An excellent walk for variety and novelty and wildness.

February 12. 

Wednesday. A beautiful day, with but little snow or ice on the ground.

Though the air is sharp, as the earth is half bare the hens have strayed to some distance from the barns.

The hens, standing around their lord and pluming themselves and still fretting a little, strive to fetch the year about.

A thaw has nearly washed away the snow and raised the river and the brooks and flooded the meadows, covering the old ice, which is still fast to the bottom.

I find that it is an excellent walk for variety and novelty and wildness, to keep round the edge of the meadow, — the ice not being strong enough to bear and transparent as water, - on the bare ground or snow, just between the highest water mark and the present water line, - a narrow , meandering walk, rich in unexpected views and objects.

The line of rubbish which marks the higher tides — withered flags and reeds and twigs and cranberries — is to my eyes a very agreeable and significant line, which Nature traces along the edge of the meadows. It is a strongly marked, enduring natural line , which in summer reminds me that the water has once stood over where I walk.

Sometimes the grooved trees tell the same tale. The wrecks of the meadow, which fill a thousand coves, and tell a thousand tales to those who can read them.

Our prairial, mediterranean shore.

The gentle rise of water around the trees in the meadow, where oaks and maples stand far out in the sea, and young elms sometimes are seen standing close around some rock which lifts its head above the water, as if protecting it, preventing it from being washed away, though in truth they owe their origin and preservation to it.

It first invited and detained their seed, and now preserves the soil in which they grow.

A pleasant reminiscence of the rise of water, to go up one side of the river and down the other, following this way, which meanders so much more than the river itself.

If you cannot go on the ice, you are then gently compelled to take this course, which is on the whole more beautiful, -- to follow the sinuosities of the meadow.

Between the highest water mark and the present water line is a space generally from a few feet to a few rods in width.

When the water comes over the road, then my spirits rise, - when the fences are carried away.

A prairial walk.

Saw a caterpillar crawling about on the snow.

The earth is so bare that it makes an impression on me as if it were catching cold.

I saw to-day something new to me as I walked along the edge of the meadow.

Every half - mile or so along the channel of the river I saw at a distance where apparently the ice had been broken up while freezing by the pressure of other ice, — thin cakes of ice forced up on their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors, whole fleets of shining sails , giving a very lively appearance to the river, where for a dozen rods the flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun  a fleet of ice-boats.

It is remarkable that the cracks in the ice on the meadows sometimes may be traced a dozen rods from the water through the snow in the neighboring fields.

It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it.

The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedge row and sometimes a coppice.

I found to-day apples still green under the snow, and others frozen and thawed, sweeter far than when sound, a sugary sweetness.

There is something more than association at the bottom of the excitement which the roar of a cataract produces. It is allied to the circulation in our veins. We have a waterfall which corresponds even to Niagara somewhere within us. It is astonishing what a rush and tumult a slight inclination will produce in a swollen brook.

How it proclaims its glee, its boisterousness, rushing headlong in its prodigal course as if it would exhaust itself in half an hour! How it spends itself! I would say to the orator and poet, Flow freely and lavishly as a brook that is full, — without stint.

Perchance I have stumbled upon the origin of the word “lavish.”

It does not hesitate to tumble down the steepest precipice and roar or tinkle as it goes, for fear it will exhaust its fountain. The impetuosity of descending water even by the slightest inclination! It seems to flow with ever increasing rapidity.

It is difficult to believe what philosophers assert, that it is merely a difference in the form of the elementary particles - as whether they are square or globular — which makes the difference between the steadfast, everlasting, and reposing hillside and the impetuous torrent which tumbles down it.

It is refreshing to walk over sprout-lands, where oak and chestnut sprouts are mounting swiftly up again into the sky, and already perchance their sere leaves begin to rustle in the breeze and reflect the light on the hillsides.

“Heroic underwoods that take the air

With freedom , nor respect their parents' death.”

I trust that the walkers of the present day are conscious of the blessings which they enjoy in the comparative freedom with which they can ramble over the country and enjoy the landscape , anticipating with compassion that future day when possibly it will be partitioned off into so - called pleasure - grounds, where only a few may enjoy the narrow and exclusive pleasure which is compatible with ownership, — when walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds, when fences shall be multiplied and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road.

I am thankful that we have yet so much room in America.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1851

Flakes of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream against the sun a fleet of ice-boats. See February 13, 1851 ("Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand. They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon, which I do not remember to have seen . . .They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking breeze.")  Compare July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean")

February 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023