Last night was so cold that the river closed up

December 19. 

December 19, 2023

Skated a half-mile up Assabet and then to foot of Fair Haven Hill. This is the first tolerable skating. Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before. 

First there is the snow ice on the sides, somewhat rough and brown or yellowish spotted where the water overflowed the ice on each side yesterday, and next, over the middle, the new dark smooth ice, and, where the river is wider than usual, a thick fine gray ice, marbled, where there was probably a thin ice yesterday. Probably the top froze as the snow fell.

I am surprised to find how rapidly and easily I get along, how soon I am at this brook or that bend in the river, which it takes me so long to reach on the bank or by water. I can go more than double the usual distance before dark. 

It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice; I look for cracks to see how thick it is. 

Near the island I see a muskrat close by swimming in an open reach. He was always headed up-stream, a great proportion of the head out of water, and his whole length visible, though the root of the tail is about level with the water. Now and then he stopped swimming and floated down-stream, still keeping his head pointed up with his tail. It is surprising how dry he looks, as if that back was never immersed in the water. 

It is apt to be melted at the bridges about the piers, and there is a flow of water over the ice there. There is a fine, smooth gray marbled ice on the bays, which apparently began to freeze when it was snowing night before last. There is a marbling of dark where there was clear water amid the snow. Now and then a crack crosses it, and the water, oozing out, has frozen on each side of it two or three inches thick, and some times as many feet wide. These give you a slight jolt. 

Off Clamshell I heard and saw a large flock of Fringilla linaria over the meadow. No doubt it was these I saw on the 15th. ( But I saw then, and on the 10th, a larger and whiter bird also; may have been the bunting.) 

Suddenly they turn aside in their flight and dash across the river to a large white birch fifteen rods off, which plainly they had distinguished so far. I afterward saw many more in the Potter swamp up the river. They were commonly brown or dusky above, streaked with yellowish white or ash, and more or less white or ash beneath. 

Most had a crimson crown or frontlet, and a few a crimson neck and breast, very handsome. Some with a bright-crimson crown and clear-white breasts. I suspect that these were young males. 

They keep up an incessant twittering, varied from time to time with some mewing notes, and occasionally, for some unknown reason, they will all suddenly dash away with that universal loud note (twitter) like a bag of nuts. They are busily clustered in the tops of the birches, picking the seeds out of the catkins, and sustain themselves in all kinds of attitudes, sometimes head downwards , while about this. 

Common as they are now, and were winter before last, I saw none last winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1854

Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before. See December 20, 1854 ("It is very fine skating for the most part. All of the river that was not frozen before, and therefore not covered with snow on the 18th, is now frozen quite smoothly; but in some places for a quarter of a mile it is uneven like frozen suds, in rounded pan cakes, as when bread spews out in baking.") See also note to December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

A large flock of Fringilla linaria over the meadow. Common as they are now, and were winter before last , I saw none last winter. See December 9, 1852 ("They suddenly dash away from this side to that in flocks, with a tumultuous note, half jingle, half rattle, like nuts shaken in a bag, or a bushel of nutshells, soon returning to the tree they had forsaken on some alarm. They are oftenest seen on the white birch, apparently feeding on its seeds, scattering the scales about. "); December 11, 1855 (" The snow will be three feet deep, the ice will be two feet thick, and last night, perchance, the mercury sank to thirty degrees below zero. . . .But under the edge of yonder birch wood will be a little flock of crimson-breasted lesser redpolls, busily feeding on the seeds of the birch and shaking down the powdery snow! . . .There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll