It is the worst or wettest of walking.

January 21. 

A January thaw, with some fog, occasioned as yet wholly by warm weather, without rain; high wind in the night; wind still south. 

The last two days have been remarkably pleasant and warm, with a southerly wind, and last night was apparently warmer yet (I think it was 46° this morning); and this morning I am surprised to see much bare ground and ice where was snow last evening, and though last evening it was good sleighing and the street was not wet at all, — though the snow was moist, — now it is almost entirely bare ice except for the water. 

The sluices are more than full, rushing like mill-streams on each side the way and often stretching in broad lakes across the street. It is the worst or wettest of walking, requiring india-rubber boots. Great channels, eight inches deep and a foot or more wide, are worn in the ice across the street, revealing a pure, clear ice on the sides, contrasting with the dirty surface. 

I do not remember so sudden a change, the effect of warmth without rain. 

• Yesterday afternoon it was safe sledding wood along the riverside on the ice, — Hubbard was doing so,— and I saw at the bridges that the river was some eight inches lower than it had been when it froze, the ice adhering to the piers, and all held up there so much higher than the surrounding surface; and now it is rapidly rising, and the river is forbidden ground. 

It is surprising how suddenly the slumbering snow has been melted, and with what a rush it now seeks the lowest ground on all sides. 

• Yesterday, in the streets and fields, it was all snow and ice and rest; now it is chiefly water and motion. 
• Yesterday afternoon I walked in the merely moist snow-track of sleds and sleighs, while all the sides of the road and the ditches rested under a white mantle of snow. This morning I go picking my way in rubbers through broad puddles on a slippery icy bottom, stepping over small torrents which have worn channels six or eight inches deep, and on each side rushes past with a loud murmur a stream large enough to turn a mill, occasionally spreading out into a sizable mill-pond. 

It begins to rain by afternoon, and rains more or less during the night. Before night I heard of the river being over the road in one place, though it was rather low before. 

Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1859

A January thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard."); January 9, 1860 ("After the January thaw our thoughts cease to refer to autumn and we look forward to spring."); January 12, 1854 ("Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”); January 13, 1854 ("Still warm and thawing, springlike. . . The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. "); January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”); January 22, 1860 ("Crows . . . are heard cawing in pleasant, thawing winter weather, and their note is then a pulse by which you feel the quality of the air, i. e., when cocks crow."); January 23, 1853 ("It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.”);January 23, 1860 ("When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe "); January 31, 1854 ("We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression.")

It is the worst or wettest of walking. See January 12, 1854 (“hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, — thaw and rain. Walking, or wading, very bad.”); January 22, 1855 (“Heavy rain in the night and half of today, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers.”); January 23, 1853 ("It is perhaps the wettest walking we ever have.”)

Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to morrow. See January 22, 1859 ("Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun.")