The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter. I stole up within five or six feet of a pitch pine behind which a downy woodpecker was pecking. From time to time he hopped round to the side and observed me without fear. They are confident birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the other side of the bough to you, perhaps.
Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. We begin to say that the day is springlike.
Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring.
2.02.2012
2.01.2012
half your wood and half your hay
...Thoreau's Journal: 1-Feb-1857
Down railroad.
Thermometer at 42 degrees. Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway. Their wings are white above next the body, but black or dark beyond and on the back. This produces that regular black and white effect when they fly past you.
A laborer on the railroad tells me it is Candlemas Day (February 2d) to-morrow and the winter half out. “half your wood and half your hay,” etc., etc.; and, as that day is, so will be the rest of winter.
Thermometer at 42 degrees. Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway. Their wings are white above next the body, but black or dark beyond and on the back. This produces that regular black and white effect when they fly past you.
A laborer on the railroad tells me it is Candlemas Day (February 2d) to-morrow and the winter half out. “half your wood and half your hay,” etc., etc.; and, as that day is, so will be the rest of winter.
1.31.2012
our sluices break loose
...Thoreau's Journal: 31-Jan-1854
We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. There is a freshet which carries away dams of accumulated ice. Our thoughts hide unexpressed, like the buds under their downy or resinous scales; they would hardly keep a partridge from starving. If you would know what are my winter thoughts look for them in the partridge’s crop. They are like the laurel buds,—some leaf, some blossom buds,—which, though food for such indigenous creatures, will not expand into leaves and flowers until summer comes.
1.30.2012
comprehensive character
...Thoreau's Journal: 30-Jan-1852
I doubt if Emerson could trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets, because it would be out of character. One needs to have a comprehensive character.
1.29.2012
near the sources
...Thoreau's Journal: 29-Jan-1856
It is interesting to see near the sources, even of small streams or brooks, which now flow through an open country, perhaps shrunken in their volume, the traces of ancient mills, which have devoured the primitive forest, the earthen dams and old sluiceways, and ditches and banks for obtaining a supply of water. These relics of a more primitive period are still frequent in our midst. Such, too, probably, has been the history of the most thickly settled and cleared countries of Europe. The saw-miller is neighbor and successor to the Indian.
It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic “no-see-em.” How imperfect a notion have we commonly of what was the actual conditions of the place where we dwell, three centuries ago!
It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic “no-see-em.” How imperfect a notion have we commonly of what was the actual conditions of the place where we dwell, three centuries ago!
1.28.2012
how we are to be used
...Thoreau's Journal: 28-Jan-1841
It would be worth while, once for all, fairly and cleanly to tell how we are to be used, as vendors of Lucifer matches send directions in the envelope, both how light may be readily procured and no accident happen to the user.
1.27.2012
that subdued and knocking mood
...Thoreau's Journal: 27-Jan-1860
As I go along the edge of Hubbard’s Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun—and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy!
How many memorable localities in a river walk! Here is the warm wood-side; next, the good fishing bay; and next, where the old settler was drowned when crossing on the ice a hundred years ago. It is all storied.
I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore.
These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead.
When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.
How many memorable localities in a river walk! Here is the warm wood-side; next, the good fishing bay; and next, where the old settler was drowned when crossing on the ice a hundred years ago. It is all storied.
I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore.
These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead.
When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.
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