What is lost in time is gained in power.

December 13. 

P. M. – To Goose Pond. 

This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent. I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond. 

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d), moving about in the same place under the ice, which I can not crack with my feet. The Emerson children see six under the ice of Goose Pond to-day. Apparently many winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes. 

In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. 

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. 

I find one white birch standing and two fallen. The latter were faced at one end, for the numbers, and at the other rotten and broken off as short, apparently, as if sawed, because the bark so tears. At first I did not know but they had been moved, but thinking that if they had fallen where they stood I should find some hole or looseness in the ground at the rotten end, I felt for it and in each case found it; in one, also, the rotten point of the stake. 

Thus in six years two out of three stout (two-and-a-half-inch) birch stakes were flat. The hickory stake I set on R. W. E.'s town line in March, ’50, was flat this last summer, or seven years, but a white stake set in ’49–50 on Moore and Hosmer's lot was standing aslant this month. 

A surveyor should know what stakes last longest. 

I hear a characteristic anecdote respecting Mrs. Hoar, from good authority. Her son Edward, who takes his father's place and attends to the same duties, asked his mother the other night, when about retiring, 

“Shall I put the cat down cellar?” 

“No,” said she, “you may put her outdoors.” 

The next night he asked, “Shall I put the cat outdoors?” 

“No,” answered she, “you may put her down cellar.”

The third night he asked, “Shall I put the cat down cellar or outdoors?” 

“Well,” said his mother, “you may open the cellar door and then open the front door, and let her go just which way she pleases.” 

Edward suggested that it was a cold night for the cat to be outdoors, but his mother said, 

“Who knows but she has a little kitten somewhere to look after?” 

Mrs. H. is a peculiar woman, who has her own opinion and way, a strong-willed, managing woman.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1857

Water target or water shield: an aquatic plant, Brasenia schreberi, of thewater lily family, having purple flowers, floating, elliptic leaves, and ajellylike coating on the underwater stems and roots.

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d). See December 2, 1857 ("Measuring Little Goose Pond, I observed two painted tortoises moving about under the thin transparent ice.")

All at once, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. See December 13, 1851 ("By stepping aside from my chosen path so often, I see myself better and am enabled to criticise myself. Of this nature is the only true lapse of time.")

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. See  November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town."); November 18, 1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot."); November 24, 1851("Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial).")