This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather – alone in distant woods.

Almost every track

made yesterday in the snow. 

A dead leaf in it.

January 8, 1852

January 7. 

P. M. — To Walden down railroad and return over Cliffs. 

I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms. 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. The pond is now a plain snow-field, but there are no tracks of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. The surface of the snow there is finely waved and grained, giving it a sort of slaty fracture, the appearance which hard, dry blown snow assumes. All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. 

This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour or two. Some have to make their paths two or three times over in a day. The fisherman is not here, for his lines would freeze in. 

I go through the woods toward the Cliffs along the side of the Well Meadow Field. There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields even now, when I meet none abroad for pleasure. Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought. The objects are elevating. 

In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it, — dining with the Governor or a member of Congress! ! 

But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. 

I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. 

I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day. If there are missionaries for the heathen, why not send them to me? I wish to know something; I wish to be made better. I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and this requires usually to forego and forget all personal relations so long), and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. 

I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. 

Our skylights are thus far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must have a true skylight. My true sky light is on the outside of the village. 

I am not thus expanded, recreated, enlightened, when I meet a company of men. It chances that the sociable, the town and county, or the farmers' club does not prove a sky light to me. I do not invariably find myself translated under those circumstances. They bore me. The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. 

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him. There at last my nerves are steadied, my senses and my mind do their office. 

I am aware that most of my neighbors would think it a hardship to be compelled to linger here one hour, especially this bleak day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable compensation for it. It is the most agreeable thing I do. Truly, my coins are uncurrent with them. 

I love and celebrate nature, even in detail, merely because I love the scenery of these interviews and translations. I love to remember every creature that was at this club. I thus get off a certain social scurf and scali-ness. 

I do not consider the other animals brutes in the common sense. I am attracted toward them undoubtedly because I never heard any nonsense from them. I have not convicted them of folly, or vanity, or pomposity, or stupidity, in dealing with me. Their vices, at any rate, do not interfere with me. 

My fairies in variably take to flight when a man appears upon the scene. In a caucus, a meeting-house, a lyceum, a club-room, there is nothing like it in my experience. 

But away out of the town, on Brown's scrub oak lot, which was sold the other day for six dollars an acre, I have company such as England cannot buy, nor afford. This society is what I live, what I survey, for. I subscribe generously to this — all that I have and am. 

There, in that Well Meadow Field, perhaps, I feel in my element again, as when a fish is put back into the water. I wash off all my chagrins. All things go smoothly as the axle of the universe. 

I can remember that when I was very young I used to have a dream night after night, over and over again, which might have been named Rough and Smooth. All existence, all satisfaction and dissatisfaction, all event was symbolized in this way. Now I seemed to be lying and tossing, perchance, on a horrible, a fatal rough surface, which must soon, indeed, put an end to my existence, though even in the dream I knew it to be the symbol merely of my misery; and then again, suddenly, I was lying on a delicious smooth surface, as of a summer sea, as of gossamer or down or softest plush, and life was such a luxury to live. 

My waking experience always has been and is such an alternate Rough and Smooth. In other words it is Insanity and Sanity. 

Might I aspire to praise the moderate nymph Nature! I must be like her, moderate. 

This snow which fell last Saturday so moist and heavy is now surprisingly dry and light and powdery. In the wood-path between the Well Meadow Field and the Cliff, it 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. 

Here and there is but a leaf or two to be seen in the snow-covered path. The myriads which scampered here are now at rest perhaps far on one side. I have listened to the whispering of the dry leaves so long that whatever meaning it has for my ears, I think that I must have heard it. 

On the top of the Cliff I am again exposed to the cutting wind. It has blown the hilltops almost bare, and the snow is packed in hard drifts, in long ridges or coarse folds, behind the walls there. Fine, dry snow, thus blown, will become hard enough to bear. Especially the flat rocks are bared, the snow having nothing to hold by. 

Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it, and 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.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, January 7, 1857 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind. See January 7, 1853 ("All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind.")

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. See January 8, 1852 ("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.")

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. See January 8, 1856("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 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.”)

I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature . . . and it is as if I had come to an open window. See December 8, 1850("I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!") December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,");  December 25, 1856 ("Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); January 10, 1856 ("I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed up, untracked by man, into which the fine dry snow is still drifting ”); January 11, 1857 (""I never chanced to meet with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well Meadow Field.); February 28, 1852 ("To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin,"); March 8, 1859 (" If the weather is thick and stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage . . .There is no better fence to put between you and the village than a storm into which the villagers do not venture out"); April 19, 1854 ("When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth.').  See also December 20, 1851(" Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset.") January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever.”); November 4, 1852 ("I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day."); September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late."); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day.")

in addition

to my solitude

frost on the window

Issa

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

It is bitter cold

with a cutting northwest wind –

I come to myself.

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/hdt570107

Colder and perhaps windier.

January 6. 

Still colder and perhaps windier. 

The river is now for the most part covered with snow again, which has blown from the meadows and been held by the water which has oozed out. I slump through snow into that water for twenty rods together, which is not frozen though the thermometer says — 8°. 

I think that the bright-yellow wood of the barberry, which I have occasion to break in my surveying, is the most interesting and remarkable for its color of any. 

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. 

I frequently have occasion in surveying to note the position or bearing of the edge of a wood, which I describe as edge of wood. In such a way apparently the name Edgewood originated. 

Beatton, the old Scotch storekeeper, used to say of one Deacon (Joe ?) Brown, a grandfather of the milkman, who used to dine at his house on Sundays and praise his wife's dinners but yet prevented her being admitted to the church, that his was like a "coo's (cow's) tongue, rough one side and smooth the other." 

A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. 

"Why!"

 said I, speaking to his condition,

"the stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I am happy too.

When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, its form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness.

The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content.

Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy.

 
Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt's Island, if it had not been happy, — if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that it sprang ?" 

Though there is an extremely cold, cutting northwest wind, against which I see many travellers turning their backs, and so advancing, I hear and see an unusual number of merry little tree sparrows about the few weeds that are to be seen. 

They look very chipper, flitting restlessly about and jerking their long tails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1857

I am happy too. See September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.”); January 7, 1855 ("It would not be worth the while to die and leave all this life behind one.”); March 15, 1852 ("The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Concord River . . . continued to flow these millions of years . . . See March 14, 1860 ("No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if melted a million years."); March 12, 1856 ("It is long-continued, steady cold which produces thick ice. If the present cold should continue uninterrupted a thousand years would not the pond become solid?"); March 24, 1855 ("In the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. Time is cheap and rather insignificant."); February 11, 1854 ("For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created!"); May 5, 1860 ("Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built!!”)

Friday I get home after 630 and change and by seven we are out under red light only with the half moon on the crusty snow for a long walk up to the view down to the Moosetrail back up via Beech Lane and then bushwhacking to the Kendall Fisher pond where there are some very distinct old Fisher tracks frozen in the ice then up to the double chair but By now I've taken off my mittens even though it's 21° and we decide to bushwhack down the property line. Easier said than done because of those cliffs in the dark and forgetting just where the Way around is we end up stuck halfway down and halfway up a cliff over on the neighbors land and have to climb back up in order to get down and it seems as though we are at the stream that flows down through our St. George land but we head back south and end up (although I have no clue) near the lake view farm corner above the ramp and having to slide down here and there and over the boulders and eventually down to the ramp and out and starting down that old first trail that we saw when we first bought this land but I veer off to the sheep trail by the stream and over rainbow bridge to pick up Jane's glove where she at the start of the hike already too hot had left that behind. home by 10PM. 20170106

stuck halfway down and

halfway up we climb back up

to get  back down.

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 © 2009-2024

tinyurl.com/HDT570106

Cold.

January 5

January 5.

A cold, cutting northwest wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1857

See February 3, 1856 ("It is a cold and windy Sunday . . . Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile.")

Even in the middle of winter, aye, in middle of the Great Snow, Nature does not forget these her vegetable economies.

January 4

To my surprise a high wind arose in the night and the cold so dried the snow that this morning it is a good deal drifted. 

It did not freeze together, or crust, as you might have expected. You would not suppose it had been moist when it fell. 

About eight inches have fallen, yet there is very little on the river. It blows off, unless where water has oozed out at the sides or elsewhere, and the rough, flowing, scaly mass is frozen into a kind of batter, like mortar, or bread that has spewed out in the oven. 

Deep and drifted as the snow is, I find, when I return from my walk, some dry burs of the burdock adhering to the lining of my coat. Even in the middle of winter, aye, in middle of the Great Snow, Nature does not forget these her vegetable economies. 

It does look sometimes as if the world were on its last legs. How many there are whose principal employment it is nowadays to eat their meals and go to the post-office! 

After spending four or five days surveying and drawing a plan incessantly, I especially feel the necessity of putting myself in communication with nature again, to recover my tone, to withdraw out of the wearying and unprofitable world of affairs. The things I have been doing have but a fleeting and accidental importance, however much men are immersed in them, and yield very little valuable fruit. I would fain have been wading through the woods and fields and conversing with the sane snow. Having waded in the very shallowest stream of time, I would now bathe my temples in eternity. I wish again to participate in the serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the river and the woods. 

I thus from time to time break off my connection with eternal truths and go with the shallow stream of human affairs, grinding at the mill of the Philistines; but when my task is done, with never-failing confidence I devote myself to the infinite again. It would be sweet to deal with men more, I can imagine, but where dwell they? Not in the fields which I traverse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1857

. . .the rough, flowing, scaly mass is frozen into a kind of batter, like mortar, or bread that has spewed out in the oven. See December 20, 1854 (The river is "uneven like frozen suds, in rounded pan cakes, as when bread spews out in baking.) ; December 26, 1858 ("I notice that water has oozed out over the edge of this ice or next the meadow’s edge . . . This thin water is turned to a slush of crystals as thick as mortar nearly, and will soon be solid ice. ")

Having waded in the very shallowest stream of time, I would now bathe my temples in eternity. See Where I lived and what I lived for (“I . . .detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”); March 23, 1856 ("The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also")

A moist and heavy snow.

January 3

Snows all day, falling level, without wind, a moist and heavy snow. Snowed part of the night also.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 3, 1857

A moist and heavy snow. Compare January 7, 1857 ("This snow which fell last Saturday so moist and heavy is now surprisingly dry and light and powdery."). See  January 1, 1854 ("[A] moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day.”) January 3, 1856 ("Snows again. About two inches have fallen in the night, . . . It was a damp snow."); January 3, 2010 ("Over two fluffy feet perched on the railing obscures half the window.”). Also December 14, 1859 and A Book of the Seasons, Snow-storms might be classified

January 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 3

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 nuthatch and the creeper.

January 2.

January 2, 2017

It is singular that the nuthatch and the creeper should be so rare, they are so regular.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1857

See December 21, 1855 ("Scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company, from near the base of a small elm within three feet of me. The former dashes off with a loud rippling of the wing, and the creeper flits across the street to the base of another small elm , whither I follow. At first he hides behind the base, but ere long works his way upward and comes in sight. He is a gray-brown, a low curve from point of beak to end of tail  resting flat against the tree.");  March 25, 1856 ("I have not seen a tree sparrow, nuthatch, creeper, nor more than one redpoll since Christmas.”); April 6, 1856 ("Heard there a nuthatch's faint vibrating tut - tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah gnah.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 2.

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 shelf of ice.

January 1, 2017 

January  1. 

I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze. It is often two or three feet wide and now six inches thick. . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1857

What arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot. See January 16, 1857 ("As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. . . . The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north.”)