Thoreau
December 8
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and Other Natural History Essays |
 Henry David Thoreau American Writer  Red Sky In the Morning by Royce Howland  Short Eared Owl  H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal  Thoreau A Book of Quotations  Excursions  The Journal of Henry David Thoreau: 1837-1861 Kindle Edition  Walden  Thumbing Through Thoreau A Book of Quotations by Henry David Thoreau  Walden, or Life in the Woods Poster  Kindle 6" Display, U.S. & International Wireless |
How
can we spare to be abroad in the morning red, to see the forms of the
leafless eastern trees against the dun sky and hear the cocks crow,
when a thin low, mist hangs over the ice and frost in meadows? I have come along the riverside in Merrick's pasture to collect for kindling the fat pine roots and knots which the spearers dropped last spring, and which the floods have washed up. Get a heaping bushel-basketful. The thin, trembling sheets of imperfectly cemented ice or ice-crystals, loosened by the warmth of the day, now go floating down the stream, looking like dark ripples in the twilight and grating against the edges of the firm ice. They completely fill the river where it is bridged with firmer ice below. I observed a place on the shore where a small circle of the withered grass was feathered white with frost, and, putting down my hand, felt the muskrat's hole in the bank which was concealed to my eye.
Walden at sunset . The twilights, morn and eve, are very clear and light, very glorious and pure, or stained with red, and prolonged, these days. But, now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky - a whiteness as of silver plating, while the sky is yellowish in the horizon and a dusky blue above. Though the water is smooth enough, the trees are lengthened dimly one third in the reflection. Is this phenomenon peculiar to this season? Goose Pond now firmly frozen. It had melted since it froze before. I see there a narrow open channel in the ice, two and a half rods long and six inches wide, leading straight to a muskrat-house by the shore, apparently kept open by them. Snow will soon come, in a measure to restore the equilibrium between night and day by prolonging the twilight. 1853 Other Entries |