A crust on which I go in any direction across the fields

February 13.

Grew cold again last night, with high wind. The wind began about midday. I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M. is at zero. (At 1 P. M., 8° + .) 

This fall of 42° from 8.30 A. M. yesterday to the same time to-day has produced not a thin and smooth, but a very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences; yet there is some slosh at the bottom of the snow, above, the icy foundation. 

Now, no doubt, many sportsmen are out with their dogs, who have been imprisoned by the depth of the snow. In the woods where there are bushes beneath, you still slump more or less. 

The crust is quite green with the needles of pitch pines, sometimes whole plumes which have recently fallen. Are these chiefly last year’s needles brought down by the glaze, or those of the previous year which had not fallen before? I suspect they are chiefly the former, but maybe some of the latter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1856

I think a high wind commonly follows rain or a thaw in winter. See January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”)

A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences. See February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer.") See also January 16, 1856 ("With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried.”); February 17, 1854 ("In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well.");March 10, 1856 ("I may say that I have not had to climb a fence this winter, but have stepped over them on the snow.“); See also January 27, 1860 ("After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears, — if not too deep."); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on.It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences."); December 29, 1855 ("Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls.")