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.”).