A cold and windy Sunday.

February 3

Analyzed the crow blackbird’s nest from which I took an egg last summer, eight or ten feet up a white maple by river, opposite Island. Large, of an irregular form, appearing as if wedged in between a twig and two large contiguous trunks. From outside to outside it measures from six to eight inches; inside, four; depth, two; height, six. The foundation is a loose mass of coarse strips of grape-vine bark chiefly, some eighteen inches long by five eighths of an inch mikania stems, a few cellular river weeds, as rushes, sparganium, pipe-grass, and some soft, coarse, fibrous roots. The same coarse grape-vine bark and grass and weed stems, together with some harder, wiry stems, form the sides and rim, the bark being passed around the twig. The nest is lined with the finer grass and weed stems, etc. The solid part of the nest is of half-decayed vegetable matter and mud, full of fine fibrous roots and wound internally with grass stems, etc., and some grape bark, being an inch and a half thick at bottom. Pulled apart and lying loose, it makes a great mass of material. This, like similar nests, is now a great haunt for spiders. 

P. M. — Up North Branch. A strong northwest wind (and thermometer 11°), driving the surface snow like steam. About five inches of soft snow now on ice.

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank.

Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice. Half a dozen hog’s bristles might have been brought by some bird to its nest there. These made a very warm and soft nest. 

Get some kind of vireo’s nest from a maple far up the stream, a dozen feet high, pensile; within, almost wholly rather coarse grape-vine shreds; without, the same and bark, covered with the delicate white spider-nests (?), birch-bark shreds, and brown cocoon silk. 

Returning, see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree, from which at the same instant a small bird, perhaps a. creeper or nuthatch, flitted timidly away. The shrike was apparently in pursuit. 

We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back. 

How different this from sailing or paddling up the stream here in July, or poling amid the rocks! Yet still, 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. 

It is a cold and windy Sunday. 

The wind whistles round the northwest corner of the house and penetrates every crevice and consumes the wood in the stoves, — soon blows it all away. An armful goes but little way. Such a day makes a great hole in the wood-pile. It whisks round the corner of the house, in at a crevice, and flirts off with all the heat before we have begun to feel it. 

Some of the low drifts but a few inches deep, made by the surface snow blowing, over the river especially, are of a fine, pure snow, so densely packed that our feet make hardly any impression on them. 

River still tight at Merrick’s. 

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them. 

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1856

See many seeds of the hemlock on the snow still, and cones which have freshly rolled down the bank. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice. . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels."); January 24, 1856 (" A great many hemlock cones have fallen on the snow and rolled down the hill."); January 31, 1856 ("More hemlock cones also have fallen and rolled down the bank. ').

There comes a deep snow in midwinter, covering up the ordinary food of many birds and quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the seeds of pines and hemlocks and birch and alder, etc., far and wide over the surface of the snow for them.  See January 20,1860 ("What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter.")

I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer. See July 5, 1852 ("We are favored in having two rivers, flowing into one, whose banks afford different kinds of scenery, the streams being of different characters; one a dark, muddy, dead stream, full of animal and vegetable life, with broad meadows and black dwarf willows and weeds, the other comparatively pebbly and swift, with more abrupt banks and narrower meadows. To the latter I go to see the ripple, and the varied bottom with its stones and sands and shadows; to the former for the influence of its dark water resting on invisible mud, and for its reflections . . . We have become accustomed to the summer. It has acquired a certain eternity");  November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) See 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.”); December 19, 1856 ("The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom "); Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for ("While I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars")

You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. See January 1, 1856 ("I see the tracks apparently of a white rabbit, afterward many tracks of gray rabbits . . . Many have run in one course."); January 9, 1856 ("The rabbits have run in paths about the swamp."); January 10, 1856 ("A few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries and alders about the edge of the swamp.); see also November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch . . . The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”); December 22, 1850 ("I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere.”); December 22, 1853 ("Last night's sprinkling of snow does not now whiten the ground, except that here in the swamp it whitens the ice and already I see the tracks of rabbits on it."); December 22, 1858 ("I see where a rabbit has hopped across [Walden] in the slosh last night, making a track larger than a man’s ordinarily is."); February 17, 1854 ("The track of the white rabbit is gigantic compared with that of the gray one.")

February 3. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

Thin transparent ice –

I see the pebbly bottom 

same as in summer. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A cold and windy Sunday.

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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560203

Skating through snow.

February 3

This will deserve to be called the winter of skating. 

P. M. — Skating through snow. Skate up the river with Tappan in spite of the snow and wind. It has cleared up, but the snow is on a level strong three quarters of an inch deep (seemingly an inch), but for the most part blown into drifts three to ten feet wide and much deeper (with bare intervals) under a strong northwesterly wind. 

February 3

It is a novel experience, this skating through snow, sometimes a mile without a bare spot, this blustering day. 

On the whole the snow is but a slight obstruction. We skate with much more facility than I had anticipated; I would not have missed the experience for a good deal. 

We go up the Pantry Meadow above the old William Wheeler house, and come down this meadow again with the wind and snow dust, spreading our coat-tails, like birds, though somewhat at the risk of our necks if we strike a foul place. I find that I can sail on a tack pretty well, trimming with my skirts. Sometimes we have to jump suddenly over some obstacle which the snow has concealed, to save our necks. 

It is worth the while for one to look back against the sun and wind and see the other sixty rods off coming, floating down like a graceful demon in the midst of the broad meadow all covered and lit with the curling snow-steam.

Looking toward the sun and wind, you see a broad river half a mile or more in width, its whole surface lit and alive with flowing streams of snow, in form like the steam which curls along a river’s surface at sunrise, and in midst of this moving world sails down the skater, majestically, as if on the surface of water while the steam curls as high as his knees.

                           ***

I still recur in my mind to that skate of the 3lst. I was thus enabled to get a bird’s-eye view of the river, -— to survey its length and breadth within a few hours, connect one part (one shore) with another in my mind, and realize what was going on upon it from end to end, —to know the whole as I ordinarily knew a few miles of it only.

It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, —or thirty in all, —by some twenty low wooden bridges, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long, shallow lakes divided into reaches. 

These long causeways all under water and ice now, only the bridges peeping out from time to time like a dry eyelid. You must look close to find them in many cases. Mere islands are they to the traveller, in the waste of water and ice. Only two villages lying near the river, Concord and Wayland, and one at each end of this thirty miles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 3, 1855

I still recur in my mind to that skate of the 31st. See January 31, 1855 (“An unprecedented expanse of ice. At 10 A. M., skated up the river to explore further than I had been.”)  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating and compare April 6, 1856  (("There has been no skating the last winter, the snow having covered the ice immediately after it formed.")

A bird’s-eye view of the river . . . It is all the way of one character, — a meadow river, or dead stream,—Musketicook,—. . . long, shallow lakes divided into reaches. See April 7, 1853 ("The river is but a long chain of flooded meadows."); April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought."); July 30, 1859 ("It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill.")

February 3. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 3

This skating through snow

a mile without a bare spot

this blustering day. 

The skater sails midst

a moving world of snow-steam

as high as his knees.

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Skating through snow.

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-550203

It is never so cold but it melts somewhere.

December 24.

Walking to-day across the Great Meadows on the snow-crust looking toward the sun, I notice that the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain.

The snow catches only in the hollows and against the reeds and grass, and never rests there, but when it has formed a broad and shallow drift or a long and narrow one like a winrow on the ice, it blows away again from one extremity, and leaves often a thin, tongue-like projection at one end, some inches above the firm crust. 

I observe that there are many dead pine-needles sprinkled over the snow, which had not fallen before.

December 24, 2023

It is never so cold but it melts somewhere.  

It is always melting and freezing

at the same time

when icicles

form.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1850

Dec. 24. In walking across the Great Meadows to-day on the snow-crust, I noticed that the fine, dry snow which was blown over the surface of the frozen field, when I looked westward over it or toward the sun, looked precisely like steam curling up from its surface, as sometimes from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain.

The snow catches only in the hollows and against the reeds and grass, and never rests there, but when it has formed a broad and shallow drift or a long and narrow one like a winrow on the ice , it blows away again from one extremity, and leaves often a thin, tongue-like projection at one end, some inches above the firm crust .

I observe that there are many dead pine-needles sprinkled over the snow, which had not fallen before.

Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird At length he took him up in his bill, almost half as big as himself, and flew slowly off with his prey dangling from his beak .

I find that I had not associated such actions with my idea of birds . It was not birdlike .

It is never so cold but it melts somewhere. Our mason well remarked that he had sometimes known it to be melting and freezing at the same time on a particular side of a house; while it was melting on the roof the icicles [were] forming under the eaves. It is always melting and freezing at the same time when icicles are formed.

Our thoughts are with those among the dead into whose sphere we are rising, or who are now rising into our own. Others we inevitably forget, though they be brothers and sisters. Thus the departed may be nearer to us than when they were present. At death our friends and relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

 

The fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain. See  December 24, 1851 ("like steam when seen in the sun.");January 19, 1852 ("like the mist that rises from rivers in the morning”); February 16, 1852 ("like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind”);February 23, 1854 (“like steam curling from a roof”); February 5, 1855(“like the steam curling along the surface of a river.”).

Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird. See note to  December 24, 1858 ("Another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter!")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Northern Shrike

December 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 24

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/hdt12241850