These trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky.

December 13. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

There is a fine mizzling rain, which rests in small drops on your coat, but on most surfaces is turning to a glaze. 

Yet it is not cold enough for gloves even, and I think that the freezing may be owing to the fineness of the rain, and that, if it should rain much harder, even though it were colder, it would not freeze to what it fell on. It freezes on the railroad rails when it does not on the wooden sleepers. 

Already I begin to see, on the storm side of every twig and culm, a white glaze (reflecting the snow or sky), rhyming with the vegetable core. And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads, being not yet run together. 

There is little if any wind, and the fine rain is visible only against a dark ground. 

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. 

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves, somewhat as of lichens. They are of a brighter and deeper leather-color, richer and more wholesome, hanging more straightly down than ever. They look peculiarly clean and wholesome, their tints brought out and their lobes more flattened out, and they show to great advantage, these trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky. They are again as it were full-veined with some kind of brown sap.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1858
                 
And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads. See December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen .”)

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. See December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over."); December 18, 1858 ("The pond is merely frozen a little about the edges. I see various little fishes lurking under this thin, transparent ice, close up to the edge or shore, especially where the shore is flat and water shoal."); December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle."); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!"); December 25, 1858 (" Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves. See December 18, 1859 (“The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color.”) See also December 1, 1856 (“The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm,. . .Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath. ”);  December 13, 1856 (“A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . .The leaves have a little redness in them.”); December 21, 1856 (“The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.”);December 31, 1854 ("The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’); January 2, 1859 (“The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown”)

Leather-colored leaves

seen against the misty sky

in this mizzling rain.