The snow of yesterday.

December 21. 

A. M. — A fine winter day and rather mild. 

Solstice 2019

Ride to T. Wheeler's lot. 

See a red squirrel out in two places. Do they not come out chiefly in the forenoon? 

Also a large flock of snow buntings, fair and pleasant as it is. Their whiteness, like the snow, is their most remarkable peculiarity. 

The snow of yesterday having turned to rain in the afternoon, the snow is no longer (now that it is frozen) a uniformly level white, as when it had just fallen, but on all declivities you see it, even from a great distance, strongly marked with countless furrows or channels. These are about three inches deep, more or less parallel where the rain ran down. 

On hillsides these reach from top to bottom and give them a peculiar combed appearance. Hillsides around a hollow are thus very regularly marked by lines converging toward the centre at the bottom. 

In level fields the snow is not thus furrowed, but dimpled with a myriad little hollows where the water settled, and perhaps answering slightly to the inequalities of the ground. 

In level woods I do not see this regular dimpling — the rain being probably conducted down the trunks — nor the furrows on hillsides; the rain has been differently distributed by the trees. 

This makes a different impression from the fresh and uniformly level white surface of recently fallen snow. It is now, as it were, wrinkled with age. The incipient slosh of yesterday is now frozen, and makes good sleighing and a foundation for more.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 21, 1859

A fine winter day and rather mild. See note to December 21, 1854 ("We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year.")

A large flock of snow buntings, fair and pleasant as it is. Their whiteness, like the snow, is their most remarkable peculiarity. See December 10, 1854 ("See a large flock of snow buntings (quite white against woods, at any rate), though it is quite warm."); December 24, 1851 ("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") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting