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Thoreau writes in his journal:

When, as now, in January a south wind melts the snow, and the bare ground appears, covered with sere grass and occasionally wilted green leaves which seem in doubt whether to let go their greenness quite or absorb new juices against the coming year,—in such a season a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself and the south wind melts my integuments also. Then is she my mother earth. I derive a real vigor from the scent of the gale wafted over the naked ground, as from strong meats, and realize again how man is the pensioner of Nature. We are always conciliated and cheered when we are fed by [such] an influence, and our needs are felt to be part of the domestic economy of Nature.

(Journal, 1:315-318)

8 January 1843. Concord, Mass.

Lidian Jackson Emerson writes to her husband Ralph Waldo on 10 January:

We had a meeting of the wise men and their admirers on Sunday evening—(Mr Wright [Henry G. Wright] was in Boston) and though I do not believe many were edified all must have been amused. The subject (proposed the week before, they said) was the methods in practice required by the new principles—so as you may suppose, all the wild schemes were talked over again, and the poor human race are to be allowed in future, if they would walk in innocence, to walk in no clothing but white linen spun by their own hands. No more hats or shoes—and I fear on reconsideration of the decision we must give up even linen and ress as did the sinless inhabitants of Eden—for how can we spin without a sin-made wheel—how can we raise flax without guilt-stained-iron to dig the ground? Mr Lane [Charles Lane] affirms that when we are innocent there will be no need of warm cloaks boots or umbrellas—we shall be at such perfect liberty so independent of times and seasons, that we can well wait within doors till the weather be fine & the walking good. Mr Alcott [A. Bronson Alcott] was descanting on the iniquity of formal exchange—“brother should give to brother all superfluity—brother should be free to take whatever he wanted of brother wherever he could find it” &c—I answered “that might do, Mr A if there were but two people in the world”—and was going on to say it would be difficult to adjust such proceedings for the convenience of all concerned—when Mr Lane with a most inspiring animation exclaimed—There are but two people in the world the me and the not me. I cannot tell why I was delighted to be so interrupted—though my forthcoming wisdom was stifled in the birth—this speech suggested that which I cannot express—a deeper truth than my understanding can shape into words only a passing glimpse, however—Once before, Mr Lane uttered such an eloquent sentence against a doctrine of my advancing (that seeing it was a hopeless task to try to purify the doings of the race — or to do without all things because unclean from contact with those who produce them we had best only try to keep our own souls pure), as to make me glad to be so overthrown. I was acquiescing in my defeat and did not intend to rise again—when Rockwood Hoar came in and set me up by saying what I had just said, only in a more counsellor-like fashion. He manfully kept this ground all the evening against Mr Lane & Mr Alcott too. Mr Alcott proposes to abridge labour and live a life of ease and independence by certain ways of proceeding, one of which is to make your own chairs in a form of simple elegance and cover them with linen of your own spinning & weaving. When I said with a sigh that I would rather be excused from washing those linen covers preferring to dust common painted chairs, he said “O but we will contrive a way to simplify washing.[”] No one ‘spoke in the meeting’ except those I have named & Mr Hosmer [Edmund Hosmer] who leaned to the common sense side. Henry said a few words, though, deep for my comprehension.

(The Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, 114)

8 January 1851. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks to-day made them glow almost yellow. The hills seen from Fair Haven Pond make a wholly new landscape (Journal, 2:139).

8 January 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow—perhaps ten inches deep—has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow ground . . .

Reading from my manuscripts to Miss Emerson this evening and using the word “god,” in one instance, in perchance a merely heathenish sense, she inquired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety, “Is that god spelt with a little g?” Fortunately it was. (I had brought in the word “god” without any solemnity of voice or connection.) So I went on as if nothing had happened . . .

(Journal, 3:179-180)

8 January 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

At Walden.—The bubbles which I made under the ice by casting on stones here night before last, or forty-eight hours ago, nearly half a foot in diameter, still remain (Journal, 4:456-458).

8 January 1854. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

Gilpin, in his essay on the “Art of Sketching Landscape,” says: “When you have finished your sketch therefore with Indian ink, as far as you propose, tinge the whole over with some light horizon hue. It may be the rosy tint of morning; or the more ruddy one of evening; or it may incline more to a yellowish, or a greyish cast. . . . By washing this tint over your whole drawing, you lay a foundation for harmony.”

I have often been attracted by this harmonious tint in his and other drawings, and sometimes, especially, have observed it in nature when at sunset I inverted my head. We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active . . .

P.M.—To the Spruce Swamp in front of J. Farmer’s. Can go across both rivers now . . .

(Journal, 6:53-59)

8 January 1855. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

7.30 A.M.—To river. Still warm and cloudy, but with a great crescent of clear sky increasing in the north by west. The streets are washed bare down to the, ice. It is pleasant to see the sky reflected in the open river-reach, now perfectly smooth.

10 A.M.—To Easterbrooks place via old mill site. It is now a clear warm and sunny clay. The willow osiers by the Red Bridge decidedly are not bright now. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing. I hear a few chickadees near at hand . . .

(Journal, 7:106-107)

8 January 1856. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—To Walden.

The snow is about a foot, or probably a little more, deep on a level, and considerably drifted, but on the pond it is not more than five inches deep on an average, hero, partly turned into snow ice by tile, sinking of the ice, and perhaps partly blown off.

Many catbird-nests about the pond. In apparently one I see a snake’s slough interwoven . . .

(Journal, 8:96-97)

8 January 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

I find hanging Smith’s thermometer on the same nail with ours that it stands 5° below ours.

It was 18° by ours when I went out for a walk. I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck’s land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball or close ring, like a woodchuck. I pressed it hard between my fingers and found it frozen. I put it into my hat, and when I took it out in the evening, it soon began to stir and at length crawled about, but a portion of it was not quite flexible. It took some time for it to thaw. This is the fifth cold day, and it must have been frozen so long. It was more than an inch long . . .

(Journal, 9:212)

8 January 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

P.M.—To that small meadow just above the Boaz Brown meadow. Going through the swamp, the snow balled so as to raise me three inches higher than usual . . . (Journal, 10:241).

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