Thus beautiful the snow.

January 14. 

Snows all day.

The place of the sun appears through the storm about three o'clock, a sign that it is near its end, though it still snows as hard as ever. It is a very light snow, lying like down or feathery scales. Examined closely, the flakes are beautifully regular six-rayed stars or wheels with a centre disk, perfect geometrical figures in thin scales far more perfect than I can draw. These thin crystals are piled about a foot deep all over the country, but as light as bran.

White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness. Already, before the storm is over, the surface of the snow in the high woods is full of indentations and hollows where some of this burden has fallen.

And now the snow has quite ceased, blue sky appears, and the sun goes down in clouds. The surface of fields, as I look toward the western light, appears as if different kinds of flakes drifted together, some glistening scales, others darker; or perhaps the same reflected the light differently from different sides of slight drifts or undulations on the surface. 

Thus beautiful the snow. These starry crystals, descending profusely, have woven a pure white garment, over all the fields.

Snow freshly fallen is one thing, to-morrow it will be another. 

It is now pure and trackless. Walking three or four miles in the woods, I see but one track of any kind, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks of all sizes all over the country.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1853

It is now pure and trackless, yet by to-morrow morning there will he countless tracks. See February 21, 1854 (“You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.”); January 31, 1856 (“These fresh falls of snow are like turning over a new leaf of Nature’s Album.”)