I see the snow lying thick

April 4. 

It is refreshing to stand on the face of the Cliff and see the water gliding over the surface of the almost perpendicular rock in a broad thin sheet, pulsing over it.

It reflects the sun for half a mile like a patch of snow, as you stand close by  bringing out the colors of the lichens like polishing or varnish. It is admirable, regarded as a dripping fountain.

You have lichens and moss on the surface, and starting saxifrage, ferns still green, and huckleberry bushes in the crevices.

The rocks never appear so diversified, and cracked, as if the chemistry of nature were now in full force.

Then the drops, falling perpendicularly from a projecting rock, have a pleasing geometrical effect.

I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills, and though the ground is bare from the seashore to their base, I presume it is covered with snow from their base to the Icy Sea. 

I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek. 

Those hills are probably the dividing line at present between the bare ground and the snow-clad ground stretching three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and Mackenzie and the Icy Sea.


H.D.Thoreau, Journal, April 4, 1852

I see the snow lying thick on the south side of the Peterboro Hills See April 4, 1855 ("far beyond all, in the north western horizon, my eye rests on a range of snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun."); April 4, 1859 ("When I look with my glass, I see the cold and sheeny snow still glazing the mountains. This it is which makes the wind so piercing cold.")


I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek.   Overheard April 2, 2019  ("My father always said the air won't be warm until they get the snow out of the mountains")