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 . . .”)