Snowflakes and raindrops

December 15. 

This morning it has begun to snow apparently in earnest. The air is quite thick and the view confined. It is quite still, yet some flakes come down from one side and some from another, crossing each other like woof and warp apparently, as they are falling in different eddies and currents of air. 

In the midst of it, I hear and see a few little chickadees prying about the twigs of the locusts in the graveyard. They have come into town with the snow. They now and then break forth into a short sweet strain, and then seem suddenly to check them selves, as if they had done it before they thought.

The boys have skated a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet.

How like a bird of ill omen the crow behaves! Still holding its ground in our midst like a powwow that is not to be exterminated! Sometimes when I am going through the Deep Cut, I look up and see half a dozen black crows flitting silently across in front and ominously eying down; passing from one wood to another, yet as if their passage had reference to me.

The snow turns to rain, and this afternoon I walk in it down the railroad and through the woods. 

The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. A steady but gentle, warm rain.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 15, 1855

Flakes come down from one side and some from another, crossing each other like woof and warp apparently, as they are falling in different eddies and currents of air. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. . . .That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side, . . . A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused.”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The boys have skated a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet. See 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 7, 1856 (" Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."); 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

Half a dozen black crows . . . passing from one wood to another, yet as if their passage had reference to me. See September 18, 1852 ("The crows congregate and pursue me through the half-covered woodland path, cawing loud and angrily above me.”) November 18, 1857 ("Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me.");    December 31, 1859 ("Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen,. . .You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The snow turns to rain, See December 14, 1856 ("This morning it begins to snow, and the ground is whitened again, but in an hour or two it turns to rain, and rains all the rest of the day. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Snow-storms might be classified.

The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen . . .See December 15, 1854 ("How interesting a few clean, dry weeds on the shore a dozen rods off, seen distinctly against the smooth, reflecting water between ice!")