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.”
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?
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");
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
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.")
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