I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice.

January 24.

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did, but what I am and aspire to become. 

I knew that a crow had that day plucked the cedar berries and barberries by Flint’s Pond and then flapped silently through the trackless air to Walden, where it dined on fisherman’s bait, though there was no living creature to tell me. 

P. M. -- Up Assabet. 

Even the patches of shining snow-crust between those of dry white surface snow are slightly blue, like ice and water. 

You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again, and there is only six feet of water there now. I walk with a peculiar sense of freedom over the snow-covered ice, not fearing that I shall break through. 

I have not been able to find any tracks of muskrats this winter. I suspect that they very rarely venture out in winter with their wet coats. 

I see squirrel-tracks about the hemlocks. They are much like rabbits, only the toes , are very distinct. From this they pass into a semicircular figure sometimes. Some of the first are six inches from outside to outside lengthwise with one to two feet of interval. Are these the gray or red? 

A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill. 

Higher up, against the Wheeler Swamp, I see where many squirrels —perhaps red, for the tracks appear smaller—have fed on the alder cones on the twigs which are low or frozen into the ice, stripping them to the core just as they do the pine cones. 

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. The two feet are also nearly two inches apart. I see where the bird alighted, descending with an impetus and breaking through the slight crust, planting its feet side by side.

How different this partridge-track, with its slight hind toe, open and wide-spread toes on each side, both feet forming one straight line.  The middle toe alternately curved to the right and to the left, and what is apparently the outer toe in each case shorter than the inner one. 

I see under a great many trees, black willow and swamp white oak, the bark scattered over the snow, some pieces six inches long, and above see the hole which a woodpecker has bored. 

The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. I can hardly believe them the same. They have only an ice egg in them now. 

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter. What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! So we soar. 

I do not find a foot of open water, even, on this North Branch, as far as I go, i.e. to J. Hosmer’s lot. The river has been frozen unusually long and solidly. 

They have been sledding wood along the river for a quarter of a mile in front of Merriam’s and past the mouth of Sam Barrett’s Brook, where it is bare of snow, — hard, glare ice on which there is scarcely a trace of the sled or oxen. They have sledded home a large oak which was cut down on the bank. Yet this is one of the rockiest and swiftest parts of the stream. Where I have so often stemmed the swift current, dodging the rocks, with my paddle, there the heavy, slow paced oxen, with their ponderous squeaking load, have plodded, while the teamster walked musing beside it. 

That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species. 

There is much of the water milkweed on the little island just above Dove Rock. It rises above the deep snow there. 

It is remarkable how much the river has been tracked by dogs the week past, not accompanied by their masters. They hunt, perchance, in the night more than is supposed, for I very rarely see one alone by day. 

The river is pretty low and has fallen within a month, for there has been no thaw. The ice has broken and settled around the rocks, which look as if they had burst up through it. Some maple limbs which were early frozen in have been broken and stripped down by this irresistible weight. 

You see where the big dogs have slipped on one or two feet in their haste, sinking to the ice, but, having two more feet, it did not delay them. 

I walk along the sides of the stream, admiring the rich mulberry catkins of the alders, which look almost edible. They attract us because they have so much of spring in them. The clear red osiers, too, along the riverside in front of Merriam’s on Wheeler’s side. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1856



Things well done or said. See March 11, 1859 "There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression,the admirable deed are only partly ours."_)

You may walk anywhere on the river now. See February 5, 1856 ("I have walked much on the river this winter")

Here are the tracks of a crow, like those of the 22d, with a long hind toe, nearly two inches. See January 22, 1856 ("See the track of a crow, the toes as usual less spread and the middle one making a more curved furrow in the snow than the partridge as if they moved more unstably,"); February 1, 1856 ("The two inner toes are near together; the middle, more or less curved often."); January 19, 1859 ("The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of 'curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation! See February 8, 1852 ("I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new.")