December on the Concord: a Mink.

December 2.

Started in boat before 9 A.M. down river to Billerica with W.E.C.  I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. 

  December 2, 2017

We had to break the ice about the boat-house for some distance. The banks are white with frost. The air is calm, and the water smooth.

Some parts of the meadow are covered with thin ice, through which we row, and the waves we make in the river nibble and crumble its edge, and produce a rustling of the grass and reeds, as if a muskrat were stirring. 

The distant sounds of cars, cocks, hounds, etc., as we glide past N.Barrett's farm, remind me of spring. There is a certain resonance and elasticity in the air that makes the least sound melodious as in spring. It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring. 

There goes a muskrat. He leaves so long a ripple behind that in this light you cannot tell where his body ends, and think him longer than he is. 

Above the bridge on the road from Chelmsford to Bedford we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form. He alternately runs along on the ice and swims in the water, now and then holding up his head and long neck looking at us. 

Not so shy as a muskrat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1852

I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. See December 8, 1855 ("Still no snow, — nor ice noticeable. I might have left my boat out till now."); December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up. Ground bare. River open"); December 28, 1852 ("Brought my boat from Walden in rain. No snow on ground.") See also November 26, 1857 ("Got my boat up this afternoon. . . .One end had frozen in.”); November 26, 1858 ("Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual”); November 29, 1860 ("Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”); November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day.”); December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it."); December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat, which before I had got out and turned up on the bank.");December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in."); December 10, 1859 ("Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze”); ) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

There is a certain resonance and elasticity in the air that makes the least sound melodious as in spring. It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring. See December 2, 1859 ("The crowing of cocks and other sounds remind you of spring, such is the state of the air.") See also December 1, 1852 (“The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face”)

Above the bridge . . .we see a mink, slender, black. . . See November 27, 1855 ("A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (he says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black.”); November 17, 1855 ("Mink seem to be more commonly seen now . . .”); November 13, 1855 (“Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . It was a rich brown fur . . . not black as it sometimes appears, especially on ice.”).

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