The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.

February 27.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. 

It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has overflowed the ice for many rods a few feet in width. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th, and elsewhere on the main stream since January 7th, as it still is. 

That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. 

On the 25th I saw a load of wood drawn by four horses up the middle of the river above Fair Haven Pond.  On that day, the 25th, they were cutting the last of Baker’s the greater part of it last winter, and this was the wood they were hauling off. 

I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter. 

Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1856

The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. ... See February 12, 1856 ("forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, . . .twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!”) Compare February 27, 1852 ("the North Branch, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters. . . “); February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least."); February 27, 1857 ("The river has skimmed over again in many places.").