At Ricketson’s.

December 26.

I walk in the woods with R. It is wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crow just as in a spring day at home. I feel the winter breaking up in me; if I were home I would try to write poetry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1854

I feel the winter breaking up in me. See December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth. The crowing of cocks and other sounds remind you of spring, such is the state of the air. "); December 2, 1852 ("The distant sounds of cars, cocks, hounds, etc.. . . 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."); December 29, 1851 ("It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring."); December 29, 1856 (“The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring.”);  January 31, 1854 ("We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression."); March 9, 1852 ("[T]he air excites me. When the frost comes out of the ground, there is a corresponding thawing of the man.”) March 21, 1853 ("Winter breaks up within us; the frost is coming out of me, and I am heaved like the road; accumulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and thoughts like a freshet pour down unwonted channels.")