in Thoreau’s Journal:

2 pm To Walden 

A snow-storm which began in the night –& is now 3 or 4 inches deep– The ground which was more than half bare before–is thus suddenly concealed–& the snow lodges on the trees & fences & sides of houses–& we have a perfect wintry scene again– We hear that it stormed at Philadelphia yesterday morning. 

As look I toward the woods beyond the poor house– & see how the trees—esp apple trees, are suddenly brought out–relieved against the snow–black on white–every twig as distinct as if it were a pen & ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a back ground, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects–each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it.  

Suddenly too where of late all was tawney brown in pastures–I see a soft snowy field with the pale brown lichens just peeping out of it. 

It is a moist & starry snow–lodging on trees–leaf bough & trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry the side of a high pine wood–well greyed with the snow that has lodged on it– & the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster–with their lowered plumes–like rams-heads’ drawings.

The character of the wood paths is wholly changed by the new fallen snow–- not only all tracks are concealed–but the pines drooping over it–& half concealing or filling it, it is merely a long chink or winding open space between the trees– 

This snow, as I have often noticed, before, & other crystals is composed of stars–with a very fine cotton intermixed. It lodges & rests softly on the horizontal limbs of oaks & pines–- On the fruit & dry leaflets (?) of the alders that stand over the pond it is in the form of little cones 2 inches high–making them snow ball plants. So many little crystalline wheels packed in cotton. 

When we descend on to Goosepond–we find that the snow rests more thickly on the numerous zigzag & horizontal branches of the high blueberries that start bend over it–than on any deciduous shrub or tree producing a very handsome snowy maze & can thus distinguish this shrub–by the manner in which the snow lies on it–quite across the pond. It is remarkable also how very distinct & white every plane surface as the rocks which lie here and there amid the blueberries or higher on the bank–a place where no twig or weed rises to interrupt the pure white impression. In fact this crystalline snow–lies up so light & downey that it evidently admits more light than usual & the surface is more white & glowing for it– It is semi transparent. This is especially the case with the snow lying upon rocks, or musquash houses–which is elevated & brought between you & the light.  It is partially transparent like alabaster.  Also all the birds nests in the blueberry are bushes revealed–by the great snow balls they hold.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

All day a steady, warm, imprisoning rain, carrying off the snow, not unmusical on my roof. It is a rare time for the student and reader who cannot go aboard in the P.M., provided he can keep awake, for we are wont to be as drowsy as cats in such weather.

Without, it is not walking, but wading. It is so long since I have heard it, that the steady rushing, soaking sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. It is because I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. This sound sinks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed, and drink up the rain as fast as it falls.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We learn by the January thaw that winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons— The back of the winter is broken.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in the summer.  Not till winter can we take possession of the whole of our territory…The wonderful stillness of a winter day!

The sources of sound are, as it were, frozen up…A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it, and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walk up river to F.H. Pond.  Clear &  windy NW.  … In this cold, clear, rough air from the N.W. we walk amid what simple surroundings, surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects–living in our ideas,  but one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him—  Above me is a cloudless blue sky, beneath is the sky blue…

Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see any thing as it is—so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects & phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

….Now, as after a freshet in cold weather, the ice which had formed around and frozen to the trees and bushes along the shore, settling, draws them down to the ground or water, after breaking them extensively. It reminds you of an alligator or other evil genius of the river pulling the trees and bushes, which had come to drink, into the water. If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to slip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying with it, their fate is sealed, for the water freezing that night takes fast hold of them like a vise, and when the water runs out from beneath an irresistible weight brings them down to the ground and holds them there. Only the spring will soften the heart of the relentless monster when commonly it is too late.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A fine clear day— There is a glare of light from the fresh unstained surface of the snow that it pains the eyes to travel toward the sun. I go across Walden.  My shadow is very blue—

It is especially blue when there is a bright sun light on pure white snow— It suggests that there may be something divine—something celestial in me.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Snowed harder in the night & blowed considerably. It is somewhat drifted this morning. A very fine & dry snow about a foot deep on a level. 

It stands on the top of our pump about 10 inches deep almost a perfect hemisphere or half of an ellipse.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste.— gleanings from the field which in action I reap. I must not live for it, but in it for the gods— They are my correspondent to whom daily I send off this sheet post-paid. I am clerk in their counting room and at evening transfer the account from day-book to ledger.

It is as a leaf which hangs over my head in the path — I bend the twig and write my prayers on it then letting it go the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to heaven. As if it were not kept shut in my desk—but were as public a leaf as any in nature—it is papyrus by the river side—it is vellum in the pastures—it is parchment on the hills— I find it every where as free as the leaves which troop along the lanes in autumn— The crow—the goose—the eagle—carry my quill—and the wind blows the leaves—as far as I go— Or if my imagination does not soar, but gropes in slime and mud—then I write with a reed.

It is always a chance scrawl, and commemorates some accident—as great as earthquake or eclipse. Like the sere leaves in yonder vase these have been gathered far and wide—upland and lowland.— forest and field have been ransacked.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days?

1841 in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I select one here and another there, and strive to join sundered thoughts, I make but a partial heap after all— Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never collects them into heaps— A man does not tell us all he has thought upon truth or beauty at a sitting—but from his last thought on the subject wanders through a varied scenery of upland meadow and woodland to his next— Sometimes a single and casual thought rises naturally and inevitably with a queenly majesty and escort like the stars in the east.

Fate has surely enshrined it in this hour and circumstances for some purpose— What she has joined together, let not man put asunder.— Shall I transplant the primrose by the river’s brim—to set it beside its sister on the mountain? This was the soil it grew in—this the hour it bloomed in—if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish and expand it–shall not we come here to pluck it? — Shall we require it to grow in a conservatory for our convenience?

1855 in Thoreau’s Journal:

in Thoreau’s Journal:

 In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Wait till you can be genuinely polite, though it be till doomsday….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods;

nor is the evening less serene for them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows—which in the fall is one of the least noticeable colours—should now that the landscape is mostly covered with snow—be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color.  —& an agreeable contrast to the snow—

I frequently see where oak leaves–absorbing the heat of the sun have sunk in to the ice & an inch in depth & afterward been blown out–leaving a perfect type of the leaf with its petiole & lobes sharply cut–with perfectly upright sides–so that I can easily tell the species of oak that made it. Sometimes these moulds have been evenly filled with snow–while the ice is dark–& you have the figure of the leaf in white.

February 2, 2020

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A laborer on the RR—tells me it is Candlemas day—(Feb 2d) tomorrow—& the winter half out—half your wood & half your hay—&c &c—& as that day is so will be the rest of the winter.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Surely the ice is a great & absorbing phenomenon– Consider how much of the surface of the town it occupies– How much attention it monopolizes!  We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river–but what various kinds of ice there are!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Up river on ice & snow to Fair Haven Pond––

There is a few inches of snow perfectly level which now for nearly a week has covered the ice— Going toward the sun you are snow-blinded–– At each clump of willows on the meadow it looks as if there were a hillock––out of which they grow–– This appearance is produced by the willow twigs holding up the ice to height at which it was frozen after the last thaw about 2 feet above the present level.— It forms a regularly rounded hillock. We look at every track in the snow — Every little while there is the track of a fox across the river—turning aside sometimes to a muskrats cabin or a point of ice—where he has left some traces— frequently the larger track of a hound which has followed his trail— It is much easier & pleasanter to walk thus on the river—the snow being shallow & level —& there is no such loud squeaking or cronching of the snow as in the road—and This road is so wide that you do not feel confined in it—& you never meet travelers with whom you have no sympathy. The winter, cold & bound out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, & we are expected to get the marrow out of it. While the milkmen in the outskirts are milking so many scores of cows before sunrise these winter mornings, it is our task to milk the winter itself. It is true it is like a cow that is dry & our fingers are numb—& there is none to wake up us— Some desert the field & go into winter quarters in the city— They attend the oratorios while the only music that we hear is the squeaking of the snow under our boots. But the winter was not given to us for no purpose— We must thaw its cold with our genialness. We are tasked to find out & appropriate all the nutriment it yields— If it is a cold & hard season—its fruit no doubt is the more concentrated & nutty. It took the cold & bleakness of November to ripen the walnut—but the human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures— Not till then does its shell come off— The seasons were not made in vain— Because the fruits of the earth are already ripe—we are not to suppose there is no fruit left for winter to ripen. — It is for man the seasons and the all the fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate & harden & mature the kernel of his brain—to give tone & firmness & consistency to his thought— Then is the great harvest of the year—the harvest of thought— All previous harvests are stubble to this—mere fodder & green crop. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars, our oil is winter-strained.  We are islanded in Atlantic & Pacific—& Indian Oceans of thought— Bermudas or Friendly or Spice Islands—

Shall we take refuge in cities in November?— shall the nut fall green from the tree? Let not the year be disappointed of its crop— A crazy man walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday & taking up a hymnbook remarked — We have had a good fall for getting in corn & potatoes—let us sing winter— So I say let us sing winter— What else can we sing—and our voices be in harmony with the season. 

As we walked up the river—a little flock of chickadees apparently flew to us from a woodside 15 rods off & uttered their lively day day day—& followed us along at a considerable distance—flitting by our side on the button bushes & willows—it is the most if not the only sociable bird we have.

Now is the time to fill ice houses- – Brown filled his last week.

I will be a country man— I will not go to the city—even in winter, any more than the sallows & sweet-gale by the river do— I see their yellow osiers & freckled handsomely imbricated buds still rising above the ice & snow there—to cheer me—

The white rabbit is a large fellow well furred—what does he get to eat—being a vegetable liver—? He must be hardy & cunning in his way— His race have learned by long practice to find their food where a new comer would inevitably starve.

How retired an otter manages to live. He grows to be 4 feet longer without any mortal getting a glimpse of him.

Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barretts pond slips from the ice man’s sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald—an object of interest to all travelers.

The hips of the late rose are still abundant & perfect amid the button bushes—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Of all strange and unaccountable-things this journalising is the strangest, it will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest homemade stuffs, but after months or years, I may discover the wealth of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple or pumpkin, will prove a strong of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Coromandel.

Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as effectually concealed as the landscape by a mist; and when at length some unforeseen accident throws me into a new attitude toward them, I am astounded, as if for the first time I saw the sun on the hill-side.—  They lie out before me like a new order of things.— As when the master meets his pupil as a man.— Then first do we stand under the same heavens—and master and pupil alike go down the resistless ocean stream together.  

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Perhaps I can never find so good a setting for my thoughts

as I shall thus have taken them out of.