A Book of the Seasons: January 17 (thaw, red squirrels, western sky, winter sunsets, unclouded mind)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 17

The unclouded mind,

serene, pure, ineffable –

like the western sky.

January 17, 1852

January 17, 2020

January 17, 2021

Another mild day . . .  Sky overcast, but a crescent of clearer in the northwest. January 17, 1860

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 17, 1860

Saw a red squirrel on the wall, it being thawing weather. January 17, 1854

I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines.  January 17, 1860

They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened.   January 17, 1860

I walk about Ripple Lake and Goose Pond. I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore.  January 17, 1860

I think that I have noticed that animals thus commonly go round by the shore of a pond, whether for fear of the ice, or for the shelter of the shore, i. e. not to be seen, or because their food and game is found there. January 17, 1860

I see on the snow in Hubbard's Close one of those rather large flattish black bugs some five eighths of an inch long, with feelers and a sort of shield at the forward part with an orange mark on each side of it. January 17, 1860

I see a large downy owl's feather adhering to a sweet-fern twig, looking like the down of a plant blowing in the wind . . . They would be very ornamental to a bonnet, so soft and fine with their reflections that the eye hardly rests on the down. January 17, 1858

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer.  January 17, 1852

 As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and por tent; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes, are directed toward earth. Some behold their serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.  January 17, 1852

Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.  January 17, 1852 

The endless variety in the forms and texture of the clouds! — some fine, some coarse grained.  January 17, 1852

When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset. The northwest sky at first was what you may call a lattice sky, the fair weather establishing itself first on that side in the form of a long and narrow crescent, in which the clouds, which were uninterrupted overhead, were broken into long bars parallel to the horizon. January 17, 1860

I saw to night overhead, stretching two thirds across the sky, what looked like the backbone, with portions of the ribs, of a fossil monster. January 17, 1852

Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inanimate matter, — rocks or earth. Looking on the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred. January 17, 1854

What is your thought like? That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind, for whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within.  January 17, 1852

January 17, 2021

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus)

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind

*****

January 17, 2021

August 30 1856 (“I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter”)

December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?")

December 21, 1851 ("To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars. . .Such is the morning and such the evening, converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day.")

December 27, 1851 (" The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . .The sky is always ready to answer to our moods; we can see summer there or winter.")

December 29, 1859 ("The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east")

December 31, 1851 ("Consider in what respects the winter sunsets differ from the summer ones")

December 31, 1851 ("I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies.")

January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. ")

January 11, 1856 ("The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting . . . There is nothing to distract our attention from it ")

January 13, 1860 ("I see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels have run about much since this snow.")  
January 14, 1852 ("We are related to all nature, animate and inanimate")

January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east.")

January 18, 1852 ("The low western sky an Indian red, after the sun was gone.")

January 19, 1856 ("There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky")

January 26, 1852.("Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise.")
February 19, 1852 ("By an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons,")
February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.")

January 17, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

January 16  <<<<<<<<    January 17  >>>>>>>>  January 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 17

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/HDT17Jan

A Book of the Seasons; January 11 (western sky, cold, snow, rain, ice, winter sunsets)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 11

Pale greenish-yellow

ineffably clear blue sky

just before sunset.

January 11, 1852

Close objects stand out

against a near horizon –

air thick with snowflakes.

January 11, 1855

Sunsets now contrast

with the simple snow-clad earth 

and the clear cold sky. 

January 11, 1856

 

January 11, 2016

The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. January 11, 1852

The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. January 11, 1852

Let me not live as if time was short. January 11, 1852

Surveying for John L  . . . He says that the most snow we have had this winter (it has not been more than one inch deep) has been only a "robin snow," as it is called, i. e. a snow which does not drive off the robins.  January 11 & 12, 1853

Now is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes. January 11, 1854

A fine snow has just begun to fall, so we make haste to improve the skating before it is too late.   January 11, 1855

It is a pleasant time to skate, so still, and the air so thick with snowflakes that the outline of near hills is seen against it and not against the more distant and higher hills. January 11, 1855

Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon.   January 11, 1855

 

This air, thick with snowflakes, making a background, enables me to detect a very picturesque clump of trees on an islet at Pole Brook,—a red oak in midst, with birches on each side.  January 11, 1855

The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting.   January 11, 1856

The colors of the west seem more than usually warm, perhaps by contrast with this simple snow-clad earth over which we look and the clear cold sky,— a sober but extensive redness, almost every night passing into a dun. There is nothing to distract our attention from it.  January 11, 1856

Began snowing yesterday afternoon, and it is still snowing this forenoon.  January 11, 1857

Rain, rain — washes off almost every vestige of snow.  January 11, 1858

At 6 A. M. -22° and how much more I know not, ours having gone into the bulb; but that is said to be the lowest. January 11, 1859

There are so many of these [huckle]berries in their season that most do not perceive that birds and quadrupeds make any use of them, since they are not felt to rob us; yet they are more important to them than to us. January 11, 1861 

We do not notice the robin when it plucks a berry, as when it visits our favorite cherry tree, and the fox pays his visits to the field when we are not there.  January 11, 1861 

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

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

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

*****

August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects")

September 23, 1860 ("It is evident, then, that the fox eats huckleberries and so contributes very much to the dispersion of this shrub, for there were a number of entire berries in its dung in both the last two I chanced to notice.")  

September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");  

 November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist..."

December 11, 1854 ("It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.")

December 12, 1851 ("I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days.")

December 14, 1851("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.")

December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”)

December 27, 1853 ("It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon.") 

December 28, 1852 ("We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food. ")

December 30, 1860 ("The Whortleberry Family"); January 3, 1861 ("The berries which I celebrate")

January 8, 1861 ("The Indians used their dried berries commonly in the form of huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry porridge or pudding.") 

January 17, 1852 (“”Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.")

January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")

February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.")

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.")  

February 14, 1852 ("At the Cliffs, the rocks are in some places covered with ice; icicles at once hang perpendicularly, like organ pipes, in front of the rock.  . . . The shadow of the water flowing and pulsating behind . . .these stalactites in the sun imparts a semblance of life to the whole.”)

March 3, 1857 ("[W]hen the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ-pipes of a ringed structure, which run together, buttressing the rock.") 

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

January 10  <<<<<<<<  January 11  >>>>>>>> January 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT11Jan

Why was it made that man should be thrilled to his inmost being by the vibrating of a wire?

January 3, 2022

January 3. 

Oak-apples are a winter fruit. The leaves being gone, they are now conspicuous and shine in the sun. Some trees are quite full of them.
Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life? 

The ground has been bare for some days, and the weather warm.

The river has risen, and now the meadows are frozen so as to bear, a dark, thin, but rather opaque ice, as if covered with steam, -- and I see now travelling, sweeping, coursing over it, in long winrows, fine pellets of snow, like cotton, fine, round, and dry, which I do not detect in the air before they fall.

They lodge against a rail and make a small drift. So once more the skating will be spoiled.

A spirit sweeps the string of the telegraph harp, and strains of music are drawn out endlessly like the wire itself.  We have no need to refer music and poetry to Greece for an origin now. What becomes of the story of a tortoise-shell on the seashore now? The world is young, and music is its infant voice.

I do not despair of such a world where you have only to stretch an ordinary wire from tree to tree to hear such strains drawn from it by New England breezes as make Greece and all antiquity seem poor in melody. Why was it made that man should be thrilled to his inmost being by the vibrating of a wire? 

Are not inspiration and ecstasy a more rapid vibration of the nerves swept by the in rushing excited spirit, whether zephyral or boreal in its character.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 3, 1852

Oak-apples are a winter fruit . . . Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life?  See September 4, 1854 ("Is not Art itself a gall? Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea. If the gall was anticipated when the oak was made, so was the canoe when the birch was made. Genius stings Nature, and she grows according to its idea.")

Fne pellets of snow, like cotton, fine, round, and dry. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . . Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot."); November 24, 1860 (“ The first spitting of snow. . .consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind . . . T he air was so filled with these snow pellets that for an hour we could not see a hill half a mile off”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The telegraph harp . . .t o hear such strains drawn from it by New England breezes as make Greece and all antiquity seem poor. September 22, 1851 ("How much the ancients would have made of it! To have a harp on so great a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds of every latitude and longitude,")

To read that the ancients stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Electricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than Mercury, the stern commands of war and news of peace , and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate so that it emitted a harp like and æolian music in all the lands through which it passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the gods in this invention . Yet this is fact, and we have yet attributed the invention to no god.

September 22, 1851. See also September 3, 1851 ("As I went under the new telegraph - wire , I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead . It was as the sound of a far - off glorious life , a supernal life , which came down to us , and vibrated the lattice - work of this life of ours."); September 12, 1851 ("As I was entering the Deep Cut, the wind, which was conveying a message to me from heaven, dropped it on the wire of the telegraph which it vibrated as it passed."); September 23, 1851 ("The telegraph harp sounds strongly to-day, in the midst of the rain. I put my ear to the trees and I hear it working terribly within, and anon it swells into a clear tone, which seems to concentrate in the core of the tree, for all the sound seems to proceed from the wood. It is if you had entered some world - famous cathedral, resounding to some vast organ."); October 14, 1851 ("There was but little wind this morning, yet I heard the telegraph harp. It does not require a strong wind to wake its strings . . . A gentle but steady breeze will often call forth its finest strains");  December 29, 1851 ("The artist is at work in the Deep Cut . The telegraph harp sounds . "); January 18, 1852 (" While the snow is falling, the telegraph harp is resounding across the fields. "); March 12, 1852 ("The telegraph harp has spoken to me more distinctly and effectually than any man ever did.")

And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

The Eolian Harp 

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

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

A Book of the Seasons: January 1 (cloudless sky, moon half full, winter moods, a clear winter day, ice storm, ice fishing, ice skating, ice crystals, the winter night sky )

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

January 1

While looking closely,

thin and fragile leaf crystals

melt under my breath.

January 1, 1856

January 1, 2017

I would fain keep a journal of those thoughts and impressions i am most liable to forget; that have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me. January, 1851

The river has risen and flooded the meadows again. The white pines, now seen against the moon, with their single foliage, look thin.   January 1, 1852

I observe a shelf of ice . . . 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.  January 1, 1857

This morning we have something between ice and frost on the trees, etc. The whole earth . . . is encased in ice. . . frozen drizzle, collected around the slightest cores, gives prominence to the least withered herbs and grasses. . . . Standing on the north side of a bush or tree, looking against the sky, you see only a white ghost of a tree. January 1, 1853

The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the most feathery, fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. January 1, 1853

Seen from the north, there is no greenness in the pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain is falling, . . . I return at last in a rain, and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. January 1, 1853

This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 a. m., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day. January 1, 1854

All the tolerable skating is a narrow strip, often only two or three feet wide, between the frozen spew and the broken ice of the middle. January 1, 1855

Walden is covered with white snow ice six inches thick, for it froze while it was snowing . . .  A very small patch of Walden, frozen since the snow, looks at a little distance exactly like open water by contrast with the snow ice, the trees being reflected in it, and indeed I am not certain but a very small part of this patch was water. January 1, 1856

I notice that in the angle made by our house and shed, a southwest exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. It shows where the wind has been, the form of the wind. January 1, 1854

The snow is like a mould, showing the form of the eddying currents of air which have been impressed on it, while the drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium between the currents of air or particular winds. January 1, 1854

By the side of the Deep Cut are the tracks of probably tree sparrows about the weeds, and of partridges. January 1, 1856

 I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits, and where they had squatted under or rather by the side of an alder stem or the like, and left many balls in the pure snow. Many have run in one course. January 1, 1856

In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice. Your own feelings are fluttered proportionately. January 1, 1856

We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue. January 1, 1855

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

Moon little more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars dazzlingly bright. It is a remarkably warm night for the season, the ground almost entirely bare. January 1, 1852

On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . . They are, on a close examination, surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns . . .They are so thin and fragile that they melt under your breath while looking closely at them. January 1, 1856

I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. January 1, 1853

The stars of higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, and therefore appear more near and numerable, while those that appear indistinct and infinitely remote in the summer, imparting the impression of unfathomability to the sky, are scarcely seen at all. January 1, 1852

The front halls of heaven are so brilliantly lighted that they quite eclipse the more remote. January 1, 1852

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I . . .am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a one's wood-lot to such another's. I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will seem so unexplored now that I know that a stake and stones may be found in it.  January 1, 1858

Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer. January 1, 1852

Lichen-covered rock

almost warm as in summer --

naked in moonlight.

The fault may be in my own barrenness, but methinks there is a certain poverty about the winter night's sky . . .  The sky has fallen many degrees.  January 1, 1852

*****

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

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

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

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

*****

January 1, 2023

March 5, 1852 ("The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk")

April 13, 1856 (“[D]ark-green clear ice . . . At a little distance you would mistake it for water; further off still . . .it is blue as in summer.“)

May 6, 1858 ("One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it")

June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind.”)

August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")
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.")

November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.")

November 25, 1850 ("I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit . . . the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to my senses like a bird or a beast.")

December 6, 1858  ("Yesterday it froze as it fell on my umbrella, converting the cotton cloth into a thick stiff glazed sort of oilcloth, so that it was impossible to shut it. ")

December 18, 1852 ("I slid over it with a little misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. “)

Surface so polished

I mistake it for water.

This the first skating.

December 18, 1852

December 22, 1859 ("The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won't bite. You won't catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had "fisherman's luck," and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow . . . .[T]he pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day")
December 23, 1851 ("I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, — that dun atmosphere instead of clouds reflecting the sun, — and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon")

December 28, 1856 ("There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords")

December 30, 1855 ("A dry, light, powdery snow. . .The pump has a regular conical Persian( cap, and every post about the house a. similar one. It is quite light, but has not drifted. ")

December 20, 1854 ("In some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge")

December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. ")

Venus -- very bright

now in the early twilight.

right after sunset

December 27, 1851

The evening star seen

shining brightly before the

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853

December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue")

December 31, 1851 (“I have not enough valued and attended to the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter skies.  . . . The day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the night sky, in which the stars shine and twinkle so brightly in this latitude.”)

December 31, 1852 (“It is a sort of frozen rain this afternoon, which does not wet one, but makes the still bare ground slippery with a coating of ice, and stiffens your umbrella so that it cannot be shut.")

January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.")

January 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. ")

January 19, 1859 ("Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening.")

January 22, 1852 ("Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, of keeping a journal, - that so we remember our best hours and stimulate ourselves.")

January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”)

January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”)

January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . .; it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”)

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. ")

February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight")

February 3, 1852 ("The heavens appear less thickly starred than in summer, - rather a few bright stars, brought nearer by this splendid twinkling in the cold sky.")
February 9, 1855 ("A very fine and dry snow, about a foot deep on a level. It stands on the top of our pump about ten inches deep, almost a perfect hemisphere, or half of an ellipse.”)
February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”)
February 12, 1854 (“The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering”); Walden (“Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should.”)
February 12, 1860("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.")

January 1, 2017

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

December 31 <<<<<<<< January 1 >>>>>>>> January 2

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 1

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

tinyurl.com/hdt01jan