A Book of the Seasons: January 7 (a winter morning, after the storm, poetic days, bracing cold, birch seed, fresh snow and tracks, winter birds, winter sunset, solitude)

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 7

January 7, 2024

I feel spirits rise.

The life, the joy that is in

blue sky after storm!

January 7, 1851

The invisible moon

gives light through the thickest of

a driving snow-storm.

January 7, 1852

All Nature braced by

the cold that gives tension to

both body and mind.

January 7, 1853 

The bird-shaped scales of

the white birch are blown more than

twenty rods from trees.

January 7, 1854

It would not be worth

the while to die and leave all

this life behind one.

January 7, 1855

Tracing birch scales north

twenty rods to the nearest

and the only birch.

January 7, 1856

It is bitter cold

with a cutting northwest wind –

I come to myself.

January 7, 1857

The storm is over–

beautiful winter morning,

one of creation.

January 7, 1858

These true mornings of

creation – original

and poetic days.

January 7, 1858

January 7, 2022

This is one of those pleasant winter mornings when you find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still the air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise.  January 7, 1853

January 7.  

The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings when a vapor is seen hanging in the air between the village and the woods. January 7, 1858. 

These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past. There is no lingering of yesterday's fogs, only such a mist as might have adorned the first morning. January 7, 1858. 

The air is serene and the sun feels gratefully warm an hour after sunrise, — though so fair, a healthy whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air, concealing the mountains. January 7, 1853

The water has oozed out from the thinnest part of the black ice, and I see a vapor curling up from it.  There is also much vapor in the air, looking toward the woods. January 7, 1856

It is a lichen day . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark! January 7, 1855

By 10 o'clock I notice a very long level stratum of cloud not very high in the southeastern sky, — all the rest being clear, — which I suspect to be the vapor from the sea. January 7, 1858

At breakfast time the thermometer stood at -12°. Earlier it was probably much lower. Smith’s was at -24° early this morning. January 7, 1856

All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body and mind. January 7, 1853 

It is bitter cold, with a cutting northwest wind . . .  All animate things are reduced to their lowest terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing weather. January 7, 1857 

I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road into the open fields , and the sky had a new appearance . I stepped along more buoyantly. January 7, 1857

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature 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. January 7, 1857

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw.  Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. January 7, 1851

The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard. January 7, 1851

Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note.  January 7, 1855

On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind, contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw. January 7, 1855

A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. From having been about 20° at midday, it is now (the thermometer) some 35° quite early, and at 2 p. m. 45°.  January 7, 1860

The wind and thaw have brought down a fresh crop of dry pine and spruce needles.  January 7, 1854

The snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight.  January 7, 1853

The least touch or jar shakes them off, and it is difficult to bring the female catkins home in your pocket. They cover the snow like coarse bran.  January 7, 1853

The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees. January 7, 1854

 

I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it. January 7, 1856 

Going down path to the spring, I see where some fox (apparently) has passed down it. January 7, 1857

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. January 7, 1857 

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. January 7, 1857 

It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown.   January 7, 1858 

The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences.  January 7, 1858

I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him. A little further was a similar hole with some fur in it. January 7, 1860 

The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. January 7, 1858 

Though the snow is only some six inches deep, the yards appear full of those beautiful crystals (star or wheel shaped flakes), lying light, as a measure is full of grain.  January 7, 1858 

By 10.30 A.M. it begins to blow hard, the snow comes down from the trees in fine showers, finer far than ever falls direct from the sky, completely obscuring the view through the aisles of the wood, and in open fields it is rapidly drifting. It is too light to make good sleighing. January 7, 1858 

 The surface of the snow in the woods is thickly marked by the snow which has fallen from the trees on to it.  January 7, 1858 

The whole surface of the snow on fields and river is composed now of flat, rough little drifts, like the surface of some rough slaty rocks. January 7, 1856

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. January 7, 1857

On breaking the male catkins, I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct, promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so sure a promise or prophecy of spring. These are frozen in December or earlier, — the anthers of spring, filled with their fertilizing dust January 7, 1853

The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and I hear the pleasant sound of running water. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. January 7, 1855

It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter, this surrounded by a broad border of yellowish spew. The water has oozed out from the thinnest part of the black ice, and I see a vapor curling up from it. January 7, 1856

 The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses.  January 7, 1856  

Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. January 7, 1860 

I see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside. January 7, 1858

One occasionally hops or flies toward another, and the latter suddenly jerks away from him. They are reaching or hopping up to the fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the snow. At length the whole ten have collected within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, being alarmed, they utter a different and less musical chirp and flit away into an apple tree. 

The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but [it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the beginning of a January thaw . . . I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow damp. January 7, 1851

A thaw begins, with a southerly wind . . . As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., where, methinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen. January 7, 1860 

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature 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. January 7, 1857 

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. January 7, 1857 

Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it. January 7, 1856 

I perceive the increased length of the day on returning from my afternoon walk. Can it be? The sun sets only about five minutes later, and the day is about ten minutes longer. January 7, 1852

I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly,  hoorer hoo . . .  It is a sound which the wood or horizon makes.  January 7, 1854

In the western horizon . . . a bright coppery-yellow fair-weather cloud. January 7, 1852 

There was a warm sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames stood over it. January 7, 1857

And then streaks of blue sky were seen here and there. The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! There is no account of the blue sky in history. January 7, 1857

We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views.  January 7, 1852 

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls.  January 7, 1852 

And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window. January 7, 1852

And now the first star is lit, and I go home. January 7, 1852

January 7, 2019

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

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

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

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, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hour before sunset

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

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

December 6, 1859 ("No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders")
December 19, 1856 (“[it] is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well.”)

December 31, 1850  ("The blue jays evidently notify each other of the presence of an intruder, and will sometimes make a great chattering about it, and so communicate the alarm to other birds and to beasts.")

January 5, 1854 ("Still thaws. This afternoon (as probably yesterday), it being warm and thawing, though fair, the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came.")

 January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.")

A little flock of titmice

with their black caps and throats

restlessly hopping along

with sharp clear lisping notes.

January 7, 1855

Light of the setting

sun falling on the snow-banks

glow almost yellow.

January 8, 1851

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 8. 1860  ("We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. ")
January 9, 1858 ("Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him. ")

January 9, 1854 ("Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow.")
January 10, 1854 ("I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state.")

January 10, 1859 (" 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")

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.”) 
January 21, 1857 (“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. ”)

January 30, 1859 ("How peculiar the hooting of an owl! It is not shrill and sharp like the scream of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, waking the echoes of the wood.")

February 2, 1860 (“I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably [the fox] has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow.”)
February 2, 1860 (“And as we were kindling a fire on the pond by the side of the island , we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the river . He was busily examining along the sides of the pond by the button - bushes and willows , smelling in the snow . Not appearing to regard us much , he slowly explored along the shore of the pond thus , half - way round it ; at Pleasant Meadow , evidently looking for mice ( or moles ? ) in the grass of the bank , smelling in the shallow snow there amid the stubble , often retracing his steps and pausing at particular spots”)
March 7, 1852 ("The stillness is more impressive than any sound, - the moon, the stars, the trees, the snow.")

January 7, 2023

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 6   <<<<<<<< January 7>>>>>>>>  January 8

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

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

Yesterday's ice storm today.

(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.)

9 A.M.

Out to see the glaze 

now half fallen    melting off –

the dripping trees and

falling ice wets you

like rain in the woods. It is

a lively sound busy

tinkling incessant

brattling and from time to time

a rushing crashing

falling ice and trees

suddenly erecting when

relieved of their loads. 

Look at this dripping

tree between you and the sun

you may see here there

one or another

rainbow color – a small

brilliant point of light. 

Henry Thoreau

December 6, 1858

tinyurl.com/HDT581206

December 6. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 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 © 2009-2023

Yesterday's ice storm today.

The Steam of the Engine (a poet's account of a steam-engine*)

The engine's steam

stretches low over the earth

enveloping the cars.

Henry Thoreau, December 3, 1856

December 4, 2017

February 16. The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. February 16, 1855

April 4. Rains all day. The steam-cloud from the engine rises but slowly in such an atmosphere, and makes a small angle with the earth. It is low, perhaps, for the same reason that the clouds are. April 4, 1853

June 9.  The steam of the engine streaming far behind is regularly divided, as if it were the vertebræ of a serpent, probably by the strokes of the piston. June 9, 1853

August 17.  Cannot distinguish the steam of the engine toward Waltham from one of the morning fogs over hollows in woods. August 17, 1852

November 23.  The mist so low is clouds close to the ground, and the steam of the engine hugs the earth in the Cut, concealing all objects for a great distance. November 23, 1852

December 3. The steam of the locomotive stretches low over the earth, enveloping the cars. December 3, 1856

December  18. The steam of the engine hugs the earth very close. Is it because it [is] a very clear, cold day?  December 18, 1856

December 29 . In the clear atmosphere I see, far in the eastern horizon, the steam from the steam-engine, like downy clouds above the woods. December 29, 1851

January 3.  When a locomotive came in, just before the sun set, I saw a small cloud blown away from it which was a very rare but distinct violet purple.   January 3, 1860

January 13.  A few clouds are floating overhead, downy and dark. Clear sky and bright sun. I see a long, light-textured cloud stretching from north to south, stretching over half the heavens; and underneath it, in the west, flitting mother-o'-pearl clouds, which change their loose-textured form and melt rapidly away, even while I write. Before I can complete this sentence, I look up and they are gone, like  the steam from the engine in the winter air.  January 13, 1852

January 24.  I see a faint bluish tinge in the ruts. but it is warmer and there is a snow-bearing cloud over all. When the cars passed, I being on the pond ( Walden)  the sun was setting and suffusing the clouds far and near with rosy light  Even the steam from the engine  as its flocks or wreaths rose above the shadow of the woods, became a rosy cloud even fairer than the rest  but it was soon dissipated. January 24, 1852

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Steam of the Engine

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 poet's account of a steam-engine. See December 25, 1851 ("I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon.You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence.  If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient –– that is not the way it speaks to the imagination, and that is not the account which the imagination gives of it. Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine.") 

A Book of the Seasons: Cinquefoil in Autumn

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I am not ashamed to be contemporary with the Norway cinquefoil.

This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part

in the revolution of the seasons.

August 30, 1851

August 17.  Cow-wheat and indigo-weed still in bloom by the dry wood-path-side, and Norway cinquefoil.   August 17, 1851

August 25.  Silvery cinquefoil now begins to show itself commonly again. Perhaps it is owing to the rain, spring like, which we have in August. August 25, 1856

August 28.  Potentilla Norvegica again. August 28, 1856

August 30.  I perceive in the Norway cinquefoil (Potentilla Norvegica), now nearly out of blossom, that the alternate five leaves of the calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them.  There is one door closed, of the closing year. Thus all the Norway cinquefoils in the world have curled back their calyx leaves, their warm cloaks, when now their flowering season was past, over their progeny, from the time they were created! It is as good as if I saw the great globe go round. I am not ashamed to be contemporary with the Norway cinquefoil. This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!  August 30, 1851

September 1.  Methinks the silvery cinquefoil is of late much more abundant. September 1, 1853

September 19. I see the oxalis and the tree primrose and the Norway cinquefoil and the prenanthes and the Epilobium coloratum and the cardinal-flower and the small hypericum and yarrow, and I think it is the Ranunculus repens, between Ripley Hill and river, with spotted leaves lingering still. September 19, 1852

September 23.  [Near Bangor]  Saw Aster undulatus, Solidago nemoralis, fragrant everlasting, silvery cinquefoil, small white birch, Lobelia inflata, both kinds of primrose, low cudweed, lactuca, Polygonum cilinode (apparently out of bloom), yellow oxalis. September 23, 1853

September 28. This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again  September 28, 1852

October 2.  There is a more or less general reddening of the leaves at this season, down to the cinquefoil and mouse-ear, sorrel and strawberry under our feet. October 2, 1857

October 9.  The hoary cinquefoil in blossom. October 9, 1851

October 9.  Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed.  October 9, 1852

October 12. Yesterday afternoon, saw by the brook-side above Emerson's the dwarf primrose in blossom, the Norway cinquefoil and fall dandelions which are now drying up, the houstonia, buttercups, small goldenrods, and various asters, more or less purplish . . . The Anemone nemorosa in bloom and the Potentilla sarmentosa, or running cinquefoil, which springs in April, now again springing. October 12, 1851

October 21.  Silvery cinquefoil, hedge-mustard, and clover.  October 21, 1852

November 1.  The cinquefoil on Conantum. November 1, 1851

November 3.  To-day I see yarrow, very bright; red clover; autumnal dandelion; the silvery potentilla, and one Canadensis and the Norvegica.  November 3, 1853

November 6. Still the Canada snapdragon, yarrow, autumnal dandelion, tansy, shepherd's-purse, silvery cinquefoil, witch-hazel. November 6, 1853

November 9.  Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. A late three ribbed goldenrod, with large serratures in middle of the narrow leaves, ten or twelve rays. Potentilla argentea.   November 9, 1852

November 19.  There are also many of the common cinquefoil with its leaves five inches asunder, dangling down five or six feet over the same rock.  November 19, 1857

November 23. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc.   November 23, 1852

December 23.  At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, mullein, columbine, veronica, thyme-leaved sandwort, spleenwort, strawberry, buttercup, radical johnswort, mouse-ear, radical pinweeds, cinquefoils, checkerberry, Wintergreen, thistles, catnip, Turritis stricta especially fresh and bright.  December 23, 1855

December 31.   Potentilla Norvegica appears to have some sound seed in its closed heads.  December 31, 1859

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cinquefoil in Autumn

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/HDTcinque