P. M. —-To Walden.
Cold as the weather has been for some days, it is melting a little on the south side of houses to-day for the first time for quite a number of days, though the 9th was the coldest day thus far, the thermometer hardly going above zero during the day.
Yet when ever I have been to Walden, as January 4th, 8th, and to-day, I have found much water under the snow above the ice, though there is but about five inches, both snow and water, above the ice. January 4th was the coldest day that I have been there, and yet I slumped through the snow into water, which evidently was prevented from freezing at once by the snow.
I think that you may find water on the ice thus at any time, however cold, and however soon it may freeze.
Probably some of the overflow I noticed on the river a few days ago was owing to the weight of the snow, as there has been no thaw.
Observed that the smooth sumachs about the north side of the Wyman meadow had been visited by partridges and a great many of the still crimson berries were strewn on the snow. There they had eaten them, perched on the twigs. Elsewhere they had tracked the snow from bush to bush, visiting almost every bush and leaving their traces.
The mice, also, had run from the base of one sumach to that of another on all sides, though there was no entrance to the ground there. Probably they had climbed the stems for berries. Most of the bunches now hang half broken off, by time, etc.
The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting. The colors of the west seem more than usually warm, perhaps by contrast with this simple snow-clad earth over which we look and the clear cold sky,— a sober but extensive redness, almost every night passing into a dun. There is nothing to distract our attention from it.
Monroe, who left his lines in Walden on the 8th, cut them out to-day, but he got no fish, though all his bait were gone.
To-day I burn the first stick of the wood which I bought and did not get from the river. What I have still left of the river wood, added to what of it I reserve for other uses, would last me a week longer.
Animals that live on such cheap food as buds and leaves and bark and wood, like partridges and rabbits and wild mice, never need apprehend a famine.
I have not done wondering at that voracity of the pickerel, —three fresh perch and part of another in its maw! If there are a thousand pickerel in the pond, and they eat but one meal a day, there go a thousand perch or shiners for you out of this small pond. One year would require 365,000! not distinguishing frogs. Can it be so? The fishermen tell me that when they catch the most, the fish are fullest.
It is commonly said that fishes are long-lived on account of the equable temperature of their element. The temperature of the body of Walden may perhaps range from 85° - perhaps at bottom much less - down to 32°, or 53°, while that of the air ranges from 100° down to - 28°, or 128°, more than twice as much.
Yet how large a portion of animal life becomes dormant or migrates in the winter! And on those that remain with us there is an increase of fur, and probably of down, corresponding to the increased cold. If there is no corresponding thickening of the integument or scales of fishes on the approach of winter, they would seem to enjoy no advantage over land animals. Beside their thick coats, most land animals seek some comparatively warm and sheltered place in which to sleep, but where do the fishes resort?
They may sink to the bottom, but it is scarcely so warm there as at the bottom of a gray rabbit’s or a fox’s burrow. Yet the fish is a tender animal in respect to cold. Pull him out in the coldest weather, and he at once becomes encased in ice and as stiff as a stake, and a fox (?) stands at his ease on the ice devouring him.
Frogs, which, perchance, are equally tender, and must come to the air occasionally, are therefore compelled to go into the mud and become dormant. They may be said to live there in a southern climate.
Even the tough mud turtle possesses a southern constitution. He would snap in vain, and soon cease snapping, at the northwest wind when the thermometer is at 25° below zero. Wild mice and spiders and snow-fleas would be his superiors.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1856
The sunsets, I think, are now particularly interesting. See January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
I have not done wondering at that voracity of the pickerel, —three fresh perch and part of another in its maw. See January 6, 1856 ("Frank Morton has brought home, and I opened, that pickerel of the 4th. . . . I find in its gullet, or paunch, or maw (the long white bag), three young perch, one of them six inches long, and the tail of a fourth. . . .This is what you may call voracity. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 11
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 © 2009-2023
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