Measuring snow.

January 16. 

8 A. M. — Down railroad, measuring snow, having had one bright day since the last flake fell; but, as there was a crust which would bear yesterday (as to-day), it cannot have settled much. 

The last storms have been easterly and northeasterly. Why so much (five and one half inches) more now in the woods than on the 12th, as compared with open fields? Was the driving snow caught in a small wood, or did it settle less in the rain there, or since the snow on account of bushes? 

I hear flying over (and see) a snow bunting, -- a clear loud tcheep or tcheop, sometimes rapidly trilled or quavered, -- calling its mates. 

With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. 

I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. 

The snow is much deeper in yards, roads, and all small inclosures than in broad fields.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1856

I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. See January 12, 1856 ("Though the snow is only ten inches deep on a level, farmers affirm that it is two feet deep"); January 29, 1856 ("Measure the snow in the same places measured the 16th and 23d, . . . the snow is probably about fourteen on a level in open fields now, or quite as deep as at any time this winter. . . . Since the 13th there has been at no time less than one foot on a level in open fields."); February 12, 1856 ("From January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”) Compare December 30, 1853 ("I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday in Abiel Wheeler's wood by the railroad, near the pond. In going a quarter of a mile it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches. Then went to Potter's wood,. . .and paced straight through a level wood where there was no drift perceptible, measuring at every ten paces for two hundred paces, and the average was twenty and one half inches.")

January 16  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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