Why do water and snow take just this form?

February 19. 

Cloudy and somewhat rainy, the thermometer at last fallen to thirty-two and thirty-three degrees. 

I have often noticed that the surface of the snow was rippled or waved like water. The dust from plowed ground collects on the ridges which bound these waves, and there it becomes very conspicuous as the snow melts, the ridges standing out more and more, for the dirt apparently protects the snow from the sun. 

Why do water and snow take just this form? 

Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather. 

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. 

An old man, one of my neighbors, is so demented that he put both legs into one leg of his pantaloons the other morning! 

Mr. Cheney tells me that Goodwin brought him a partridge to sell in the midst of the late severe weather. C. said it was a pity to kill it, it must find it hard to get a living. "I guess she didn't find it any harder than I do," answered G. 

It would be pleasant to recall to mind the different styles of boats that have been used on this river from the first, beginning with the bark canoe and the dug out, or log canoe, or pirogue. Then, perhaps, some simple log canoe, or such a boat as now prevails, which probably has its prototype on English rivers, — call it dory, skiff, or what-not, — made as soon as boards were sawed here; the smaller, punt-like ones for one man; the round-bottomed boats from below, and the half-round or lapstreaked, sometimes with sails; the great canal-boats; and the hay-boats of the Sudbury meadows; and lastly what the boys call "shell-boats," introduced last year, in imitation of the Esquimau kayak. 

At evening it begins to snow . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1857

Why do water and snow take just this form? See February 12, 1860 ("That is what the phenomenon of ice means. The earth is annually inverted and we walk upon the sky. The ice reflects the blue of the sky. The waters become solid and make a sky below. The clouds grow heavy and fall to earth, and we walk on them. We live and walk on solidified fluids."); February 8, 1860 ("One would think that the forms of ice-crystals must include all others."); January 5, 1856 ("The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals"); See also February 19, 1854 ("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”). Also April 18, 1852 (“"Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? Why . . .just this circle of creatures completes the world?”).

Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales See November 18, 1858 (“The early willow catkins already peep out a quarter of an inch”);  March 2, 1859 (“Go and measure to what length the silvery willow catkins have crept out beyond their scales, if you would know what time o' the year it is by Nature's clock.”);See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:. Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. See February 8, 1857 ("And now another friendship is ended.”)