What various kinds of ice there are!

January 26. 

P. M. — Over Cyanean Meadow on ice. 

These are remarkably warm and pleasant days. The water is going down, and the ice is rotting. 

I see some insects — those glow-worm-like ones — sunk half an inch or more into the ice by absorbed heat and yet quite alive in these little holes, in which they alternately freeze and thaw. 

At Willow Bay I see for many rods black soil a quarter of an inch deep, covering and concealing the ice (for several rods). This, I find, was blown some time ago from a plowed field twenty or more rods distant. This shows how much the sediment of the river may be increased by dust blown into it from the neighboring fields. 

Any ice begins immediately after it is formed to look dusty in the sun anywhere. 

This black soil is rapidly sinking to the bottom through the ice, by absorbing heat, and, water overflowing and freezing, it is left deep within thick ice. Or else, lying in wavelets on the ice, the surface becomes at last full of dark bottomed holes alternating with clear ice. 

The ice, having fairly begun to decompose, is very handsomely marked, more or less internally as it appears, with a sort of graphic character, or bird-tracks, very agreeable and varied. It appears to be the skeleton of the ice revealed, the original crystals (such as we see shoot on very thin ice just beginning) revealed by the rotting. 

Thus the peculiar knotty grain or knurliness of the ice is shown, — white marks on dark. These white waving lines within it look sometimes just like some white, shaggy wolf-skin. 

The meadow which makes up between Hubbard’s mainland and his swamp wood is very handsomely marked, or marbled, with alternate white and dark ice. The upper surface appears to be of one color and consistency, like a hard enamel, but very interesting white figures are seen through it. 

What various kinds of ice there are! 

This which lately formed so suddenly on the flooded meadows, from beneath which the water has in a great measure run out, letting it down, while a warm sun has shone on it, is perhaps the most interesting of any. It might be called graphic ice.

 It is a very pleasant and warm day, and when I came down to the river and looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1859

When I looked off to Merrick’s pasture, the osiers there shone as brightly as in spring, showing that their brightness depends on the sun and air rather than the season. See January 29, 1856 (“Another bright winter day.. . .The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, ”); March 14, 1856 ("As I return by the old Merrick Bath Place, on the river,. . .the setting sun falls on the osier row toward the road and attracts my attention. They certainly look brighter now and from this point than I have noticed them before this year, — greenish and yellowish below and reddish above, — . . . it is, on the whole, perhaps the most springlike sight I have seen.”)

What various kinds of ice there are! See January 31, 1859 ("We do not commonly distinguish more than one kind of water in the river, but what various kinds of ice there are!")