Surveying the W farm.

December 30. 

Surveying the W farm. 

Parker, the Shaker that was, my assistant, says that the first year he came to live with W, he worked on the farm, and that when he was digging potatoes on that jog (of about an acre) next to the site of the old Lee house, he found snakes' eggs in many hills, perhaps half a dozen together, he thinks as many as seventy in all. He did not perceive that they were united as he hoed them out, but may have separated them. When he broke the eggs, the young snakes, two or three inches long, wriggled out and about. 

Had the experience of losing a pin and then hunting for it a long time in vain. 

What an evidence it is, after all, of civilization, or of a capacity for improvement, that savages like our Indians, who in their protracted wars stealthily slay men, women, and children without mercy, with delight, who delight to burn, torture, and devour one another, proving themselves more inhuman in these respects even than beasts, — what a wonderful evidence it is, I say, of their capacity for improvement that even they can enter into the most formal compact or treaty of peace, burying the hatchet, etc., etc., and treating with each other with as much consideration as the most enlightened states. You would say that they had a genius for diplomacy as well as for war. 

Consider that Iroquois, torturing his captive, roasting him before a slow fire, biting off the fingers of him alive, and finally eating the heart of him dead, betraying not the slightest evidence of humanity; and now behold him in the council-chamber, where he meets the representatives of the hostile nation to treat of peace, conducting with such perfect dignity and decorum, betraying such a sense of justness.

These savages are equal to us civilized men in their treaties, and, I fear, not essentially worse in their wars.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 30, 1856

I open my mouth to the wind.

December 29

The snow is softened yet more, and it thaws somewhat. The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring. 

P. M. — To Warren Miles's mill. 

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. 

Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital. A night and a forenoon is as much confinement to those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I recover some sanity which I had lost almost the instant that I come abroad. 

Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter? 

The fields behind Dennis's have but little snow on them; the weeds rising above it imbrown them. It is collected in deep banks on the southeast slopes of the hills, — the wind having been northwest, — and there no weeds rise above it. 

By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground. Do they ever return to the same nests?

White oaks standing in open ground will commonly have more leaves now than black or red oaks of the same size, also standing exposed. 

Miles is sawing pail-stuff. Thus the full streams and ponds supply the farmer with winter work. 

I see two trout four or five inches long in his brook a few rods below the mill. The water is quite low, he having shut it off. Rich copper-brown fish darting up and down the fast-shoaling stream. 

When I return by Clamshell Hill, the sun has set, and the cloudy sky is reflected in a short and narrow open reach at the bend there. The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1856

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . . I open my mouth to the wind. See July 23, 1851 ("The wind has fairly blown me outdoors; the elements were so lively and active, and I so sympathized with them, that I could not sit while the wind went by."); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”)

It thaws somewhat. The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring. See December 29, 1851 ("It is warm as an April morning. There is a sound as of bluebirds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the spring.")

I see two trout four or five inches long in his brook a few rods below the mill. The water is quite low, he having shut it off. See May 7, 1856 ("Miles began last night to let the water run off. . . . The brook below is full of fishes, -—suckers, pouts, eels, trouts, -— endeavoring to get up, but his dam prevents.”)

The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky. See  December 30, 1855 (“Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P. M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green”); January 18, 1860 ("The sky in the reflection at the open reach at Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality.”).

A wilder experience than the town affords

December 28. Sunday. 

Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here.

Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water. 

They have had but poor luck. One middling-sized pickerel and one large yellow perch only, since 9 or 10 a. m. It is now nearly sundown. 

The perch is very full of spawn. How handsome, with its broad dark transverse bars, sharp narrow triangles, broadest on the back! 

The men are standing or sitting about a smoky fire of damp dead wood, near by the spot where many a fisherman has sat before, and I draw near, hoping to hear a fish story. 

One says that Louis Menan, the French Canadian who lives in Lincoln, fed his ducks on the fresh-water clams which he got at Fair Haven Pond. He saw him open the shells, and the ducks snapped them up out of the shells very fast. 

I observe that some shrub oak leaves have but little silveriness beneath, as if they were a variety, the color of the under approaching that of the upper surface somewhat. 

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. 

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. 

There lies a pickerel or perch on the ice, waving a fin or lifting its gills from time to time, gasping its life away. 

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. 

As the Esquimaux of Smith's Strait in North Greenland laughed when Kane warned them of their utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice on all sides from their race, unless they attempted in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I laugh when you tell me of the danger of impoverishing myself by isolation. It is here that the walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the eider ducks and auks on which I batten, most abound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1856


Walden completely frozen over again last night. See December 19, 1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night . . . "); December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle."); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.").

. . .  if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. See January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.") June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind. The mass of men are still and always young men in this respect. They do not think they are lucky unless they get a long string of fish, though they have the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself."); October 4, 1858 ("A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. . . There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. See December 17, 1850 ("I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer.")

I thrive best on solitude. . . . See August 2, 1854 ("I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much.")

Just off the east cape of long southern bay.

December 27. 

Saturday. 

Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1856

Walden is still open . . .See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it.”); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night.”);  see also December 24, 1858 "Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, ...”); December 24, 1859 (“There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. ”); December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over");   December 26, 1853 (“Walden still open.”); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open . . ."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open . . .”).

Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

December 25. 

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff. 

A strong wind from the northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls. As usual they resemble shells more than anything, sometimes prows of vessels, also the folds of a white napkin or counterpane dropped over a bonneted head. There are no such picturesque snow-drifts as are formed behind loose and open stone walls. 

Already yesterday it had drifted so much, i.e. so much ground was bare, that there were as many carts as sleighs in the streets. 

Just beyond Hubbard's Bridge, on Conant's Brook Meadow, I am surprised to find a tract of ice, some thirty by seven or eight rods, blown quite bare. It shows how unstable the snow is. 

Sanborn got some white spruce and some usnea for Christmas in the swamp. I thought the last would be the most interesting and weird. 

On the north sides of the walls we go over boots and get them full, then let ourselves down into the shell- work on the south side; so beyond the brows of hills.

At Lee's Cliff I pushed aside the snow with my foot and got some fresh green catnip for Min. 

I see the numerous tracks there, too, of foxes, or else hares, that have been running about in the light snow. 

Called at the Conantum House. It grieves me to see these interesting relics, this and the house at the Baker Farm, going to complete ruin. 

Met William Wheeler's shaggy gray terrier, or Indian dog, going home. He got out of the road into the field and went round to avoid us. 

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 25, 1856

A strong wind from the northwest is gathering the snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls. See December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”)

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows.  Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. See January 12, 1852 ("I sometimes think that I may go forth and walk hard . . . be much abroad in heat and cold, day and night; live more, expend more atmospheres, be weary often, etc., etc.” ); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); April 19 1852 ("To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.’)

Walking before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light.

December 24. 

December  24, 2016

More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches. 

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little. 

Turn off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl, Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. 

It is very handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood; also on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, resting on them just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out  above. 

We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests on the trees much. 

Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast. 

There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down, so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. 

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. 

Return across the pond and go across to Baker Farm. 

Notice, at east end of westernmost Andromeda Pond, the slender spikes of lycopus with half a dozen distant little spherical dark-brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like, or even like flagroot (?), when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them. 

It is very pleasant walking thus before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. 

Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path. 

I do not take snuff. In my winter walks, I stoop and bruise between my thumb and finger the dry whorls of the lycopus, or water horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping them off, and smell that. That is as near as I come to the Spice Islands. That is my smelling-bottle, my ointment.

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

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. See December 26, 1853  ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. The sight . . . would tempt us to begin life again.”); January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.") 

Foxes . . . one of whom I have a glimpse of . . . See February 10, 1856 ("I saw a fox on the railroad. . . He coursed, or glided, along easily, appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over obstacles, with his tail extended straight behind. He leaped over the ridge of snow . . . between the tracks, very easily and gracefully.”)

They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

December 23. 

December 23, 2016

Some savage tribes must share the experience of the lower animals in their relation to man. With what thoughts must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not a natural but an artificial product, the work of man's hands, the waste of the commerce of a superior race, whom perchance he never saw! 

The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights. After being awaked by the loud cracks the night of the 18th at Amherst (a man told me in the morning that he had seen a crack running across the plain (I saw it), almost broad enough to put his hand into; this was an exaggeration; it was not a quarter of an inch wide), I saw a great many the same forenoon running across the road in Nashua, every few rods, and also by our house in Concord the same day when I got home. So it seems the ground was cracking all the country over, partly, no doubt, because there was so little snow, or none (none at Concord). 

If the writer would interest readers, he must report so much life, using a certain satisfaction always as a point d'appui. However mean and limited, it must be a genuine and contented life that he speaks out of. They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

1 P. M. — Surveying for Cyrus Jarvis. 

Snows more or less all day, making an inch or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1856

The cracking of the ground . . . at Amherst. . . . See December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.")

The writer . . . must report so much life, . . . experience and joy .See October 18, 1856 ("All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.")

Local travel

December 22. 

To Boston and Cambridge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 22, 1856

Winter colors

December 21.
Sunday. 

Think what a pitiful kind of life ours is, eating our kindred animals! and in some places one another! Some of us (the Esquimaux), half whose life is spent in the dark, wholly dependent on one or two animals not many degrees removed from themselves for food, clothing, and fuel, and partly for shelter; making their sledges "of small fragments of porous bones of whale, admirably knit together by thongs of hide" (Kane's last book, vol. i, page 205), thus getting about, sliding about, on the bones of our cousins.

Where Kane wintered in the Advance in 1853-54, on the coast of Greenland, about 78 1° north latitude, or further north than any navigator had been excepting Parry at Spitzbergen, he meets with Esquimaux, and "the fleam-shaped tips of their lances were of unmistakable steel." "The metal was obtained in traffic from the more southern tribes." Such is trade. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday. 

I go across to the cliffs by way of the Andromeda Ponds. How interesting and wholesome their color now! A broad level thick stuff, without a crevice in it, composed of the dull brown-red andromeda. Is it not the most uniform and deepest red that covers a large surface now? No withered oak leaves are nearly as red at present. In a broad hollow amid the hills, you have this perfectly level red stuff, marked here and there only with gray streaks or patches of bare high blueberry bushes, etc., and all surrounded by a light border of straw-colored sedge, etc. 

Even the little red buds of the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum and vacillans on the now bare and dry-looking stems attract me as I go through the open glades between the first Andromeda Pond and the Well Meadow Field. 

Many twigs of the Vaccinium vacillans appear to have been nibbled off, and some of its buds have unfolded, apparently in the fall. 

I observe sage willows with many leaves on them still. 

Apparently the red oak retains much fewer leaves than the white, scarlet, and black. I notice the petioles of both the black and red twisted in that peculiar way. 

The red oak leaves look thinner and flatter, and therefore perhaps show the lobes more, than those of the black. 

The white oak leaves are the palest and most shrivelled, the lightest, perhaps a shade of buff, but they are of various shades, some pretty dark with a salmon tinge. 

The swamp white oak leaves (which I am surprised to find Gray makes a variety (discolor) of the Quercus Prinus) are very much like the shrub oak, but more curled. These two are the best preserved, though they do not hang on so well as the white and scarlet. Both remarkable for their thick, leathery, sound leaves, uninjured by insects, and their very light downy under sides. 

The black oak leaves are the darkest brown, with clear or deep yellowish-brown under sides, obovate in outline. 

The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides. They still spread their ruddy fingers to the breeze. After the shrub and swamp white, they are perhaps the best preserved of any I describe. 

The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath. Their lobes, methinks, are narrower and straighter-sided. They are the color of their own acorns.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 21, 1856

Think what a pitiful kind of life ours is, eating our kindred animals!  See December 12, 1856 ("At length, without having solved any of these problems, we fatten and kill and eat some of our cousins!"); and Knud Rasmussen (“The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, . . .” )

The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday. See December 19,1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night. . .");  December 20, 1858 (“Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”);  December 21, 1855 (“Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.”); December 21, 1854 (“Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick.”)

Winter colors and oak leaves. See  December 21, 1854  ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.  The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.");  December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”) See also November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak");  December 11, 1858 ("While the oak leaves look redder and warmer, the pines look much darker since the snow has fallen (the hemlocks darker still)"); December 13, 1856 (“A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . .The leaves have a little redness in them.”); December 13, 1858 ("A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves, somewhat as of lichens. They are of a brighter and deeper leather-color, richer and more wholesome"); December 18, 1859 (“The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color.”);  December 20, 1851 ("Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. . . . The red shrub oaks on the white ground of the plain beneath make a pretty scene. . . .The red oak leaves are even more fresh and glossy than the white."); December 21, 1856 (“The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.”);  December 23, 1855 ("These are the colors of the earth now."); December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’);  January 2, 1859 (“The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown”)  

Winter rain.

December 20. 

Rain more or less all day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1856

See December 15, 1855 (". . .A steady but gentle, warm rain."); December 22, 1855 ("Warm rain and frost coming out and muddy walking.")

The voice of the wood.

December 19.

December 19, 2021

I rode back to Nashua in the morning  —   Knew the road by some yellow birch trees in a swamp and some rails set on end around a white oak in a pasture. These it seems were the objects I had noticed. 

In Nashua observed, as I thought, some elms in the distance which had been whitewashed. It turned out that they were covered from top to bottom, on one side, with the frozen vapor from a fall on the canal.

Walked a little way along the bank of the Merrimack, which was frozen over, and was agreeably reminded of my voyage up it. 

The night previous, in Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front. I saw several of these here in Nashua, and ran a bit of stubble into them but in no place more than five inches. This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights. 

Observed that the Nashua in Pepperell was frozen to the very edge of the fall, and even further in some places. 

Got home at 1.30 p. m. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the 15th there was not a particle of ice in it. In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks, which are already very numerous, but, having been made at different stages of the ice, they indicate very various thicknesses. Often one only an inch deep crosses at right angles another two and a half inches deep, the last having been recently made and indicating the real thickness of the ice. 

I advance confidently toward the middle, keeping within a few feet of some distinct crack two inches or more deep, but when that fails me and I see only cracks an inch or an inch and a half deep, or none at all, I walk with great caution and timidity, though the ice may be as thick as ever, but I have no longer the means of determining its thickness. 

The ice is so transparent that it is too much like walking on water by faith. 

The portion of the pond which was last frozen is a thinner and darker ice stretching about across the middle from southeast to northwest, i. e. from the shoulder of the Deep Cove to nearly midway between the bar and Ice-Fort Cove Cape. 

Close to the northwest end of this, there is a small and narrow place twenty feet long east and west, which is still so thin that a small stone makes a hole. The water, judging from my map, may[be] seventy or seventy-five feet deep there. It looks as if that had been the warmest place in the surface of the pond and therefore the last to yield to the frost king. 

Into this, or into the thinner ice at this point, there empties, as it were, a narrow meandering creek from near the western shore, which was nearly as late to freeze as any part. All this, I think, I have noticed in previous years. 

About the edge of all this more recent and darker ice, the thicker ice is white with a feathery frost, which seems to have been produced by the very fine spray, or rather the vapor, blown from the yet unfrozen surface on to the ice by the strong and cold wind. Here is where, so to speak, its last animal heat escaped, the dying breath of the pond frozen on its lips. It had the same origin with the frost about the mouth of a hole in the ground whence warm vapors had escaped. 

The fluid, timid pond was encircled within an ever-narrowing circle by the icy grasp of winter, and this is a trace of the last vaporous breath that curled along its trembling surface. Here the chilled pond gave up the ghost. 

As I stand here, I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? This sound, heard near at hand, is more simply animal and guttural, without resonance or reverberation, but, heard here from out the depths of the wood, it sounds peculiarly hollow and drum-like, as if it struck on a tense skin drawn around, the tympanum of the wood, through which all we denizens of nature hear. 

Thus it comes to us an accredited and universal or melodious sound; is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well. The owl only touches the stops, or rather wakes the reverberations. For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. It sounds now, hoo | hoo hoo (very fast) | hoo-rer | hoo. 

Withered leaves! this is our frugal winter diet, in stead of the juicy salads of spring and summer. I think I could write a lecture on "Dry Leaves," carrying a specimen of each kind that hangs on in the winter into the lecture-room as the heads of my discourse. They have long hung to some extent in vain, and have not found their poet yet. 

The pine has been sung, but not, to my knowledge, the shrub oak. Most think it is useless. How glad I am that it serves no vulgar use! It is never seen on the woodman's cart. The citizen who has just bought a sprout-land on which shrub oaks alone come up only curses it. But it serves a higher use than they know. Shrub oak! how true its name! 

Think first what a family it belongs to. The oak, the king of trees, is its own brother, only of ampler dimensions. The oaks, so famous for grandeur and picturesqueness, so prized for strength by the builder, for knees or for beams; and this is the oak of smaller size, the Esquimau of oaks, the shrub oak! The oaken shrub! I value it first for the noble family it belongs to. 

It is not like brittle sumach or venomous dogwood, which you must beware how you touch, but wholesome to the touch, though rough; not producing any festering sores, only honest scratches and rents.

Dr. Kane says in his "Arctic Explorations," page 21, that at Fiskernaes in Greenland "the springs, which well through the mosses, frequently remain unfrozen throughout the year."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1856

In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. See December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”)

Walden froze completely over last night. .. . See December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”); December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.”); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night.”)  Also December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle"); December 21, 1855 (" Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove. It will probably be finished to-night. (No, it proved too warm.)"); December 21, 1854 ("Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th");   December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.");  December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond [Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night."); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”).

The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. See November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) Also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”)

I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks..See December 19, 1854 ("It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice; I look for cracks to see how thick it is.")

I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? Compare December 19, 1851 ("In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper's axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year")

For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. See June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”); July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains.); October 26, 1851 ("The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument ")

December 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 19

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

tinyurl.com/hdt561219

Lectured in basement (vestry) of the orthodox church, and I trust helped to undermine it.

December  18. 

12 m. Start for Amherst, N. H. 

A very cold day. Thermometer at 8 a. m. — 8° (and I hear of others very much lower at an earlier hour), -2° at 11.45. 

I find the first snow enough to whiten the ground beyond Littleton, and it deepens all the way to Amherst. The steam of the engine hugs the earth very close. Is it because it [is] a very clear, cold day? 

The last half the route from Groton Junction to Nashua is along the Nashua River mostly. This river looks less interesting than the Concord. It appears even more open, i. e. less wooded (?). At any rate the banks are more uniform, and I notice none of our meadows on it. 

At Nashua, hire a horse and sleigh, and ride to Amherst, eleven miles, against a strong northwest wind, this bitter cold afternoon. When I get to South Merrimack, about 3.15 p. m., they tell me the thermometer is —3°. While the driving hand is getting benumbed, I am trying to warm the other against my body under the buffalo. 

Warm myself there in the shop of a tub and pail maker, who does his work by hand, splitting out the staves with a curved knife and smoothing them with curved shaves. His hoops are white ash, shaved thin. 

After entering Amherst territory, near the Souhegan, notice many shagbark trees, which they tell me the owners value as they do a good apple tree, getting a dozen bushels of shelled nuts sometimes from a tree. I see the nuts on some still. 

At my lecture, the audience attended to me closely, and I was satisfied; that is all I ask or expect generally. Not one spoke to me afterward, nor needed they. I have no doubt that they liked it, in the main, though few of them would have dared say so, provided they were conscious of it. 

Generally, if I can only get the ears of an audience, I do not care whether they say they like my lecture or not. I think I know as well as they can tell. At any rate, it is none of my business, and it would be impertinent for me to inquire. 

The stupidity of most of these country towns, not to include the cities, is in its innocence infantile. Lectured in basement (vestry) of the orthodox church, and I trust helped to undermine it. 

I was told to stop at the U. S. Hotel, but an old inhabitant had never heard of it and could not tell me where to find it, but I found the letters on a sign with out help. It was the ordinary unpretending (?) desolate-looking country tavern. The landlord apologized to me because there was to be a ball there that night which would keep me awake, and it did. He and others there, horrible to relate, were in the habit of blowing their noses with their fingers and wiping them on their boots! Champney's U. S. Hotel was an ordinary team tavern, and the letters U. S., properly enough, not very conspicuous on the sign. 

A paper called the Farmer's Cabinet is published there. It has reached its fifty-fifth volume.

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


At my lecture. See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden, Lecture 54. HDT read his paper “Walking or the Wild,”  which had first been delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. The lecture began  with a reference to a Wordsworth poem :

Wordsworth on a pedestrian tour through Scotland, was one evening just as the sun was setting with an usual splendor, greeted by a woman of the country with the words “What, are you stepping westward?" And he says that such was the originality of the salutation, combined with the association of the hour and place that 

"stepping westward seem to be 

a kind of heavenly destiny.”

The sentences from my journal which I am going to read this evening, for want of a better rallying cry may accept these words "stepping westward.” 

See Walking (1861) ( "Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon though they may be of vapor only which were last gilded by his rays . . . The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild and what I have been preparing to say is that in Wildness is the preservation of the World .")

See also January 11, 1857 ("For some years past I have partially offered myself as a lecturer; have been advertised as such several years. Yet I have had but two or three invitations to lecture in a year, and some years none at all. I congratulate myself on having been permitted to stay at home thus, I am so much richer for it. I do not see what I should have got of much value, but money, by going about, but I do see what I should have lost. It seems to me that I have a longer and more liberal lease of life thus. I cannot afford to be telling my experience, especially to those who perhaps will take no interest in it. I wish to be getting experience.")

They never did any man harm that I know.

December 17. 

P. M. — Cold, with a piercing northwest wind and bare ground still. 

The river, which was raised by the rain of the 14th and ran partly over the meadows, is frozen over again, and I go along the edge of the meadow under Clamshell and back by Hubbard's Bridge. 

At Clamshell, to my surprise, scare up either a woodcock or a snipe. I think the former, for I plainly saw considerable red on the breast, also a light stripe along the neck. It was feeding alone, close to the edge of the hill, where it is springy and still soft, almost the only place of this character in the neighborhood, and though I started it three times, it each time flew but little way, round to the hillside again, perhaps the same spot it had left a moment before, as if unwilling to leave this unfrozen and comparatively warm locality. It was a great surprise this bitter cold day, when so many springs were frozen up, to see this hardy bird loitering still. Once alighted, you could not see it till it arose again. 

In Saw Mill Brook, as I crossed it, I saw the tail disappearing of some muskrat or other animal, flapping in the cold water, where all was ice around.

A flock of a dozen or more tree sparrows flitting through the edge of the birches, etc., by the meadow front of Puffer's. They make excursions into the open meadow and, as I approach, take refuge in the brush. I hear their faint cheep, a very feeble evidence of their existence, and also a pretty little suppressed warbling from them. 

To-day, though so cold, there is much of the frozen overflow, a broad border of it, along the meadow, a discolored yellowish and soft ice (it probably ran out yesterday or last night), the river still rising a little. 

The wind is so cold and strong that the Indians that are encamped in three wigwams of cloth in the railroad wood-yard have all moved into two and closed them up tight. 

That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle, or the chafing of two hard shrub oak twigs, is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together. These birds, when perched, look larger than usual this cold and windy day; they are puffed up for warmth, have added a porch to their doors. 

It is pretty poor picking out of doors to-day. There 's but little comfort to be found. You go stumping over bare frozen ground, sometimes clothed with curly yellowish withered grass like the back of half-starved cattle late in the fall, now beating this ear, now that, to keep them warm. 

It is comparatively summer-like under the south side of woods and hills. 

When I returned from the South the other day, I was greeted by withered shrub oak leaves which I had not seen there. It was the most homely and agreeable object that met me. I found that I had no such friend as the shrub oak hereabouts. A farmer once asked me what shrub oaks were made for, not knowing any use they served. But I can tell him that they do me good. They are my parish ministers, regularly settled. They never did any man harm that I know.

Yesterday afternoon I was running a line through the woods. How many days have I spent thus, sighting my way in direct lines through dense woods, through cat-briar and viburnum in New Jersey, through shrub oak in New England, requiring my axeman to shear off twigs and bushes and dead limbs and masses of withered leaves that obstruct the view, and then set up a freshly barked stake exactly on the line; looking at these barked stakes from far and near as if I loved them; not knowing where I shall come out; my duty then and there perhaps merely to locate a straight line between two points. 

Now you have the foliage of summer painted in brown. Go through the shrub oaks. All growth has ceased; no greenness meets the eye, except what there may be in the bark of this shrub. The green leaves are all turned to brown, quite dry and sapless. The little buds are sleeping at the base of the slender shrunken petioles. Who observed when they passed from green to brown? I do not remember the transition; it was very gradual. 

But these leaves still have a kind of life in them. They are exceedingly beautiful in their withered state. If they hang on, it is like the perseverance of the saints. Their colors are as wholesome, their forms as perfect, as ever. Now that the crowd and bustle of summer is passed, I have leisure to admire them. 

Their figures never weary my eye. Look at the few broad scallops in their sides. When was that pattern first cut? With what a free stroke the curve was struck! With how little, yet just enough, variety in their forms! Look at the fine bristles which arm each pointed lobe, as perfect now as when the wild bee hummed about them, or the chewink scratched beneath them. What pleasing and harmonious colors within and without, above and below! 

The smooth, delicately brown-tanned upper surface, acorn- color, the very pale (some silvery or ashy) ribbed under side. How poetically, how like saints or innocent and beneficent beings, they give up the ghost! How spiritual! Though they have lost their sap, they have not given up the ghost. Rarely touched by worm or insect, they are as fair as ever. These are the forms of some: — When was it ordained that this leaf should turn brown in the fall ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1856

The Indians that are encamped in three wigwams of cloth in the railroad wood-yard have all moved into two and closed them up tight. . . .See December 5, 1856 (“[T]hey do not appear to mind the cold, though one side the tent is partly open, and all are flapping in the wind, and there is a sick child in one.”)

That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle. . . is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together. See December 4, 1856 ("Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white- barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf.”); December 28, 1853 ("By their sharp silvery chip, perchance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together.")

When I returned from the South ... See November 25, 1856 (“Am glad to get back to New England, the dry, sandy, wholesome land, land of scrub oaks and birches and white pines . . .”); December 1, 1856 ("I love and could embrace the shrub oak . . .”)

A winter eve in memory.

December 15.  

It still blows hard at 2 p. m., but it is not cold.

8 p.m.- To Walden. 

The high northwest wind of this morning, with what of cold we have, has made some of those peculiar rake-toothed icicles on the dead twigs, etc., about the edge of the pond at the east end. To produce this phenomenon is required only open water, a high wind, and sufficiently cold weather to freeze the spray. 

I observe B 's boat left out at the pond, as last winter. When I see that a man neglects his boat thus, I do not wonder that he fails in his business. It is not only shiftlessness or unthrift, but a sort of filthiness to let things go to wrack and ruin thus. 

December 15, 2023

I still recall to mind that characteristic winter eve of December 9th; the cold, dry, and wholesome diet my mind and senses necessarily fed on, —

· oak leaves, bleached and withered weeds that rose above the snow,

· the now dark green of the pines, and

· perchance the faint metallic chip of a single tree sparrow;

· the hushed stillness of the wood at sundown, aye, all the winter day;

· the short boreal twilight;

· the smooth serenity and the reflections of the pond, still alone free from ice;

· the melodious hooting of the owl, heard at the same time with the yet more distant whistle of a locomotive, more aboriginal, and perchance more enduring here than that, heard above the voices of all the wise men of Concord, as if they were not (how little he is Anglicized!);

· the last strokes of the woodchopper, who presently bends his steps homeward;

· the gilded bar of cloud across the apparent outlet of the pond, conducting my thoughts into the eternal west;

· the deepening horizon glow; and

· the hasty walk homeward to enjoy the long winter evening.

The hooting of the owl! That is a sound which my red predecessors heard here more than a thousand years ago. It rings far and wide, occupying the spaces rightfully, — grand, primeval, aboriginal sound. There is no whisper in it of the Buckleys, the Flints, the Hosmers who recently squatted here, nor of the first parish, nor of Concord Fight, nor of the last town meeting. 

Mrs. Moody very properly calls eating nuts "a mouse like employment." It is quite too absorbing; you can't read at the same time, as when you are eating an apple.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, December 15, 1856

That characteristic winter eve of December 9th. See December 9, 1856 ("Such is a winter's eve.")

I observe B 's boat left out at the pond, as last winter . . . See January 5, 1856 ("Boats . . . half filled with ice and almost completely buried in snow, so neglected by their improvident owners . . .") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

The smooth serenity and the reflections of the pond, still alone free from ice. See December 15, 1854 ("How interesting a few clean, dry weeds on the shore a dozen rods off, seen distinctly against the smooth, reflecting water between ice!"). See also December 14, 1854 ("Your eye slides first over a plane surface of smooth ice of one color to a water surface of silvery smoothness, like a gem set in ice, and reflecting the weeds and trees and houses and clouds with singular beauty. The reflections are particularly simple and distinct."); December 20, 1855 ("How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky! ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

The hooting of the owl! . . . grand, primeval, aboriginal sound. See. December 9, 1856 ("Every week almost I hear the loud voice of the hooting owl, though I do not see the bird more than once in ten years"); December 19, 1856 ("More than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well . . . It sounds now, hoo | hoo hoo (very fast) | hoo-rer | hoo."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl


December 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 15

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