Midwinter travel; missing lives and landmarks

February 19.

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. Sam Potter’s father, moving into town, turned off into the fields with a four-horse team as soon as he had crossed Wood’s Bridge and went directly across to Deacon Hubbard’s.

When Wood’s Bridge was carried off up stream, it was landed against Hubbard’s land. Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice from town, just below the bridge since built.

The water is about a foot deep on the Jimmy Miles road. E. Conant thinks that the Joe Miles causeway is rather worse than Hubbard’s in respect to water. Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing, and a mulberry tree whose stump remains, were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by. 

The only way for Conant to come to town when the water is highest is by Tarbell’s and Wood’s on the stone bridge, about a mile and a half round. 

It is true when there is no snow we cannot so easily see the birds, nor they the weeds.

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. “Can’t understand them.” “Would you have us return to the savage state?” etc., etc. A criticism true enough, it may be, from their point of view. 

But the fact is, the earnest lecturer can speak only to his like, and the adapting of himself to his audience is a mere compliment which he pays them. 

If you wish to know how I think, you must endeavor to put yourself in my place. If you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is another affair. 

I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1855

Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences. See December 29, 1855 ("Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls. . .")

Showed me where his grandfather, Nathan Hosmer, who lived in the old house still standing on Conantum, was drowned when crossing the river on the ice. See February 12, 1860 ("Next above Good Fishing Bay and where the man was drowned, I pass Black Rock Shore, and over the Deep Causeway I come to Drifted Meadow.")


I think it was about a week ago that I saw some dead honey-bees on the snow. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees, dead and sunk half an inch below the crust.")

Many will complain of my lectures that they are transcendental. See February 13, 1860 ("Read to them a lecture on "Education," naming that subject, and they will think that they have heard some thing important, but call it "Transcendentalism," and they will think it moonshine.")