I have been surveying most of the time for a month past and have associated with various characters.

December 31. 

P. M. —Surveying Goose Pond. 

After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. 

I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over, and that Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh; but ice under water is slow to thaw. It does not break up so soon as you would expect. 

Walking over it, I thought that I saw an old glove on the ice or slosh, but, approaching, found it to be a bull frog, flat on its belly with its legs stretched out. Touching it, I found it to be alive, though it could only partially open its eyes, and it hung motionless and flimsy like a rag in my hands. It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump, though there was then no freezing. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into, squeezing it through. 

Perhaps in such a warm rain the surface water becomes warmer than at the bottom, and so tempts the frogs up on to the ice through a hole. This one was wholly unscathed by any animal, but would surely have frozen stiff in the night. 

It is remarkable that in ordinary winter weather you will commonly find some of these small holes called air or breathing holes, in most ponds. But of whatever service they may be to the inhabitants of the water, they are not commonly formed by any undulation or upwelling from below, but as far as I have observed, by surface water flowing in through a crevice and wearing away the ice. 

Warm as it is, underneath all this slosh the ice seems as solid as ever. 

Under and attached to one of the lowermost branches of a white pine sapling in my old potato-field, I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground.

I have been surveying most of the time for a month past and have associated with various characters: 

First there was Staples, quick, clear, downright, and on the whole a good fellow, especially good to treat with rougher and slower men than himself, always meaning well.

An Irishman, rather slow and dull but well-meaning.

A rustic innkeeper, evidently rather close-fisted. 

George Heywood, a quiet, efficient man, very gentlemanly and agreeable to deal with; no pretense nor bluster, but simple, direct, and even sweet. 

___ ___,  a crooked stick, not readily apprehending your drift, referring to old deeds or places which he can’t find, thinking he is entitled to many more acres than belong to him, but never leaving his work or his cattle to attend to you. To be found commonly in his barn, if you come upon him suddenly before he can hide. Has some complaint or injury which deforms him somewhat, — has crooked his body, so that when you meet him in the street he looks as if he was going across the road. 

Another Irishman, one of the worst of his race, full of blarney, one of the would-be gentlemen, who, when treated according to his deserts, having complained unreasonably of my price, apologizes by saying that he meant nothing. “What's the use of having a tongue in your head if you don’t use it?” 

A common specimen of the Yankee, who commonly answers me with “exactly” or “just so.” 

___ ___, who was so afraid he should lose some land belonging to him that, though he had employed Rice to survey his small wood-lot of three acres, within a year, he working two or three days at it and setting at least fifty stakes about it, having also two plans of it, yet, seeing that I had by chance set a stake a foot or two one side of his line, thought there was some mistake and would have me measure his lot anew. 

It was but little labor, the lines were so open, — for a path was actually worn round the whole lot. He appears to go round it every day or two. When I wanted a straight pole, he was very scrupulous not to cut it from his neighbor's side of the line.

He did not seem able to understand a plan or deed, and had sold some of his land because he did not know that he had a good title to it. Everything I told him about his deed and plan seemed to surprise him infinitely and make him laugh with excess of interest. When I pointed out anything in the plan, he did not look at it, only at my finger and at me, and took my word for it. 

I told him that I wondered his last surveyor had not set a stake and stone in one place, according to his plan and deed, a perfectly plain case, the stump of the pitch pine referred to being left. He said he didn’t want to make bounds, and asked me if I should have set it there, to which I answered, “Yes, of course,” that was what I had been doing all my life, making bounds, or rather finding them, remaking what had been unmade, where they were away. 

He listened to me as if I were an oracle. He did not in the least understand my instrument, or “spy-glass,” as he called it, but had full faith that it knew the way straight through the thickest wood to missing bounds. 

He was so deaf I had to shout to him, and there were two more in his house deafer than he, — and I think only one other. The passers-by commonly hear them talking to one another within. I could never communicate with him when setting a stake or carrying the chain but by signs, and must first get his at tention to the signs. This I accomplished, when he had hold of the chain, by giving it several smart jerks. 

When he paid me at his house, I observed that all his money was in silver. 

He said he told H that we had been cutting off some of his land, and H said, "Is that right?” H has a good deal of large old wood which he will not cut. ___ ___says that he goes into it with his axe, and striking on an old tree says, “That ’s sound,” and so lets it stand, though when cut it turns out to be false-hearted. 

___ ___says that Rice worked two days on only two sides of his lot, but that he told him he would not charge him but two dollars if it took him a week. 

I found and used one of Rice’s poles, left on the ground all planed for the purpose, for he worked not without tools.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, December 31, 1857

Surveying Goose Pond. See Concord Library, Plan of the Goose Pond & Walden Pond Woodlots (so called) Belonging to the Heirs of John Richardson, Jr Esq ...Nov. & Dec. 1857

I am surprised to find Walden still closed since Sunday night, notwithstanding the warm weather since it skimmed over. See December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”); December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard, and it looks like frozen yeast somewhat.”); see also December 21, 1857 (" Walden and Fair Haven,. . .have only frozen just enough to bear me, “); December 27, 1857("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Annual ice-in at Walden

I am surprised to find . . .  Goose Pond bears, though covered with slosh.   See (December 27, 1857 ("Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet . . .in many places water has oozed out and spread over the ice, mixing with the snow and making dark places.”) See also December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.”)

After some rain yesterday and in the night, there was a little more snow, and the ground is still covered. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

It was evidently nearly chilled to death and could not jump. I looked round a good while and finally found a hole to put it into, squeezing it through. See  April 2, 1857 (" I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture. Carried it into Boston in my pocket, but could not thaw it into life. "); See also April 22, 1857 (“Near Tall's Island, rescue a little pale or yellowish brown snake that was coiled round a willow half a dozen rods from the shore. ”);  June 6, 1856 (“In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. Some inhuman fellow has cut off his tail. I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two.”); May 19, 1856 ("Saw a small striped snake in the act of swallowing a Rana palustris . . .. The snake, being frightened, released his hold, and the frog hopped off to the water. "); August 23, 1851 ("[ A snake] had a toad in his jaws, which he was preparing to swallow with his jaws distended to three times his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled"); July 23, 1856 ("Saw . . . a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, . . . I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. ")

I see a large hornet's nest, close to the ground. See December 29, 1856 (“By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown's fence crossing, I see a hornets' nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground.”); December 29, 1858 ("A large hornets’ nest thirty feet high on a maple over the river.”) See also  October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.”); October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone”) and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

December 31, 2017

All day a driving snow-storm.

December 29

We survive, in one sense, in our posterity and in the continuance of our race, but when a race of men, of Indians for instance, becomes extinct, is not that the end of the world for them? 

Is not the world forever beginning and coming to an end, both to men and races? 

Suppose we were to foresee that the Saxon race to which we belong would become extinct the present winter, — disappear from the face of the earth, -would it not look to us like the end, the dissolution of the world? 

Such is the prospect of the Indians. 

All day a driving snow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads. No school to-day. 

I cannot see a house fifty rods off from my window through [it] ; yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partly blown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. [In an ordinary snow-storm, when snowing fast, Jan. 1st, '54, I can see E. Wood's house, or about a mile.]

The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices under doors and side of windows. 

P. M. — Tried my snow-shoes. 

They sink deeper than I expected, and I throw the snow upon my back. When I returned, twenty minutes after, my great tracks were not to be seen. 

It is the worst snow-storm to bear that I remember. 

The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way, it is so thick. 

Yet in spite, or on account, of all, I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note. 

An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in each pocket of my greatcoat. 

What a contrast between the village street now and last summer! The leafy elms then resounding with the warbling vireo, robins, bluebirds, and the fiery hang bird, etc., to which the villagers, kept indoors by the heat, listen through open lattices. 

Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla,-- if they were to have any there. I wade to the post-office as solitary a traveller as ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. 

The snow is mid-leg deep, while drifts as high as one's head are heaped against the houses and fences, and here and there range across the street like snowy mountains. You descend from this, relieved, into capacious valleys with a harder bottom, or more fordable. 

The track of one large sleigh alone is visible, nearly snowed up. 

There is not a track leading from any door to indicate that the in habitants have been forth to-day, any more than there is track of any quadruped by the wood-paths. It is all pure untrodden snow, banked up against the houses now at 4 P. M., and no evidence that a villager has been abroad to-day. 

In one place the drift covers the front yard fence and stretches thence upward to the top of the front door, shutting all in, and frequently the snow lies banked up three or four feet high against the front doors, and the windows are all snowed up, and there is a drift over each window, and the clapboards are all hoary with it. 

It is as if the inhabitants were all frozen to death, and now you threaded the desolate streets weeks after that calamity. 

There is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the Mill-Dam, but one saddled horse on which a farmer has come into town. 

The cars are nowhere. 

Yet they are warmer, merrier than ever there within. 

At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' --or how deep the snow is on a level. 

Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they appear in the northern parts of the United States “early in December, or with the first heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high winds.” 

This day answers to that description exactly. 

The wind is northerly. 

He adds that "they are . . . universally considered as the harbingers of severe cold weather.” 

They come down from the extreme north and are common to the two continents; quotes Pennant as saying that they

 “inhabit not only Greenland but even the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen, where vegetation is nearly extinct, and scarcely any but cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore excites wonder, how birds, which are graminivorous in every other than those frost-bound regions, subsist: yet are there found in great flocks both on the land and ice of Spitzbergen.” 

P. also says that they inhabit in summer "the most naked Lapland Alps,” and “descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads and fields; on which account the Uplanders call them "hardwarsfogel,” hard-weather birds. 

Also P. says “they overflow [in winter] the more southern countries in amazing multitudes.” 

W. says their colors are very variable, "and the whiteness of their plumage is observed to be greatest towards the depth of winter.” 

Also W. says truly that they seldom sit long, “being a roving restless bird.” 

Peabody says that in summer they are “pure white and black,” but are not seen of that color here. 

Those I saw to-day were of that color, behind A. Wheeler's. 

He says they are white and rusty brown here. 

These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. I could hardly see them, the air was so full of driving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night? 

The woodchopper goes not to the wood to-day. His axe and beetle and wedges and whetstone he will find buried deep under a drift, perchance, and his fire all extinguished. 

As you go down the street, you see on either hand, where erst were front yards with their parterres, rolling pastures of snow, unspotted blankness swelling into drifts. All along the path lies a huge barrow of snow raised by the arctic mound-builder. It is like a pass through the Wind River Mountains or the Sierra Nevada, -- a spotless expanse of drifted snow, sloping upward over fences to the houses, deep banks all along their fronts closing the doors. It lies in and before Holbrook's piazza, dwarfing its columns, like the sand about Egyptian temples. The windows are all sealed up, so that the traveller sees no face of inhabitant looking out upon him. 

The housekeeper thinks with pleasure or pain of what he has in his larder. 

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. 

The farmer considers how much pork he has in his barrel, how much meal in his bin, how much wood in his shed. 

Each family, perchance, sends forth one representative before night, who makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or post-office to learn the news; i. e., to hear what others say to it, who can give the best account of it, best can name it, has waded farthest in it, has been farthest out and can tell the biggest and most adequate story; and hastens back with the news. 


I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. I was trying to get a point d'appui within him, a shelf to spring an arch from, to suggest some employment and aim for life. 

“Satisfied!” said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another, by George. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table; that will satisfy him, by gorry."

When I met him the other day, he asked me if I had made any improvement. 

Yet I could never by any manæuvring get him to take what is called a spiritual view of things, of life. He allowed that study and education was a good thing, but for him it was too late. He only thought of its expediency; nothing answering to what many call their aspirations. 

He was humble, if he can be called humble who never aspires. 

He cut his trees very low, close to the ground, because the sprouts that came from such stumps were better. Perhaps he distinguished between the red and scarlet oak; one had a pale inner bark, the other a darker or more reddish one. 

Without the least effort he could defend prevailing institutions which affected him, better than any philosopher, because he implicitly accepted them and knew their whole value. 

He gave the true reason for their prevalence, because speculation had never suggested to him any other. Looking round among the trees, he said he could enjoy himself in the woods chopping alone in a winter day; he wanted no better sport. 

The trees were frozen, -- had been sometimes, — but would but would frequently thaw again during the day. Split easier for it, but did not chop better. 

The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.

The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees.  Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1853

Wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almost takes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you.  See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face . . ."); December 25, 1855 ("Snow driving almost horizontally from the northeast and fast whitening the ground.”); February3, 1856 (“We go wading through snows now up the bleak river, in the face of the cutting northwest wind and driving snow-steam, turning now this ear, then that, to the wind, and our gloved hands in our bosoms or pockets. Our tracks are obliterated before we come back.”);  January 19, 1857 ("A snow-storm with very high wind all last night and to-day. . . .A fine dry snow, intolerable to face");

The cars are nowhere. At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, -- "Is there any train up or down?' See January 19, 1857 ("It is exceedingly drifted, so that the first train gets down about noon and none gets up till about 6 p. m.!"); February 18, 1856 ("Yesterday’s snow drifting. No cars from above or below till 1 P. M.”)

No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. See December 30, 1855 ("About 9 A. M. it ceases, and the sun comes out, and shines dazzlingly over the white surface. Every neighbor is shovelling out, and hear the sound of shovels scraping on door-steps.")

I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) near the depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note.These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. See December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic.");  March 20, 1852 ("As to the winter birds, — those which came here in the winter, - I saw . . .  in midwinter, the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself. See November 15, 1851 ("Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer."); December 24, 1853 ("How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough.") See also Walden (" One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living.")

Thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds.  See February 3, 1852 ("The scenery is wholly arctic. See if a man can think his summer thoughts now."); February 9, 1851 ("We have forgotten summer and autumn. Though the days are much longer, the cold sets in stronger than ever."); February 27, 1852 ("We have almost completely forgotten summer."); February 1, 1856 ("We have completely forgotten the summer.")

A January Thaw.

December 28

All day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. A January thaw. 

December 28, 2023

The snow rapidly dissolving; in all hollows a pond forming; unfathomable water beneath the snow. 

Went into Tommy Wheeler's house, where still stands the spinning-wheel, and even the loom, home-made. Great pitch pine timbers overhead, fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter, telling of the primitive forest here. 

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them, and they seem of a piece with it. 

Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water, and suspended a large piece of meat over it, for a bait for a mink, apparently.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1851

Tommy Wheeler house. See February 22, 1857 ("The Tommy Wheeler house, like the Hunt house, has the sills projecting inside.")

The white pines look greener than usual in this gentle rain, and every needle has a drop at the end of it. There is a mist in the air which partially conceals them. See November 29, 1850 ("The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. "); December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen perhaps, are very interesting, but wet my feet through very soon. A steady but gentle, warm rain."); See also December 31, 1851 ("The round greenish-yellow lichens on the white pines loom through the mist . . . They eclipse the trees they cover.");  May 13, 1852 ("A May storm, yesterday and to-day;. . . The fields are green now, and all the expanding leaves and flower-buds are much more beautiful in the rain, - covered with clear drops.") And A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

tinyurl.com/hdt511228

Do not despair of life.

December 27. 

Sunday. A clear, pleasant day. 

P. M. — To Goose Pond. 

Tree sparrows about the weeds in the yard. 

A snowball on every pine plume, for there has been no wind to shake it down. The pitch pines look like trees heavily laden with snow oranges. The snowballs on their plumes are like a white fruit. When I thoughtlessly strike at a limb with my hatchet, in my surveying, down comes a sudden shower of snow, whitening my coat and getting into my neck. You must be careful how you approach and jar the trees thus supporting a light snow. 

Partridges dash away through the pines, jarring down the snow.

Mice have been abroad in the night. We are almost ready to believe that they have been shut up in the earth all the rest of the year because we have not seen their tracks. I see where, by the shore of Goose Pond, one has pushed up just far enough to open a window through the snow three quarters of an inch across, but has not been forth. Elsewhere, when on the pond, I see in several places where one has made a circuit out on to the pond a rod or more, returning to the shore again. Such a track may, by what we call accident, be preserved for a geological period, or be obliterated by the melting of the snow. 

Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet. Near the north shore it cracks under the snow as I walk, and in many places water has oozed out and spread over the ice, mixing with the snow and making dark places. 

Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night. [Yes.] 

I frequently hear a dog bark at some distance in the night, which, strange as it may seem, reminds me of the cooing or crowing of a ring dove which I heard every night a year ago at Perth Amboy. It was sure to coo on the slightest noise in the house; as good as a watch-dog. The crowing of cocks, too, reminds me of it, and, now I think of it, it was precisely the intonation and accent of the cat owl's hoo' hoo-hoo-oo, dwelling in each case sonorously on the last syllable. They get the pitch and break ground with the first note, and then prolong and swell it in the last. 

The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one. 

It is better that these cheap sounds be music to us than that we have the rarest ears for music in any other sense. I have lain awake at night many a time to think of the barking of a dog which I had heard long before, bathing my being again in those waves of sound, as a frequenter of the opera might lie awake remembering the music he had heard. 

As my mother made my pockets once of Father's old fire-bags, with the date of the formation of the Fire Society on them, – 1794, – though they made but rotten pockets, – so we put our meaning into those old mythologies. I am sure that the Greeks were commonly innocent of any such double-entendre as we attribute to them. 

One while we do not wonder that so many commit suicide, life is so barren and worthless; we only live on by an effort of the will. Suddenly our condition is ameliorated, and even the barking of a dog is a pleasure to us. 

So closely is our happiness bound up with our physical condition, and one reacts on the other. Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. 

Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide. I saw this afternoon where probably a fox had rolled some small carcass in the snow. 

I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond, with a gray, flat, scaly bark, the bark split into long, narrow, closely adhering scales, the inner bark dull-reddish. At several feet from the ground it was one and five sixteenths inches in diameter, and I counted about twenty-nine indistinct rings. It seems a very close-grained wood. It appears, then, that some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man. 

I am disappointed by most essays and lectures. I find that I had expected the authors would have some life, some very private experience, to report, which would make it comparatively unimportant in what style they expressed themselves, but commonly they have only a talent to exhibit. The new magazine which all have been expecting may contain only another love story as naturally told as the last, perchance, but with out the slightest novelty in it. It may be a mere vehicle for Yankee phrases. 

What interesting contrasts our climate affords! In July you rush panting into a pond, to cool yourself in the tepid water, when the stones on the bank are so heated that you cannot hold one tightly in your hand, and horses are melting on the road. Now you walk on the same pond frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and feet, and see the water-target bleached and stiff in the ice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1857

Mice have been abroad in the night. See December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but 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. I see where the mouse has dived into a little hole in the snow, not larger than my thumb, by the side of a weed, and a yard further reappeared again, and so on alternately above and beneath. A snug life it lives.”); January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding."); February 9, 1856 (“I see a few squirrel-tracks, but no mice-tracks, for no night has intervened since the snow.”); January 15, 1857 (“Such is the delicacy of the impression on the surface of the lightest snow, where other creatures sink, and night, too, being the season when these tracks are made, they remind me of a fairy revel.”)

Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet. See December 13, 1857 (“This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges”)

Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it.”); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent.. .”); see also December 21, 1854 (“Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick.”); December 24, 1859 (“There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. ”); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, ..."); December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over"); December 26, 1853 (“Walden still open.”); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open . . ."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open . . .”).

The commonest and cheapest sounds,produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite. See December 31, 1853 (“Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear. The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired is coincident with an ecstasy.”); March 11, 1856; ("I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me”).

It is better that these cheap sounds be music to us than that we have the rarest ears for music. See August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush.”); September 7, 1851 ("My profession is. . .to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature.”)

So closely is our happiness bound up with our physical condition. See July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”); August 23, 1853 ("Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.")

You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. See December 13, 1857 (“In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren.”)

We do not wonder that so many commit suicide, life is so barren and worthless; we only live on by an effort of the will. See January 15, 1857 ("We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; ofttimes it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide!”)

I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond. . . . half the age of man .See February 8, 1858 ("I cut one, which measured eight and a half inches in circumference at the butt, and I counted pretty accurately forty-two rings. . . . It is a heavy and close-grained wood.")

Now you walk on the same pond frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and feet, and see the water-target bleached and stiff in the ice. See December 13, 1857 (“I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond.”)

First snow of any consequence.

December 26. 

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. 

At the double-chair December 26, 2017

Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1857

Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all. See December 26, 1853 ("The first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This is the first snow.”)

The little dipper must be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe?  See November 27, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says . . .that the little dipper is not a coot. . - but he appears not to know a coot”); April 24, 1856 ("Goodwin shot, about 6 P. M., and brought to me a cinereous coot (Fulica Americana) . . .”) See also December 26, 1853  ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.”)

***

The day after Christmas in the late afternoon we walk to the double-chair via the view, stopping there only briefly because of the strong northwest wind and cold.

Near the junction we hear a raven, turn and see it fly overhead. On the walk we also hear chickadees and downy or hairy woodpecker

Deep in winter woods

we turn to see the raven

soaring overhead.

At the view low clouds are illuminated by the westering sun–- brighter than the landscape below.

I  bushwhack up the mountain  and come across an area that has been trampled down by deer. There are deer bed is all around and she is calling me from above with the same news. As we hike up there are dozens and dozens of deer beds —More than I’ve ever seen in one place.

I use their tracks to find the easiest way up.

When we get to the double-chair, clear the chairs of ice and sit -- there is the first quarter moon in a clear sky. It is 16°.

As we come down the mountain trail, cross the ice on  middle pond and skid  down over the cliff trail, I am thinking what a gift to have this land and these walks together all these years.

What a gift to have 

this land our dogs and these walks--

these years together.

zphz 20171226

I find the true line.

December 25.  

Surveying for heirs of J. Richardson, G. Heywood and A. Brooks accompanying.

Skate on Goose Pond. 

Heywood says that some who have gone into Ebby Hubbard's barn to find him have seen the rats run over his shoulders, they are so familiar with him. This because I stopped to speak with Hubbard in his barn about bounds. 

I find the true line between Richardson and Mrs. Bigelow, which Captain Hubbard overlooked in 1840, and yet I find it by his own plan of 1827. Bigelow had set a split stone far into Richardson. After making the proper allowance for variation since 1827, I set my stake exactly on an old spotted line, which was overlooked in 1840 and is probably as old as the survey of ’27, or thirty years. It is on good-sized white pines, and is quite distinct now, though not blazed into the wood at first. 

It would not be detected unless you were looking for it.

H. D. Thoreau, JournaL December 25, 1857

I find the true line between Richardson and Mrs. Bigelow. See November 30, 1857 ("Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow's wood-lot are several hornbeams . . .”)

Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow.

December 24. 

It spits snow this afternoon. 

December 24, 2015

Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm. The snow bunting (Emberiza nivalis) methinks it is, so white and arctic, not the slate-colored. 

Saw also some pine grosbeaks, magnificent winter birds, among the weeds and on the apple trees; like large catbirds at a distance, but, nearer at hand, some of them, when they flit by, are seen to have gorgeous heads, breasts, and rumps (?), with red or crimson reflections, more beautiful than a steady bright red would be. The note I heard, a rather faint and innocent whistle of two bars. 

Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow. 

I had looked in vain into the west for nearly half an hour to see a red cloud blushing in the sky. The few clouds were dark, and I had given up all to night, but when I had got home and chanced to look out the window from supper, I perceived that all the west horizon was glowing with a rosy border, and that dun atmosphere had been the cloud this time which made the day's adieus. 

But half an hour before, that dun atmosphere hung over all the western woods and hills, precisely as if the fires of the day had just been put out in the west, and the burnt territory was sending out volumes of dun and lurid smoke to heaven, as if Phaeton had again driven the chariot of the sun so near as to set fire to earth.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1851

I had looked in vain into the west for nearly half an hour to see a red cloud blushing in the sky. See December 23, 1851 ("Now all the clouds grow black, and I give up to-night; but unexpectedly, half an hour later when I look out, having got home, I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red.")

Saw a flock of snowbirds on the Walden road. See March 20, 1852 ("As to the winter birds, — those which came here in the winter, -- I saw . . . in midwinter the snow bunting, the white snowbird, sweeping low like snowflakes from field to field over the walls and fences.”) See also December 10, 1854 (“See a large flock of snow buntings (quite white against woods, at any rate), though it is quite warm.”);   January 2, 1856 (“Crossing the railroad at the Heywood meadow, I see some snow buntings rise from the side of the embankment, and with surging, rolling flight wing their way up through the cut. . . . Returning, I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed, picking them from the snow,-- apparently flat on the snow, their legs so short, -- and, when I approach, alighting on the rail fence. They are pretty black, with white wings and a brown crescent on their breasts. They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather.”)

Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow. See December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”); December 29, 1855  (“I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice.”); January 24, 1856 (“The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer. . . .They have only an ice egg in them now. ”)

A pure and trackless white napkin covers the ground, and a fair evening is coming to conclude all. Sunset, new moon.

December 23.

December 23, 2016

This morning, when I woke, I found it snowing, the snow fine and driving almost horizontally, as if it had set in for a long storm, but a little after noon it ceased snowing and began to clear up, and I set forth for a walk. 

The snow which we have had for the last week or ten days has been remarkably light and dry. It is pleasant walking in the woods now, when the sun is just coming out and shining on the woods freshly covered with snow. 

At a distance the oak woods look very venerable. A fine, hale, wintry aspect things wear, and the pines, all snowed up, even suggest comfort. Where boughs cross each other much snow is caught, which now in all woods is gradually tumbling down. 

By half past three the sun is fairly out. I go to the Cliffs. There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree. 

I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it. 

Already a few clouds are glowing like a golden sierra just above the horizon. From a low arch the clear sky has rapidly spread eastward over the whole heavens, and the sun shines serenely, and the air is still, and the spotless snow covers the fields. The snow-storm is over, the clouds have departed, the sun shines serenely, the air is still, a pure and trackless white napkin covers the ground, and a fair evening is coming to conclude all. 

Gradually the sun sinks, the air grows more dusky, and I perceive that if it were not for the light reflected from the snow it would be quite dark. The woodchopper has started for home. I can no longer distinguish the color of the red oak leaves against the snow, but they appear black. The partridges have come forth to bud on the apple trees. 

Now the sun has quite disappeared, but the afterglow, as I may call it, apparently the reflection from the cloud beyond which the sun went down on the thick atmosphere of the horizon, is unusually bright and lasting. Long, broken clouds in the horizon, in the dun atmosphere, — as if the fires of day were still smoking there, — hang with red and golden edging like the saddle cloths of the steeds of the sun. 

Now all the clouds grow black, and I give up to-night; but unexpectedly, half an hour later when I look out, having got home, I find that the evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, — that dun atmosphere instead of clouds reflecting the sun, — and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 23, 1851

This morning, when I woke, I found it snowing, the snow fine and driving almost horizontally, as if it had set in for a long storm. See December 23, 1850 ("Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm.")  See also December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face . . .”)

There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree. See January 5, 1852 ("To-day the trees are white with snow . . . and have the true wintry look, on the storm side. Not till this has the winter come to the forest.”);  December 27, 1853 (“there is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night.”); February 21, 1854 (“The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees”); December 26, 1855 (“The ice is chiefly on the upper and on the storm side of twigs”); January 14, 1856 ("I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.“)

I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it. See December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set. How red its light at this hour!")

The woodchopper has started for home. See· December 15, 1856 (“the last strokes of the woodchopper, who presently bends his steps homeward; ”)

The evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red and just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.  See  January 23, 1852 ("And the new moon and the evening star, close together, preside over the twilight scene”); January 24, 1852 (“And now the crescent of the moon is seen, and her attendant star is farther off than last night.”); February  3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight, and the moment is passed when the light in the east (i. e. of the moon) balances the light in the west. Venus is now like a little moon in the west,"); June 15, 1852 ("The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. "); July 27, 1852 ("All glow on the clouds is gone, except from one higher, small, rosy pink isle. The solemnity of the evening sky! Just before the earliest star I turn round, and there shines the moon, silvering the small clouds which have gathered.”)

This day, yesterday

December 22.

December 22, 2017

Pollywogs under ice.

December 21. 

December 21, 2017

Walking over the Andromeda Ponds between Walden and Fair Haven, which have only frozen just enough to bear me, I see in springy parts, where the ice is thin, good-sized pollywogs wiggling away, scared by the sound of my steps and cracking of the ice. 

They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 21, 1857

Walking over the Andromeda Ponds between Walden and Fair Haven.  See December 21, 1856 ("I go across to the cliffs by way of the Andromeda Ponds."); December 21, 1855 ("to Fair Haven Pond. Return by Andromeda Ponds.")

Which have only frozen just enough to bear me. See December 21, 1855 ("I here take to the riverside. The broader places are frozen over, but I do not trust them yet. Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days.")

I see, where the ice is thin, good-sized pollywogs wiggling away. See March 13, 1855 ("I am surprised to see, not only many pollywogs through the thin ice of the warm ditches, but, in still warmer, stagnant, unfrozen holes in this meadow, half a dozen small frogs, probably Rana palustris.")

A hen-hawk circling over that wild region.

December 20. 

A. M. – To Easterbrooks Country with Ricketson. 

A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See its red tail. 

The cellar stairs at the old Hunt house are made of square oak timbers; also the stairs to the chamber of the back part of apparently square maple (?) timber, much worn. 

The generous cellar stairs!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 20, 1857

A hen-hawk circling over that wild region. See December 20, 1851 ("Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight.") See also February 16, 1854 ("See two large hawks circling over the woods by Walden, hunting, — the first I have seen since December 15th."); March 15, 1856 ("These hawks, as usual, began to be common about the first of March, showing that they were returning from their winter quarters.")

The old Hunt house. See February 17, 1857 ("To the old Hunt house. . . .The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine."); February 9, 1858 ("The stairs of the old back part are white pine or spruce, each the half of a square log; those of the cellar in front, oak, of the same form.")

Plowed grounds show white

December 16. 

Begins to snow about 8 A. M., and in fifteen minutes the ground is white, but it soon stops. 

Plowed grounds show white first.

H. .D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1857

In fifteen minutes the ground is white. See December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.”); see also December 9, 1855 ("At 8.30 a fine snow begins to fall, increasing very gradually, perfectly straight down, till in fifteen minutes the ground is white . . .”)

Plowed grounds show white first. See October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now."); November 24, 1858 (“Plowed ground is quite white”); November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”)

December 16.  See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

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 ©  2009-2023

A female bird hanging dead by the neck, disembowelled.

December 15. 

December 15, 2017

Within a day or two, I saw another partridge in the snare of November 28th, frozen stiff. 

To-day I see that some creature has torn and disembowelled it, removing it half a rod, leaving the head in snare, which has lifted it three or four feet in the air on account of its lightness. 

This last bird was either a female or young male, its ruff and bar on tail being rather dark-brown than black.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 15, 1857

A female or young male, its ruff and bar on tail being rather dark-brown than black. See November 28, 1857 ("A male bird hanging dead by the neck. . . had a collar or ruff about its neck, of large and conspicuous black feathers with a green reflection. This black is peculiar to the male, the female's being brown. . . .The tail-feathers had each a broad black bar, except the middle one, which was more mixed or grayish there. The bands of the females are said to be more brown, as is their collar.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge