February 6.
P. M. —To Walden.
The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds.
Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden, Within three rods of where I cut on the 18th of January. The snow was about an inch deep only, so fast has it been converted into snow ice. I was obliged to make a hole about four feet, square in order to get out a cake, and with great care to approach the water evenly on all sides, so that I might have the less chopping to do after the water began to rush in, which would wet me through. It was surprising with what violence the water rushed in as soon as a hole was made, under the pressure of that body of ice.
On the 18th of January the ice had been about seven inches thick here, about four being snow ice and, about three water ice. It was now 19 inches thick, 11 1/2 being snow ice and 7 1/2+ water ice. Supposing it an inch thick only here when the snow began to fall on it (for it began to fall almost immediately), it had increased since that time 6 1/2+ inches downward and 11 1/2— upward.
Since the 18th of January, when there was ten inches of snow on it, it had increased about 4 1/2 downward and about 7 1/2 upward. I was not prepared to find that any ice had formed on the under side since the 18th.
The water ice was very crystalline. This ice was thicker than the snow has been in open fields any time this winter, yet this winter has been remarkable for the abundance of snow.
I also cut through and measured in the Ice Heap Cove. The snow ice was 12 1/2, and the water ice about 6, but perhaps a little was broken off in cutting through the last. In all about 18 1/2 inches.
I was not prepared to find it thickest in the middle. Earlier in the winter, or on the 18th January, it was thickest near the shore.
Goodwin says that he has caught two crows this winter in his traps set in water for mink, and baited with fish. The crows, probably put to it for food and looking along the very few open brooks, attracted by this bait, got their feet into the traps.
He thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks by the Rock, and that muskrat do not come out at all this weather. I saw a clamshell opened, and they say minks do not open them (?).
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1856
The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds. See December 12, 1852 ("The buds of the aspen are large and show wool in the fall.");February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out.")
Cut a cake of ice out of the middle of Walden,. . .On the 18th of January the ice had been about seven inches thick here,. . . It was now 19 inches thick. See January 18, 1856 ("I clear a little space in the snow, which is nine to ten inches deep over the deepest part of the pond, and cut through the ice, which is about seven inches thick. . ."); February 16, 1856 ("Where I measured the ice in the middle of Walden on the 6th I now measure again, or close by it, though without cutting out the cake. I find about 11 1/4; (probably about same as the 6th, when called 11 1/2) of snow ice and 21 in all, leaving 10 1/4 clear ice, which would make the ice to have increased beneath through all this thickness and in spite of the thaws 2 3/4 inches. "); March 11, 1856 ("Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick. . .. The clear ice has therefore gained 2 1/2 inches beneath since the 16th of February."); March 19, 1856 ( "In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now, "); March 25, 1856 ("The whole mass in the middle is about twenty-four inches thick, but I scrape away about two inches of the surface with my foot, leaving twenty-two inches."); March 30, 1856 (" It is just twenty-four inches thick in the middle . . .") See also February 3, 1853 ("The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches.")
He thinks that what I call muskrat-tracks are mink-tracks.. See February 4, 1854 ("See the tracks of a mink, in the shallow snow along the edge of the river, looking for a hole in the ice."); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); December 6. 1856 ("I see here and there very faint tracks of musk-rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy,"); February 28, 1857 ("Does the mink ever leave a track of its tail? ")
February 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6
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 © 2009-2022
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