and cottony fruits of November the heads of the white anemone, raised a couple of feet from the ground on slender stalks, two or three together, — small heads of yellowish-white down, compact and regular as a thimble beneath, but, at this time, diffusive and bursting forth above, somewhat like a little torch with its flame, — a very neat object!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1859

There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.

August 31. 

Warmer this morning and considerably hazy again. 

Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. 

Ferris in his " Utah," crossing the plains in '52, says that, on Independence Rock near the Sweetwater, "at a rough guess, there must be 35,000 to 40,000" names of travellers. [Benjamin G. Ferris, Utah and the Mormons. New York, 1854.]

1 P. M. — To Lincoln. 

Surveying for William Peirce. He says that several large chestnuts appear to be dying near him on account of the drought. 

Saw a meadow said to be still on fire after three weeks; fire had burned holes one and a half feet deep; was burning along slowly at a considerable depth. 

P. brought me home in his wagon. Was not quite at his ease and in his element; i. e., talked with some reserve, though well behaved, unless I approached the subject of horses. Then he spoke with a will and with authority, betraying somewhat of the jockey. 

He said that this dry weather was "trying to wagons ; it loosened the tires," — if that was the word. He did not use blinders nor a check-rein. Said a horse's neck must ache at night which has been reined up all day. 

He said that the outlet of F[lint's] Pond had not been dry before for four years, and then only two or three days; now it was a month. 

Notwithstanding this unprecedented drought our river, the main stream, has not been very low. It may have been kept up by the reservoirs. Walden is unaffected by the drought, and is still very high. But for the most part silent are the watercourses, when I walk in rocky swamps where a tinkling is commonly heard. 

At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows, in the air in the village. There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. Is not the haze a sort of smoke, the sun parching and burning the earth?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1854

Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. See August 31, 1859 ("These weeds require cultivated ground, and... now that the potatoes are cared for, Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds.")

This unprecedented drought. See July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”); July 24, 1854 ("A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May."); August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought, some of whose phenomena I have referred to during several weeks past.”); August 22, 1854 (" Hundreds, if not thousands, of fishes have here perished on account of the drought."); September 10, 1854 ("The first fall rains after the long drought"). See also August 21, 2019 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet., , , It is like the summer of '54.")

At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows . . .There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. See August 25, 1854 ("Between me and Nawshawtuct is a very blue haze like smoke. Indeed many refer all this to smoke"): August 26, 1854 ("I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it."); August 28, 1854 ("I think that haze was not smoke;");  September 25, 1854 ("I think that if that August haze had been much of it smoke, I should have smelt it much more strongly, for I now smell strongly the smoke of this burning half a mile off,"); See also October 21, 1856 ("It is remarkably hazy , , , but when I open the door I smell smoke, which may in part account for it. .")

August 31. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 31

Is not the haze a 

sort of smoke – the sun parching

and burning the earth?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.

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

The persistent song

of the eastern wood pewee,

high on an oak snag.

Zphx August 31, 2019

A pink light reflected from the snow fifteen minutes before the sun sets.

January. 10. 

P. M. — Up Assabet to Sam Barrett’s Pond. 

Cold weather at last; — 8° this forenoon. This is much the coldest afternoon to bear as yet, but, cold as it is,-—four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below, twenty rods off. I see, in the Island wood, where squirrels have dug up acorns in the snow, and frequently where they have eaten them on the trees and dropped the shells about on the snow. 

Hemlock is still falling on the snow, like the pitch pine. The swamp white oaks apparently have fewer leaves — are less likely to have any leaves, even the small ones — than any oaks except the chinquapin, me thinks. Here is a whole wood of them above Pinxter Swamp, which you may call bare. 

Even the tawny (?) recent shoots of the black willow, when seen thickly and in the sun along the river, are a warm and interesting sight. These gleaming birch and alder and other twigs are a phenomenon still perfect, — that gossamer or cobweb-like reflection. 

The middle of the river where narrow, as south side Willow Island, is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly. 

The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides. It seems to dread the winter less than other plants. It has a certain heyday and cheery look, and less stiff than most, with more of the flexible grace of summer. With those dangling clusters of red catkins which it switches in the face of winter, it brags for all vegetation. It is not daunted by the cold, but hangs gracefully still over the frozen stream. 

At Sam Barrett’s Pond, where Joe Brown is now get ting his ice, I think I see about ten different freezings in ice some fifteen or more inches thick. Perhaps the successive cold nights might be discovered recorded in each cake of ice. 

See, returning, amid the Roman wormwood in front of the Monroe place by the river, half a dozen goldfinches feeding just like the sparrows. How warm their yellow breasts look! They utter the goldfinches’ watery twitter still. 

I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset. 

About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6°), I observe all the sheets of ice (and they abound everywhere now in the fields), when I look from one side about at right angles with the sun’s rays, reflect a green light. This is the case even when they are in the shade.

I walk back and forth in the road waiting to see the pink. 

The windows on the skirts of the village reflect the setting sun with intense brilliancy, a dazzling glitter, it is so cold. Standing thus on one side of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. 

This gradually deepens to purple and violet in some places, and the pink is very distinct, especially when, after looking at the simply white snow on other sides, you turn your eyes to the hill. Even after all direct sunlight is withdrawn from the hill top, as well as from the valley in which you stand, you see, if you are prepared to discern it, a faint and delicate tinge of purple or violet there. This was in a very clear and cold evening when the thermometer was -6°. 

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. 

The cold rapidly increases; it is -14° in the evening.

I hear the ground crack with a very loud sound and a great jar in the evening and in the course of the night several times. It is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the Acton powder-mills. This cracking is heard all over New England, at least, this night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1859



The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter. See January 10, 1858 ("If you are sick and despairing, go forth in winter and see the red alder catkins”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

Half a dozen goldfinches feeding just like the sparrows. See November 24, 1859 ("a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. "):  December 22, 1858 ("a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground. Hear the well-known mew and watery twitter of the last . . . These burning yellow birds with a little black and white on their coat-flaps look warm above the snow."); January 7, 1860 ("Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows.")

I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. See December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); 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."); 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."); 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.")

I hear the ground crack with a very loud sound and a great jar in the evening and in the course of the night several times. It is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the Acton powder-mills. See February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”) December 23, 1856 ("The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights"); December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.")

January 10. 

See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 10

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 little owl

January  6.  

— To M. Miles’s. 

Near Nut Meadow Brook, on the Jimmy Miles road, I see a flock of snow buntings. They are feeding exclusively on that ragged weed which I take to be Roman wormwood. Their tracks where they sink in the snow are very long, i. e., have a very long heel, or sometimes almost in a single straight line. They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. They had run about to every such such, leaving distinct tracks raying from and to them, While the snow immediately about the weed was so tracked and pecked where the seeds fell that no track was distinct. 

Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl (Strix Acadica) which he caught alive with his hands about a week ago. He had forced it to eat, but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the claws, by nineteen in alar extent, — not so long by considerable as a robin, though much stouter. This one had three (not two)  white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the extremity of the toes, looking like whitish (or tawny-white) mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his boots. 

As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. Even a bird’s wing has an upper and under side, and the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1859

They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. See January 6, 1856 (“While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings”). Also January 21, 1857 (“Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter”).

A funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long.  The Little Owl is known in Massachusetts by the name of the "Saw-whet," the sound of its love-notes bearing a great resemblance to the noise produced by filing the teeth of a large saw. ~ JJ Audubon.  Compare December 14, 1858 (“ a barred owl (Strix nebulosa), . . . measures about three and a half feet in alar extent by eighteen to twenty inches long,  . . . apparently a female, since it is large and has white spots on the wings.”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 6.

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

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets.

December 19. 

December 19, 2021

Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new- fallen snow, till I came to where she took to flight, and I could track her no further. 

I see where the snowbirds have picked the seeds of the Roman wormwood and other weeds and have covered the snow with the shells and husks. 

The smilax berries are as plump as ever. 

The catkins of the alders are as tender and fresh-looking as ripe mulberries. 

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. 

The witch-hazel is covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still remaining. 

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. 

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider. I am astonished that the animals make no more use of them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1850

I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also. See December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island.")

The dried choke-cherries so abundant in the swamp are now quite sweet. Compare August 5, 1856 ("Choke-cherries near House-leek Rock begin to be ripe, though still red. They are scarcely edible, but their beauty atones for it. See those handsome racemes of ten or twelve cherries each, dark glossy red, semi- transparent. You love them not the less because they are not quite palatable.")

The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets. See November 11, 1853 ("Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket."); December 18, 1859 ("Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.")

From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes.

December 4.

Ceased raining and mizzling last evening, and cleared off, with a high northwest wind, which shook the house, coming in fitful gusts, but only they who slept on the west sides of houses knew of it. 

December 4, 2017

7.30 a. m. — Take a run down the riverside. 

Scare up a few sparrows, which take shelter in Keyes's arborvitae row. The snow has now settled, owing to the rain, and presents no longer a level surface, but a succession of little hills and hollows, as if the whole earth had been a potato or corn field, and there is a slight crust to it. 

Dark waves are chasing each other across the river from northwest to southeast and breaking the edge of the snow ice which has formed for half a rod in width along the edge, and the fragments of broken ice, what arctic voyagers call "brash," carry forward the undulation. 

I am pleased to see from afar the highest water-mark of a spring freshet on Cheney's boat-house, a level light-colored mark about an inch wide running the whole length of the building, now several years old, where probably a thin ice chafed it. 

2 p. m. — By Clamshell and back over Hubbard's Bridge. 

I notice that the swallow-holes in the bank behind Dennis's, which is partly washed away, are flat-elliptical, three times or more as wide horizontally as they are deep vertically, or about three inches by one. 

Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white-barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf.

I love the few homely colors of Nature at this season, — her strong wholesome browns, her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious green, her pure, cold, snowy white.

An F. hyemalis also. 

In the sprout-land by the road, in the woods this side of C. Miles's, much gray goldenrod is mixed with the shrub oak. It reminds me of the color of the rabbits which run there. Thus Nature feeds her children chiefly with color. 

I have no doubt that it is an important relief to the eyes which have long rested on snow, to rest on brown oak leaves and the bark of trees. We want the greatest variety within the smallest compass, and yet without glaring diversity, and we have it in the colors of the withered oak leaves. 

• The white, so curled and shrivelled and pale; 
• the black (?), more flat and glossy and darker brown;
•  the red, much like the black, but perhaps less dark, and less deeply cut. 
• The scarlet still occasionally retains some blood in its veins. 

Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark- blue artery any night. They remind me of a trap that is set for it, which the frost will spring. Each day at present, the wriggling river nibbles off the edges of the trap which have advanced in the night. It is a close contest between day and night, heat and cold.

Already you see the tracks of sleds leading by unusual routes, where will be seen no trace of them in summer, into far fields and woods, crowding aside and pressing down the snow to where some heavy log or stone has thought itself secure, and the spreading tracks also of the heavy, slow-paced oxen, of the well-shod farmer, who turns out his feet. Ere long, when the cold is stronger, these tracks will lead the walker deep into remote swamps impassable in summer. All the earth is a highway then. 

I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth, under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and Cambridge alike! and rarely an eye distinguishes it.

Sophia says that just before I came home Min caught a mouse and was playing with it in the yard. It had got away from her once or twice, and she had caught it again; and now it was stealing off again, as she lay complacently watching it with her paws tucked under her, when her friend Riordan's stout but solitary cock stepped up inquisitively, looked down at it with one eye, turning his head, then picked it up by the tail and gave it two or three whacks on the ground, and giving it a dexterous toss into the air, caught it in its open mouth, and it went head foremost and alive down his capacious throat in the twinkling of an eye, never again to be seen in this world, Min, all the while, with paws comfortably tucked under her, looking on unconcerned. What matters it one mouse more or less to her? 

The cock walked off amid the currant bushes, stretched his neck up, and gulped once or twice, and the deed was accomplished, and then he crowed lustily in celebration of the exploit. It might be set down among the gesta (if not digesta) Gallorum. There were several human witnesses. It is a question whether Min ever understood where that mouse went to. Min sits composedly sentinel, with paws tucked under her, a good part of her days at present, by some ridiculous little hole, the possible entryway of a mouse. She has a habit of stretching or sharpening her claws on all smooth hair-bottomed chairs and sofas, greatly to my mother's vexation. 

He who abstains from visiting another for magnanimous reasons enjoys better society alone. 

I for one am not bound to flatter men. That is not exactly the value of me. 

How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow? The granary of the birds. They were not observed against the dark ground, but the first snow comes and reveals them. Then I come to fields in which the fragrant everlasting, straw-colored and almost odorless, and the dark taller St. John's-wort prevail. 

When I bought my boots yesterday, Hastings ran over his usual rigmarole. Had he any stout old-fashioned cowhide boots? Yes, he thought he could suit me. 

"There 's something that 'll turn water about as well as anything. Billings had a pair just like them the other [day], and he said they kept his feet as dry as a bone. But what 's more than that, they were made above a year ago upon honor. They are just the thing, you may depend on it. I had an eye to you when I was making them."

"But they are too soft and thin for me. I want them to be thick and stand out from my foot."

"Well, there is another pair, maybe a little thicker. I 'll tell you what it is, these were made of dry hide."

Both were warranted single leather and not split. I took the last. But after wearing them round this cold day I found that the little snow which rested on them and melted wet the upper leather through like paper and wet my feet, and I told H. of it, that he might have an offset to Billings's experience.

"Well, you can't expect a new pair of boots to turn water at first. I tell the farmers that the time to buy boots is at midsummer, or when they are hoeing their potatoes, and the pores have a chance to get filled with dirt."

It is remarkably good sleighing to-day, considering the little snow and the rain of yesterday, but it is slippery and hobbly for walkers. 

My first botany, as I remember, was Bigelow's "Plants of Boston and Vicinity," which I began to use about twenty years ago, looking chiefly for the popular names and the short references to the localities of plants, even without any regard to the plant. I also learned the names of many, but without using any system, and forgot them soon. I was not inclined to pluck flowers; preferred to leave them where they were, liked them best there. I was never in the least interested in plants in the house. 

But from year to year we look at Nature with new eyes. 

About half a dozen years ago I found myself again attending to plants with more method, looking out the name of each one and remembering it. I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold lining to it, which I called my botany- box. I never used any other, and when some whom I visited were evidently surprised at its dilapidated look, as I deposited it on their front entry table, I assured them it was not so much my hat as my botany-box. 

I remember gazing with interest at the swamps about those days and wondering if I could ever attain to such familiarity with plants that I should know the species of every twig and leaf in them, that I should be acquainted with every plant (excepting grasses and cryptogamous ones), summer and winter, that I saw. Though I knew most of the flowers, and there were not in any particular swamp more than half a dozen shrubs that I did not know, yet these made it seem like a maze to me, of a thousand strange species, and I even thought of commencing at one end and looking it faithfully and laboriously through till I knew it all. I little thought that in a year or two I should have attained to that knowledge without all that labor. 

Still I never studied botany, and do not to-day systematically, the most natural system is still so artificial. 

I wanted to know my neighbors, if possible, — to get a little nearer to them. 

I soon found myself observing when plants first blossomed and leafed, and I followed it up early and late, far and near, several years in succession, running to different sides of the town and into the neighboring towns, often between twenty and thirty miles in a day. I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened, beside attending to a great many others in different directions and some of them equally distant, at the same time. At the same I had an eye for birds and whatever else might offer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 4, 1856

Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white- barred bird. See December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle, or the chafing of two hard shrub oak twigs, is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together. These birds, when perched, look larger than usual this cold and windy day; they are puffed up for warmth, have added a porch to their doors.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow and December 11, 1855 ("The incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.")

The tree sparrow comes

from the north in the winter

to get its dinner

January 16, 1860

I love the few homely colors of Nature at this season, — her strong wholesome browns, her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious green, her pure, cold, snowy white. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”); December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

An F. hyemalis also. See December 1, 1856 ("Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast."); December 3, 1854 ("Snowbirds in garden in the midst of the snow in the afternoon."); December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here"); December 29, 1856 ("Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow? The first snow comes and reveals them. See 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.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

The granary of the birds. See March 14, 1855 (“I observe the tracks of sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue-curls amid the other weeds which (its seemingly empty pitchers) rises above the snow. There seems, however, to be a little seed left in them. This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, - that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds.”)

I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold lining to it, which I called my botany-box. See June 23, 1852 ("I am inclined to think that my hat, whose lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have.”); September 7, 1852  ("We reach . . . Concord . . . four hours from the time we were picking blueberries on the mountain, with the plants of the mountain fresh in my hat.”).

From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes. See April 7, 1853 ("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."); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. ")

I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. See December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.”); see also December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds.");   December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.")

It is a question whether Min ever understood where that mouse went to. See June 2, 1856 ("Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat")

But they are too soft and thin for me. I want them to be thick and stand out from my foot. See December 3, 1856 ("Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks. The shoemaker praised them"); September 1, 1859 ("I have learned to respect my own opinion in this matter.")

December 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 4. 

Little tree sparrow

made to withstand the winter

perched on a white birch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes

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/HDT561204

I fell in love with a shrub oak.

December 1. 

P. M. — By path around Walden. With this little snow of the 29th ult. there is yet pretty good sledding, for it lies solid.

Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. 

A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground. 

Will wonder become extinct in me? Shall I become insensible as a fungus? 

A ridge of earth, with the red cockscomb lichen on it, peeps out still at the rut's edge. 

The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. 

What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this? Emblem of my winter condition.

I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue. Covert which the hare and the partridge seek, and I too seek. 

What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? 

How can any man suffer long? For a sense of want is a prayer, and all prayers are answered. 

Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge.

 I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

Tenacious of its leaves, which shrivel not but retain a certain wintry life in them, firm shields, painted in fast colors a rich brown. 

The deer mouse, too, knows the shrub oak and has its hole in the snow by the shrub oak's stem.

Now, too, I remark in many places ridges and fields of fine russet or straw-colored grass rising above the snow, and beds of empty straw-colored heads of everlasting and ragged-looking Roman wormwood. 

The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.

No, I am a stranger in your towns. I am not at home at French's, or Lovejoy's, or Savery's. I can winter more to my mind amid the shrub oaks. I have made arrangements to stay with them. 

The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it. Well-nigh useless to man. A sturdy phalanx, hard to break through. Product of New England's surface. Bearing many striped acorns. 

Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins.  

How many rents I owe to you! how many eyes put out! how many bleeding fingers! How many shrub oak patches I have been through, stooping, winding my way, bending the twigs aside, guiding myself by the sun, over hills and valleys and plains, resting in clear grassy spaces! 

I love to go through a patch of shrub oak in a bee-line, where you tear your clothes and put your eyes out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1856

I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me . See November 21, 1850 ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”); April 26, 1852 ("Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Hayden's. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. . . . It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors.")

Shrub oak. Scrub or Bear oak (Quercus ilicifolia), one of the smaller and more gnarled oaks in New England, absent from the northern portions of northern New England. Rarely exceeding 12-20 feet this species does not tolerate shade and is among the first to recolonize dry sites that have been repeatedly cut-over or burned. It sprouts prolifically after fire burns away its above-ground parts. GoBotany Its leaves are a distinguishing feature; the second set of lobes from the base tend to be much larger than the others. Forest Trees of Vermont See November 25, 1858 (“Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.”); January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")

Does not the season require this tonic?

August 13

August 13. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 




Beck says of the small circaea (C. alpina), "Many botanists consider this a mere variety of the preceding." I am not sure but it is more deeply toothed than the large. Its leaves are of the same color with those of the large at Bittern Cliff, but more decidedly toothed;

alpine enchanter’s-nightshade

(Circaea alpina)

q. v. Why does it not grow larger at Corner Spring? 

The root of the Polygala verticillata also has the checkerberry odor. 

In Bittern Cliff Woods that (apparently) very oblong elliptical leafed Lespedeza violacea (?), growing very loose and open on a few long petioles, one foot high by four or five inches wide. Is this because it grows in woods? It is not in bloom. 

Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic? 

I stripped off a shred of Indian hemp bark and could not break it. It is as strong as anything of the kind I know.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1856

The small circaea (C. alpine). . . leaves are of the same color with those of the large at Bittern Cliff.  See June 19, 1856 ("enchanter’s-nightshade"); July 8, 1856 ("Circaea alpina, some days, a foot high with opaque leaves and bracts . . .  the same with the small, also bracted, one at Corner Spring”); August 1, 1855 ("Pennyroyal and alpine enchanter’s-nightshade well out, how long?”)

A prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime . . . See August 11, 1853  ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”); August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days."); August 26, 1856 ("I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones.") See also December 14, 1855 ("In a little hollow I see the sere gray pennyroyal rising above the snow, which, snuffed, reminds me of garrets full of herbs.”)  See also June 6, 1851 ("Bigelow says, “The leaves of the Solidago odora have a delightfully fragrant odor, partaking of that of anise and sassafras, but different from either.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs;  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

Indian hemp . . . is as strong as anything of the kind I know. See August 9, 1856 ("Again I am surprised to see the Apocynum cannabinum close to the rock at the Island”); August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. "); September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago . . .my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it. ");  Compare January 19,   1856 (“ I strip off some  [milkweed] bark . . . and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, roll it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I can not break by direct pulling . . .I  doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong."). See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Dogsbane and Indian hemp

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

 

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 © 2009-202

To Conantum in moonlight.

August 8.

7.30 P.M. The light from the western sky is stronger still than that of the moon, which has not yet quite filled her horns. When I hold up my hand, the west side is lighted while the side toward the moon is comparatively dark.

But now that I have put this dark wood (Hubbard's) between me and the west, I see the moonlight plainly on my paper; I am even startled by it. One star, too, - is it Venus ? - I see in the west. Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.

I hear the clock striking eight faintly. I smell the late shorn meadows. And now I strike the road at the causeway. It is hard, and I hear the sound of my steps. The fireflies are not so numerous as they have been. There is no dew as yet.

The planks and railing of Hubbard's Bridge are removed. I walk over on the string-pieces, resting in the middle until the moon comes out of a cloud, that I may see my path, for between the next piers the string pieces also are removed and there is only a rather narrow plank, let down three or four feet. I essay to cross it, but it springs a little and I mistrust myself, whether I shall not plunge into the river. I put out my foot, but I am checked, as if some power had laid a hand on my breast and chilled me back. Nevertheless, I cross, stopping at first, and gain the other side.

On Conantum I sit awhile in the shade of the woods and look out on the moonlit fields. The air is warmer than the rocks now. It is perfectly warm and I am tempted to stay out all night and observe each phenomenon of the night until day dawns. I could lie out here on this pinnacle rock all night without cold.

To lie here on your back with nothing between your eye and the stars, - nothing but space, - they your nearest neighbors on that side, who could ever go to sleep under these circumstances ?

I hear the nine o'clock bell ringing in Bedford. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one village to another. Since I sat here a bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree, proving that my machine is moving, - proving it better for me than a rotating pendulum. I hear a solitary whip-poor-will, and a bullfrog on the river, - fewer sounds than in spring. The gray cliffs across the river are plain to be seen.

And now the star appears on the other side of the tree, and I must go. The woods and the separate trees cast longer shadows than by day, for the moon goes lower in her course at this season.

Some dew at last in the meadow. As I recross the string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the moonlight and scent the Roman wormwood in the potato fields.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1851

I put out my foot, but I am checked, as if some power had laid a hand on my breast and chilled me back. See December 11, 1855 (“My body is all sentient.”); August 8, 1852 ("[I]am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.")

  

The air is warmer than the rocks now. See May 16, 1851(“ Lay on a rock near a meadow, which had absorbed and retained much heat, so that I could warm my back on it, it being a cold night.”);June 11, 1851 (“The rocks do not feel warm to-night, for the air is warmest; ”);  July 16, 1850 (“The rocks retain the warmth of the sun.”); August 12, 1851 (“The sand is cool on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath, and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he sits on them or leans against them for warmth.")

To lie here on your back with nothing between your eye and the stars, - nothing but space. See August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are.")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 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 © 2009-2021