Moderating, though at zero at 9 A. M.
P. M. — To Andromeda Swamps, measuring snow.
It is a fortnight since we had about a foot of snowfall on two or three inches which was firmly crusted, and a week since about six inches fell upon the last, —I guess at these depths, — and we have had clear cold weather ever since.
I carry a four-foot stick marked in inches, striking it down as far as it will go at every tenth step. First, beginning in the first field west of the railroad causeway, ...
[table of measurements]
The snow in the first Andromeda Swamp was within about three inches of the top of the highest andromeda bushes and was swelled about three or four inches higher there than between such. Foxes had sunk from one to four inches in it.
In the swamp the dull-red leaves of the andromeda were just peeping out, the snow lying not quite level, but with gentle swells about the highest clumps of bushes.
Deep as the snow was, it was no harder but perhaps easier walking there than in summer. It would not much impede a mouse running about below.
Though the snow is only ten inches deep on a level, farmers affirm that it is two feet deep, confidently.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 12, 1856
Though the snow is only ten inches deep on a level, farmers affirm that it is two feet deep. See January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now."); February 12, 1856 ("From January 6th to January 13th, not less than a foot of snow on a level in open land, and from January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”)
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
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