A walk along the side of the river.

December 20

Still no snow, and, as usual, I wear no gloves. 

P. M. — To Hubbard’s skating meadow. 

A few chickadees busily inspecting the buds at the willow-row ivy tree, for insects, with a short, clear chink from time to time, as if to warn me of their neighborhood. 

Boys are now devoted to skating after school at night, far into evening, going without their suppers. It is pretty good on the meadows, which are somewhat overflown, and the sides of the river, but the greater part of it is open. 

I walk along the side of the river, on the ice beyond the Bath Place. Already there is dust on this smooth ice, on its countless facets, revealed by the sun. 

How warm the dull-red cranberry vine rises above the ice here and there! 

I stamp and shake the ice to detect the holes and weak places where that little brook comes in there. They are plainly revealed, for the water beneath, being agitated, proclaims itself at every hole far and wide or for three or four rods. The edge of the ice toward the channel is either rubbed up or edged with a ridge of frozen foam. 

I see some gossamer on the weeds above the ice. Also, in now hard, dark ice, the tracks apparently of a fox, made when it was saturated snow. So long his trail is revealed, but over the pastures no hound can now trace him. 

There has been much overflow about every tussock in the meadow, making that rough, opaque ice, like yeast. The ice is that portion of the flood which is congealed and laid up in our fields for a season.

I mark the many preparations for another year which the farmer has made, — his late plowings, his muck-heaps in fields, perhaps of grass, which he intends to plow and cultivate, his ditches to carry off the winter’s floods, etc. 

December 20, 2025

How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1855

Boys are now devoted to skating after school at night, far into evening. . . It is pretty good on the meadows, which are somewhat overflown, and the sides of the river, but the greater part of it is open. See December 20, 1854 ("The river appears to be frozen everywhere. Where was water last night is a firm bridge of ice this morning. . . . All of the river that was not frozen before, and therefore not covered with snow on the 18th, is now frozen quite smoothly. ") See also  November 28, 1853 ("Boys skating in Cambridgeport, — the first ice to bear "); December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture."); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I. . . I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."); December 15, 1855 ("The boys have skated a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet."); December 18, 1852 ("Loring's Pond beautifully frozen . . . I slid over it with a little misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. This is the first skating."); December 19, 1854 ("Skated a half-mile up Assabet and then to foot of Fair Haven Hill. This is the first tolerable skating.”);  and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

Also, in now hard, dark ice, the tracks apparently of a fox, made when it was saturated snow. See December 8, 1854 ("Go over the fields on the crust to Walden . . . Already foxes have left their tracks. How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! "); December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, [and] now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor."); December 13, 1859 ("I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

The still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! See December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame . . .  reflecting the weeds and trees

and houses and clouds.")

A few chickadees 

busily inspecting buds 

at the ivy tree.

How warm the dull-red

cranberry vines rise above

the ice here and there!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A walk along the side of the river.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551220