The coldest day.

January 23. 

The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. 

Ink froze. 

Had to break the ice in my pail with a hammer.

Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°; Wilds', -7°, the last being in a more sheltered place); at 12.45, -9°; at 4 p.m., -5 1/2°; at 7.30 p. m., -8°. 

I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day by our thermometer. 

Walking this afternoon, I notice that the face inclines to stiffen, and the hands and feet get cold soon. On first coming out in very cold weather, I find that I breathe fast, though without walking faster or exerting myself any more than usual.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1857

I may safely say that -5° has been the highest temperature to-day. See January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day."); February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above  -6° to-day.")

I notice that the face inclines to stiffen. See February 7, 1857("Several men I have talked with froze their ears a fortnight ago yesterday, the cold Friday; one who had never frozen his ears before.")

The winter of 1856-57 was one of the severest winters ever known in New England, USA (Perley 2001). It began much earlier than usual, and continued far into the spring. There were 32 snow storms in total, three more than the average number for the preceding period, and the snow covered the landscape to a depth of six feet and two inches This was one of the coldest winters ever known in USA . (1856-1857: A severe winter in New England)

During the coldest month of the 19th century, January, 1857, the 23rd ranks as the coldest day. The temperature in Burlington was minus 30 to start the morning, and reached a high of minus 17. (Weather Journal by Mark Breen)

, 

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass.

January 22. 

January 22, 2017

Snows all day, clearing up at night, — a remarkably fine and dry snow, which, looking out, you might suspect to be blowing snow merely. Yet thus it snows all day, driving almost horizontally, but it does not amount to much. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I never knew it to make such a business of snowing and bring so little to pass. The air is filled, so that you cannot see far against it, i.e. looking north-north west, yet but an inch or two falls all day. There is some drifting, however. 

You wonder how the tree sparrows can seek their food on the railroad causeway, flying in the face of such a fine, cold, driving snow-storm. 

Within the woods it is comparatively still. 

In the woods by Abel Brooks's rye hollow I hear a faint note, and see undoubtedly a brown creeper inspecting the branches of the oaks. It has white and black bars on the head, uttering from time to time a fine, wiry, screeping tse, tse, or tse, tse, tse. 

Brown Creeper

Minott tells me that Sam Barrett told him once when he went to mill that a song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. When it did not help itself he used to feed it with meal, for he was glad of its company; so, what with the dashing water and the crumbs of meal, it must have fared well. 

I asked M. about the Cold Friday. He said, "It was plaguy cold; it stung like a wasp." He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker's shop, usually a very warm place, and when it struck the floor it was frozen and rattled like so many shot. 

Old John Nutting used to say, "When it is cold it is a sign it's going to be warm," and "When it 's warm it 's a sign it 's going to be cold.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 22, 1857

A remarkably fine and dry snow, . . . driving almost horizontally ... See January 19, 1857 ("A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.”);  December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north”)

I asked M. about the Cold Friday [January 19, 1810]. . . .See January 11, 2017 ("Mother remembers the Cold Friday very well. . . .“);February 7, 1855 ("The old folks still refer to the Cold Friday, when they sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze on the mantelpiece.”)

A song sparrow took up its quarters in his grist-mill and stayed there all winter. See January 15, 1857 ("I saw, to my surprise, that it must be a song sparrow, . . .taken refuge in this shed")

A very large flock of snow buntings.

January 21

P. M. — Up river to W. Wheeler's Bridge and back by road. 

The roads are perhaps more blocked up than last winter, yet with hardly more than half as much snow. The river is now so concealed that a common eye would not suspect its existence. It is drifted on it exactly as on the meadow, i. e. successive low drifts with a bluff head toward the wind. 

It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. 

The overflow, under the snow, is generally at the bends, where the river is narrower and swifter. 

I noticed that several species of birds lingered late this year. The F. hyemalis, and then there was that woodcock, and song sparrow! What does it mean?

The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) , so white and arctic

 As I flounder along the Corner road against the root fence, a very large flock of snow buntings alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds rising above the snow in Potter's heater piece, — a hundred or two of them. They run restlessly amid the weeds, so that I can hardly get sight of them through my glass; then suddenly all arise and fly only two or three rods, alighting within  three rods of me. (They keep up a constant twittering.) It was as if they were any instant ready for a longer flight, but their leader had not so ordered it. 

Suddenly away they sweep again, and I see them alight in a distant field where the weeds rise above the snow, but in a few minutes they have left that also and gone further north. 

Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter, and from the loiterers you hear quite a tender peep, as they fly after the vanishing flock. 

What independent creatures! They go seeking their food from north to south. If New Hampshire and Maine are covered deeply with snow, they scale down to Massachusetts for their breakfasts. Not liking the grain in this field, away they dash to another distant one, attracted by the weeds rising above the snow. Who can guess in what field, by what river or mountain they breakfasted this morning. 

They did not seem to regard me so near, but as they went off, their wave actually broke over me as a rock. They have the pleasure of society at their feasts, a hundred dining at once, busily talking while eating, remembering what occurred at Grinnell Land. As they flew past me they presented a pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of white alternating with bars of black.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1857

The roads are perhaps more blocked up than last winter, yet with hardly more than half as much snow. See January 6, 1856 ("I am come forth to observe the drifts. . . .Neither man, woman, nor child, dog nor cat nor fowl, has stirred out to-day.”)


A regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years. See February 10, 1856 ("Returning, I saw a fox on the railroad, at the crossing below the shanty site, eight or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty yellow and lean. I did not notice the white tip to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears and at first ran up and along the east bank on the crust, then changed his mind and came down the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, and, gliding up the west bank, disappeared in the woods. . . . “); November 25, 1857 ("Returning .I see a fox run across the road in the twilight from Potter’s into Richardson’s woods. He is on a canter, but I see the whitish tip of his tail. I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst, and is so original so far as any resemblance to our race is concerned. Perhaps I like him better than his tame cousin the dog for it."); May 20, 1858 (“[J]ust before entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. . . I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. . . . I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. . . .t was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me.”)

Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter . . .As they flew past me they presented a pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of white alternating with bars of black. See January 2, 1856 ("They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.”); November 29, 1859 ("The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Bunting (Emberiza nivalis) 

The milkman came with oxen.

January 20. 

There probably is not more than twelve to fifteen inches of snow on a level, yet the drifts are very large. Neither milkman nor butcher got here yesterday, and to-day the milkman came with oxen, partly through the fields. Though the snow is nowhere deep in the middle of the main street, the drifts are very large, especially on the north side, so that, as you look down the street, it appears as uneven as a rolling prairie. 

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. 

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence. 

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st. 

At R. W. E.'s this evening, at about 6 p. m., I was called out to see Eddy's cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long, into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed, as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that the mouth of the cave was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of this lamp was remarkaoly reflected and distributed. The snowy walls were one universal reflector with countless facets. I think that one lamp would light sufficiently a hall built of this material. The snow about the mouth of the cave within had the yellow color of the flame to one approaching, as if the lamp were close to it. We afterward buried the lamp in a little crypt in this snow drift and walled it in, and found that its light was visible, even in this twilight, through fifteen inches' thickness of snow. The snow was all aglow with it. If it had been darker, probably it would have been visible through a much greater thickness. 

But, what was most surprising to me, when Eddy crawled into the extremity of his cave and shouted at the top of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if he were a quarter of a mile off, and at first I could not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us crawled in by turns, and though our heads were only six feet from those outside, our loudest shouting only amused and surprised them. Apparently the porous snow drank up all the sound. The voice was, in fact, muffled by the surrounding snow walls, and I saw that we might lie in that hole screaming for assistance in vain, while travellers were passing along twenty feet distant. It had the effect of ventriloquism. 

So you only need make a snow house in your yard and pass an hour in it, to realize a good deal of Esquimau life.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1857

I hear that Boston Harbor froze over. See January 26, 1857 ("Saw Boston Harbor frozen over . . . thousands on the ice, a stream of men reaching down to Fort Independence, where they were cutting a channel.") See also  Good Morning Gloucester ("In January 1857, the merchants organized a crew, who chopped a channel out of the harbor ice seven miles in length. In that month the thermometer went 16 degrees below zero, and it did not rise above zero for two weeks")

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places. See January 19, 1856 ("The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock.”); January 19, 1860 (“It is evident mere shallowness is not enough to prevent freezing, for that shallowest space of all, in middle of river at Barrett's Bar, has been frozen ever since the winter began. It is the swifter though deeper, but not deep, channels on each side that remain open.”); January 20, 1856 ("The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th, and that small open strip of yesterday (about one rod wide and in middle) was probably not more than a day or two old. It is very rarely closed, I suspect, in all places more than two weeks at a time.”)

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. See November 21, 1852("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); March 5, 1853 (“They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter.”); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of 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 age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

I hear that Boston

Harbor froze over down to

Fort Independence. 

January 20, 1857

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.

January 19. 

A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. 

Though not much snow falls (perhaps seven or eight inches), it is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.! 

There is no vehicle passing the house before 2 p. m.!

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1857

It is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.! See February 18, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow drifting. No cars from above or below till 1 P. M.”)

A fine dry snow, intolerable to face. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face, almost as much so as sand."); January 19, 1852  ("It is pleasant to make the first tracks in this road through the woods, . . . the fine, dry snow blowing and drifting still.")

A very cold day.

January 18. 

A very cold day. 

Thermometer at 7.30 a. m., -14° (Smith's hanging on same nail -20°); at 1.15 p. m., -3°; 2.15 p. m., -4°; 3.45 p. m., 0°. 

It is cloudy and no sun all day, and considerable wind also. There was no Sabbath-school on account of the cold; could not warm the room. 

We sometimes think that the inferior animals act foolishly, but are there any greater fools than mankind ? Consider how so many, perhaps most, races — Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Mussulmans generally, Russians — treat the traveller; what fears and prejudices he has to contend with. So many millions believing that he has come [to] do them some harm. 

Let a traveller set out to go round the world, visiting every race, and he shall meet with such treatment at their hands that he will be obliged to pronounce them incorrigible fools. 

Even in Virginia a naturalist who was seen crawling through a meadow catching frogs, etc., was seized and carried before the authorities. 

Three little pigs were frozen to death in an Irish man's pen last night at the Green Store. 

Began to snow in the evening, the thermometer at zero.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1857

Thermometer at 7.30 a. m., -14° (Smith's hanging on same nail -20°); at 1.15 p. m., -3°; 2.15 p. m., -4°; 3.45 p. m., 0°. See January 23, 1857 ("Thermometer at 6.45 a.m., -18°; at 10.30, -14° (Smith's, -20°. . .)"); January 9, 1856 ("Smith’s thermometer - 16°; ours - 14° at breakfast time, - 6° at 9 A. M. . . . When I return at 4.30, it is at - 2°."); January 7, 1856 ("At breakfast time the thermometer stood at - 12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning."); February 11, 1855 ("Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.")  and note to January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")

January 18. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 18

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

This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow.

January 16. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

This morning was one of the coldest. It improves the walking on the river, freezing the overflow beneath the snow. 

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 ice therefor a few feet in width slants up to it, and, owing to this, the snow is blown off it. This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow, methinks. So, too, where the ice, settling, has rested on a rock which has burst it and now holds it high above the surrounding level. The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north. 

I observe that the holes which I bored in the white maples last spring were nearly grown over last summer, commonly to within a quarter or an eighth of an inch, but in one or two instances, in very thriftily growing trees, they were entirely closed. 

When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day, McManus, who was helping me, said that they would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more if it were not for the willow-rows which bound and separate them, for you could not plow parallel with them within five rods on account of the roots, you must plow at right angles with them. Yet it is not many years since they were set out, as I remember. However, there should be a great amount of root to account for their wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year when trimmed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, 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. See January 1, 1857 (" 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"); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight."); February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.");  February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places.")

The wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year, of Shattuck's willow row. See December 4, 1855 ("The younger osiers on Shattuck’s row do shine."); January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.")


As I pass the Island (Egg Rock). . .Egg Rock is an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Thoreau surveyed Nawshawtuct Hill in December 1856 and January 1857, producing a map which included Egg Rock. ~ Wikipedia

January 16 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

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