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| December 28,2018 |
P. M. — To Walden.
The earth is bare. I walk about the pond looking at the shores, since I have not paddled about it much of late years. What a grand place for a promenade!
Methinks it has not been so low for ten years, and many alders, etc., are left dead on its brink. The high blueberry appears to bear this position, alternate wet and dry, as well as any shrub or tree. I see winterberries still abundant in one place.
That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light, is only three feet wide by one foot high; yet there even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge, and just off this shore the pickerel are most abundant. This is the warm and sunny side to which any one — man, bird, or quadruped — would soonest resort in cool weather.
I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. One a little further off utters the phoebe note.
There is a foot more or less of clear open water at the edge here, and, seeing this, one of these birds hops down as if glad to find any open water at this season, and, after drinking, it stands in the water on a stone up to its belly and dips its head and flirts the water about vigorously, giving itself a good washing. I had not suspected this at this season. No fear that it will catch cold.
The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. And I notice, as I sit here at this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, though it may be a good distance off toward the middle, the water here is very much agitated. The ice is about six inches thick.
Aunt Jane says that she was born on Christmas Day, and they called her a Christmas gift, and she remembers hearing that her Aunt Hannah Orrock was so disconcerted by the event that she threw all the spoons outdoors, when she had washed them, or with the dish water.
Father says that he and his sisters (except Elizabeth) were born in Richmond Street, Boston, between Salem and Hanover Streets, on the spot where a bethel now stands, on the left hand going from Hanover Street. They had milk of a neighbor, who used to drive his cows to and from the Common every day.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1858
That rocky shore under the pitch pines which so reflects the light. See December 25, 1858 (“[T]he rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end.. . . reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, as if the pond showed its teeth.”)
Chickadees lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think, — the cunning and innocent little birds. See November 9, 1850 (“The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note”); December 1, 1853 (“They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”); December 3, 1856 (“And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you. ”)
The ice cracks suddenly with a shivering jar like crockery or the brittlest material, such as it is. See January 23, 1858 (“Walden, I think, begins to crack and boom first on the south side,. . . like the cracking of crockery. It suggests the very brittlest material, as if the globe you stood on were a hollow sphere of glass and might fall to pieces on the slightest touch. . . . as if the ice were no thicker than a tumbler, though it is probably nine or ten inches. ”); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”) Also Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. . . . Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should . . . The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.”)
Father says that he and his sisters were born in Richmond Street, Boston, See December 27, 1855 ("Recalled this evening, with the aid of Mother, the various houses (and towns) in which I have lived and some events of my life.”); December 26, 1855 ("In a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them.”)
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