At Haywood's Pond the sky placed under our feet.

December 11. 

Almost a complete Indian-summer day, clear and warm. I am without greatcoat. 

We find Heywood's Pond frozen five inches thick. This pond is bordered on the northeast with much russet sedge grass beneath the bushes, and the sun, now falling on the ice, seems to slide or glance off into this grass and light it up wonderfully, filling it with yellowish light. This ice being whitened and made partially opaque by heat, while the surface is quite smooth, perhaps from new freezings, reflects the surrounding trees, their forms and colors, distinctly like water. The white air-bubbles are the quicksilver on the back of the mirror.

R. W. E. told me that W. H. Channing conjectured that the landscape looked fairer when we turned our heads, because we beheld it with nerves of the eye unused before. Perhaps this reason is worth more for suggestion than explanation. It occurs to me that the reflection of objects in still water is in a similar manner fairer than the substance, and yet we do not employ unused nerves to behold it. Is it not that we let much more light into our eyes, in the first case by turning them more to the sky, and in the case of the reflections by having the sky placed under our feet? i. e. in both cases we see terrestrial objects with the sky or heavens for a background or field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 11, 1853

We find Heywood's Pond frozen five inches thick See November 14, 1851 ("Unexpectedly find Heywood's Pond frozen over thinly, it being shallow and coldly placed."); see also December 13, 1859 ("Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also.”); A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

The landscape looked fairer when we turned our heads[because] we see terrestrial objects with the sky or heavens for a background or field..  See January 25, 1852 (" when I invert my head and look at the woods down the stream, I seem to see every stem and twig with beautiful distinctness, the fine tops of the trees relieved against the sky.”); February 9, 1852, ("The state of the atmosphere is continually varying. . . . If we invert our heads completely our wood-lot appears far off. But if I invert my head this morning and look at the woods in the horizon, they do not look so far off as in the afternoon. The prospect is a constantly varying mirage, answering to the condition of our perceptive faculties and our fluctuating imaginations.”)