Red ice.

January 31.

I notice in one place that the last six or more inches of the smooth sumach's lusty twigs are dead and withered, not having been sufficiently matured, not withstanding the favorable autumn. This is attaining one's growth through difficulties. 

Saw one faint tinge of red on red ice pond-hole, six inches over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 31, 1858

A faint tinge of red on red ice pond-hole. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last [Andromeda] pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?"); January 25, 1855 ("I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice.. . . The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope. . ."); February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden . . .ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge."); March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . .It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice."); March 7, 1855 ("The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle."); December 21, 1855 ("Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days. . . .I see, close under the high bank on the east side, a distinct tinge of that red in the ice for a rod.")