To Smith's Hill. P.M.

December 5.

There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves.

Thus suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter. The perfect silence -- the stillness and motionless of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses; it is as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled on her axle.

Rather hard walking in the snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1859

It is as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled on her axle. See December 24, 1854 ("a slight glaze, the first of the winter. This gives the woods a hoary aspect and increases the stillness by making the leaves immovable even in considerable wind.")



Dec. 5. P. M. — Down Turnpike to Smith's Hill. Rather hard walking in the snow. There is a slight mist in the air and accordingly some glaze on the twigs and leaves, and thus suddenly we have passed from Indian summer to winter. The perfect silence, as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled (her axle), and the stillness (motionlessness) of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses, as if they were sculptured out of marble, are striking. It is as if you had stepped from a withered garden into the yard of a sculptor or worker in marble, crowded with delicate works, rich and rare. 

I remark, half a mile off, a tall and slender pitch pine against the dull-gray mist, peculiarly monumental. I noticed also several small white oak trees full of leaves by the roadside, strangely interesting and beautiful. Their stiffened leaves were very long and deeply cut, and the lighter and glazed under sides being almost uniformly turned vertically toward the northwest, as a traveller turns his back to the storm, though enough of the redder and warmer sides were seen to contrast with them, it looked like an artificial tree hung with many-fingered gauntlets. Such was the disposition of the leaves, often nearly in the same plane, that it looked like a brown arbor-vitae. 

See four quails running across the Turnpike. How they must be affected by this change from warm weather and bare ground to cold and universal snow!

 Returning from the post-office at early candle-light, I noticed for the first time this season the peculiar streets, suggesting how withdrawn and inward the life in the former, how exposed and outward in the latter. [and more on John Brown]

December 5, 2021. After dark I take the dogs for a short walk up the driveway. They all show up and I head into the woods to the west down over the little ledge and start walking out the thrush trail. Acorn and Buda are running ahead. Presently Loki comes rushing by me at full gallop; it was a thrill to see him exercising so vigorously. All dogs go right into the garage and into the house and I shut the garage door and go in. They are all wearing their red winter jackets