One would like to skim over it like a hawk

January 4.

To Fair Haven on the ice partially covered with snow.

The cracks in the ice showing a white cleavage. 

What is their law?

Somewhat like foliage, but too rectangular, like the characters of some Oriental language. I feel as if I could get grammar and dictionary and go into it. They are of the form which a thin flake of ice takes in melting, somewhat rectangular with an irregular edge.

The pond is covered, — dappled or sprinkled, more than half covered, with flat drifts or patches of snow which has lodged, of graceful curving outlines. One would like to skim over it like a hawk, and detect their law.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1852

Patches of snow of graceful curving outlines. See February 12, 1860 ("The sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds.")

They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

December 23

December 23, 2016

Some savage tribes must share the experience of the lower animals in their relation to man. With what thoughts must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not a natural but an artificial product, the work of man's hands, the waste of the commerce of a superior race, whom perchance he never saw! 

The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights. After being awaked by the loud cracks the night of the 18th at Amherst (a man told me in the morning that he had seen a crack running across the plain (I saw it), almost broad enough to put his hand into; this was an exaggeration; it was not a quarter of an inch wide), I saw a great many the same forenoon running across the road in Nashua, every few rods, and also by our house in Concord the same day when I got home. So it seems the ground was cracking all the country over, partly, no doubt, because there was so little snow, or none (none at Concord). 

If the writer would interest readers, he must report so much life, using a certain satisfaction always as a point d'appui. However mean and limited, it must be a genuine and contented life that he speaks out of. They must have the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and joy.

1 P. M. — Surveying for Cyrus Jarvis. 

Snows more or less all day, making an inch or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1856

The cracking of the ground . . . at Amherst. . . . See December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights.")

The writer . . . must report so much life, . . . experience and joy .See October 18, 1856 ("All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); July 13, 1852 (A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.); September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.")

The voice of the wood.

December 19.

December 19, 2021

I rode back to Nashua in the morning  —   Knew the road by some yellow birch trees in a swamp and some rails set on end around a white oak in a pasture. These it seems were the objects I had noticed. 

In Nashua observed, as I thought, some elms in the distance which had been whitewashed. It turned out that they were covered from top to bottom, on one side, with the frozen vapor from a fall on the canal.

Walked a little way along the bank of the Merrimack, which was frozen over, and was agreeably reminded of my voyage up it. 

The night previous, in Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front. I saw several of these here in Nashua, and ran a bit of stubble into them but in no place more than five inches. This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights. 

Observed that the Nashua in Pepperell was frozen to the very edge of the fall, and even further in some places. 

Got home at 1.30 p. m. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the 15th there was not a particle of ice in it. In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks, which are already very numerous, but, having been made at different stages of the ice, they indicate very various thicknesses. Often one only an inch deep crosses at right angles another two and a half inches deep, the last having been recently made and indicating the real thickness of the ice. 

I advance confidently toward the middle, keeping within a few feet of some distinct crack two inches or more deep, but when that fails me and I see only cracks an inch or an inch and a half deep, or none at all, I walk with great caution and timidity, though the ice may be as thick as ever, but I have no longer the means of determining its thickness. 

The ice is so transparent that it is too much like walking on water by faith. 

The portion of the pond which was last frozen is a thinner and darker ice stretching about across the middle from southeast to northwest, i. e. from the shoulder of the Deep Cove to nearly midway between the bar and Ice-Fort Cove Cape. 

Close to the northwest end of this, there is a small and narrow place twenty feet long east and west, which is still so thin that a small stone makes a hole. The water, judging from my map, may[be] seventy or seventy-five feet deep there. It looks as if that had been the warmest place in the surface of the pond and therefore the last to yield to the frost king. 

Into this, or into the thinner ice at this point, there empties, as it were, a narrow meandering creek from near the western shore, which was nearly as late to freeze as any part. All this, I think, I have noticed in previous years. 

About the edge of all this more recent and darker ice, the thicker ice is white with a feathery frost, which seems to have been produced by the very fine spray, or rather the vapor, blown from the yet unfrozen surface on to the ice by the strong and cold wind. Here is where, so to speak, its last animal heat escaped, the dying breath of the pond frozen on its lips. It had the same origin with the frost about the mouth of a hole in the ground whence warm vapors had escaped. 

The fluid, timid pond was encircled within an ever-narrowing circle by the icy grasp of winter, and this is a trace of the last vaporous breath that curled along its trembling surface. Here the chilled pond gave up the ghost. 

As I stand here, I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? This sound, heard near at hand, is more simply animal and guttural, without resonance or reverberation, but, heard here from out the depths of the wood, it sounds peculiarly hollow and drum-like, as if it struck on a tense skin drawn around, the tympanum of the wood, through which all we denizens of nature hear. 

Thus it comes to us an accredited and universal or melodious sound; is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well. The owl only touches the stops, or rather wakes the reverberations. For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. It sounds now, hoo | hoo hoo (very fast) | hoo-rer | hoo. 

Withered leaves! this is our frugal winter diet, in stead of the juicy salads of spring and summer. I think I could write a lecture on "Dry Leaves," carrying a specimen of each kind that hangs on in the winter into the lecture-room as the heads of my discourse. They have long hung to some extent in vain, and have not found their poet yet. 

The pine has been sung, but not, to my knowledge, the shrub oak. Most think it is useless. How glad I am that it serves no vulgar use! It is never seen on the woodman's cart. The citizen who has just bought a sprout-land on which shrub oaks alone come up only curses it. But it serves a higher use than they know. Shrub oak! how true its name! 

Think first what a family it belongs to. The oak, the king of trees, is its own brother, only of ampler dimensions. The oaks, so famous for grandeur and picturesqueness, so prized for strength by the builder, for knees or for beams; and this is the oak of smaller size, the Esquimau of oaks, the shrub oak! The oaken shrub! I value it first for the noble family it belongs to. 

It is not like brittle sumach or venomous dogwood, which you must beware how you touch, but wholesome to the touch, though rough; not producing any festering sores, only honest scratches and rents.

Dr. Kane says in his "Arctic Explorations," page 21, that at Fiskernaes in Greenland "the springs, which well through the mosses, frequently remain unfrozen throughout the year."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1856

In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. See December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”)

Walden froze completely over last night. .. . See December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”); December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.”); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night.”)  Also December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle"); December 21, 1855 (" Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove. It will probably be finished to-night. (No, it proved too warm.)"); December 21, 1854 ("Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th");   December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.");  December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond [Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night."); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”).

The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. See November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) Also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”); February 3, 1856 (" [the Forth Branch] In one square rod, where they have got out ice and a thin transparent-ice has formed, I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer.")

I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks..See December 19, 1854 ("It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice; I look for cracks to see how thick it is.")

I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? Compare December 19, 1851 ("In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper's axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year")

For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. See June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”); July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains.); October 26, 1851 ("The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument ")

December 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 19

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

tinyurl.com/hdt561219

Late winter

February 26

February 26, 2022

Still clear and cold and windy. 

No thawing of the ground during the day. This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear.

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before. 

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice. You are surprised to see them lying with perpendicular edges a foot thick on bare, grassy upland where there is no other sign of water, sometimes wholly isolated by bare grass there.

When the weather became colder and froze, the new ice only reached part way up these cakes, which lay high and dry. It is therefore pretty good skating on the river itself and on a greater part of the meadows next the river, but it is interrupted by great cakes of ice rising above the general level near the shore.

Directly off Clamshell Hill, within four rods of it, where the water is three or four feet deep, I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams before the last freezing. Their open shells are strewn along close to the edge of the ice, and close together. They lie thickly around the edge of each small circle of thinner black ice in the midst of the white, showing where was open water a day or two ago. This shows that this is still a good place for clams, as it was in Indian days.

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. It appears to be composed two thirds of clay, and the rest a slate-colored fur and coarser white hairs, black-tipped, - too coarse for the deer mouse. Is it that of the rabbit? This mingled with small bones. A mass as long as one’s finger.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1855

Still clear and cold and windy. No thawing . . . very blustering and unpleasant. See February 25, 1855 ("Clear, cold, and windy. "); February 26, 1857 ("Cold and windy."); February 26, 1860 ("Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter

I see some cracks in a plowed field, — Depot Field cornfield, — maybe recent ones. I think since this last cold snap, else I had noticed them before.  See  February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up"); February 23, 1855 ("I see no cracks in the ground this year yet."); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 ("It would appear then that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather.")

Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up. See February 23, 1855 ("I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).”); February 24, 1855 ("The whole of the broad meadows is a rough, irregular checker-board of great cakes a rod square or more.”); February 28, 1855 ("Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice, often two or more upon each other and partly tilted up, a foot thick and one to two or more rods broad.")

Pretty good skating on the river itself and on a greater part of the meadows. See February 5, 1855 ("The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

I see where the musquash dived and brought up clams. See January 3, 1860 ("Melvin thinks that the musquash eat more clams now than ever, and that they leave the shells in heaps under the ice."); February 9, 1851 ("The last half of January was warm and thawy. The swift streams were open, and the muskrats were seen swimming and diving and bringing up clams, leaving their shells on the ice.");  April 1, 1860 ("The river was lowest for March yesterday . . . so low that the mouths of the musquash-burrows in the banks are exposed with the piles of shells before them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Musquash

Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. See February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence."); September 23, 1860 ("I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Pretty good skating  

interrupted by great cakes 

of ice near the shore.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Late winter

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550226

Rose-colored ice

February 23

Clear, but a very cold north wind. 

I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).

See at Walden this afternoon that the grayish ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge. 

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1855

Ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.  See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...") Also January 27, 1854 (" Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”)  See also note to January 24, 1855 (" Andromeda Ponds . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?")

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. See  February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”); February 26, 1855 ("I see some cracks in a plowed field”);  December 19, 1856 (“In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front.”); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 (“The ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before, this winter. It was so when I went to Amherst a winter or two ago.”)