Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, December 26, 1923

Up at 6:30 – out into the street at 10 min. to seven. It is still night – with just a faint glow over the east back of the harsh black buildings – over in the West the moon still shining brilliantly –

I walk out. It is cold, but the air fine and elastic – I am filled with a glowing warmth – In the east there is a flat bank of blue gray clouds – a memory of the night fleets – the underside of which low down is tinged with red – in the west the bright silver moon. I think of some nomadic adventure, when I in company with others have been traveling all night, and we come along some mountain ridge at such a time as this, a harbor or camping place in sight –                                 

Now is the time when starry nights and early morning mean the most to us. I was looking for an almanac last night and couldn’t get one in a drug store and I thought with regret that such things mean so little to us anymore. Formerly at this season (they being just issued) I used to pore over some Pain Pill almanac, enthralled by the Zodiacal signs, the eclipse predictions – the foretelling of thunderstorms into the summer. There was something poetical in the prediction that on June 19 a thunderstorm would form over the Mississippi Valley and move northeast causing terrific thunderstorms over the Ohio Valley states and Lake regions (the mere mention of summer thunderstorms in winter is exciting but it seemed wonderful to me that these storms formed over such far away and vast almost mythical regions and come onto us finally.) I associate almanacs with the country - short winter days when the sun is dying in mists, early in the afternoon; with horses going along muddy roads; with the S.W. sky at evening.

The time will no doubt come when these nostalgic reveries will be replaced by the same sort of longing for the very time I am now writing this.

Charles E. Burchfield, December 26, 1923