There is no secret but it is confided to some one.

January 18.

P. M. —To Walden to learn the temperature of the water. 

The snow is so deep at present in the streets that it is very difficult turning out, and there are cradle-holes between this and the post-office. The sidewalks being blotted out, the street, like a woodman’s path, looks like a hundred miles up country. 

I see where children have for some days come to school across the fields on the crust from Abiel Wheeler’s to the railroad crossing. I see their tracks in the slight snow upon the crust which fell the 14th. They save a great distance and enjoy the novelty.

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. The snow lies very level there, about ten inches deep, and for the most part bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can produce, with an amethystine hatchet in my hand. 

I am in raptures at my own shadow. What if the substance were of as ethereal a nature? Our very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial blue.

This has nothing to do with cold, methinks, but the sun must not be too low. 

I clear a little space in the snow, which is nine to ten inches deep over the deepest part of the pond, and cut through the ice, which is about seven inches thick, only the first four inches, perhaps, snow ice, the other three clear. The moment I reach the water, it gushes up and overflows the ice, driving me out this yard in the snow, where it stood at last two and a half inches deep above the ice. 

The thermometer indicates 331/2° at top and 342/3° when drawn up rapidly from thirty feet beneath. So, apparently, it is not much warmer beneath. 

Observe some of those little hard galls on the high blueberry, peeked or eaten into by some bird (or possibly mouse), for the little white grubs which lie curled up in them. What entomologists the birds are! Most men do not suspect that there are grubs in them, and how secure the latter seem under these thick dry shells! Yet there is no secret but it is confided to some one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1856

To Walden to learn the temperature of the water. See January 11, 1856 (" The temperature of the body of Walden may perhaps range from 85° . . . down to 32°")

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. See December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue.’); February 10, 1855 (“My shadow is blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow.”);  January 15, 1856 ("My shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. "); January 30, 1856 ("Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows and your own are the only objects.") Also see note to January 6, 1856 ("Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks.”)

What entomologists the birds are! Compare January 16, 1860 ("[T]here is no shrub nor weed which is not known to some bird.")

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 18

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022