A morning of creation.

December 31.

It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night. 

Now, at 8.30 A. M., I see, collected over the low grounds behind Mr. Cheney’s, a dense fog (over a foot of snow), which looks dusty like smoke by contrast with the snow. Though limited to perhaps twenty or thirty acres, it is as dense as any in August. 

This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. 

Clearing out the paths, which the drifting snow had filled, I find already quite a crust, from the sun and the blowing making it compact; but it is soft in the woods. 

9 A. M. — To Partridge Glade.

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night. 

In a hollow in the glade, a gray rabbit’s track, apparently, leading to and from a hole in the snow, which, following, and laying open, I found to extend curving about this pit, four feet through and under the snow, to a small hole in the earth, which apparently led down deep. 

At ten the frost leaves are nearly all melted. 

It is invariably the east track on the railroad causeway which has the least snow on it. Though it is nearly all blown off elsewhere on the causeway, Trillium Woods have prevented its being blown off opposite to them. 

The snow-plow yesterday cast the snow six feet one side the edge of the cars, and it fell thick and rich, evenly broken like well-plowed land. It lies like a rich tilth in the sun, with its glowing cottony-white ridges and its shadowy hollows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1855

One of the mornings of creation. See January 26, 1860 ("There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew . . .”)

The trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost. See January 6, 1853 ("This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost."; February 12, 1855 (“All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, —the ghosts of trees.”); February 14, 1855 ("There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails, — slight leaves or feathers, a quarter to a half inch long by an eighth wide, standing out around the slightest core . . . .These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

This [dense fog]accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side. See December 31, 1859 (''There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind.")

I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow . . . also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks. See December 31, 1854 ("I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river") See also December 27, 1853 ("It is surprising what things the snow betrays . . . no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals.")