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.’); November 12, 1858 ("Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter.")