December 8, 2023
7 a. m. — How can we spare to be abroad in the morning red, to see the forms of the leafless eastern trees against the dun sky and hear the cocks crow, when a thin low mist hangs over the ice and frost in meadows?
I have come along the riverside in Merrick's pasture to collect for kindling the fat pine roots and knots which the spearers dropped last spring, and which the floods have washed up. Get a heaping bushel-basketful.
The thin, trembling sheets of imperfectly cemented ice or ice-crystals, loosened by the warmth of the day, now go floating down the stream, looking like dark ripples in the twilight and grating against the edges of the firm ice. They completely fill the river where it is bridged with firmer ice below.
I observe a place on the shore where a small circle of the withered grass was feathered white with frost, and, putting down my hand, felt the muskrat's hole in the bank which was concealed to my eye. I often see this, and at woodchuck-holes. Yet you may see the same over the edge of many a hole, however shallow.
At midday (3 p. m.) see an owl fly from toward the river and alight on Mrs. Richardson's front-yard fence. Got quite near it, and follow it to a rock on the heap of dirt at Collier's cellar.
A rather dark brown owl above (with a decided owl head (and eyes), though not very broad), with longitudinal tawny streaks (or the reverse), none transverse, growing lighter down the breast, and at length clear rusty yellowish or cream color beneath and about feathered feet. Wings large and long, with a distinct large black spot beneath; bill and claws, I think, black. Saw no ears. Kept turning its head and great black eyes this way and that when 'it heard me, but appeared not to see me. Saw my shadow better, for I approached on the sunny side.
I am inclined to think it the short-eared owl, though I could see no ears, though it reminded [me] of what I had read of the hawk owl. It was a foot or more long and spread about three feet. Flew somewhat flappingly, yet hawk-like. Went within two or three rods of it.
Walden at sunset.
The twilights, morn and eve, are very clear and light, very glorious and pure, or stained with red, and prolonged, these days. But, now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky, -— a. whiteness as of silver plating, while the sky is yellowish in the horizon and a dusky blue above.
Though the water is smooth enough, the trees are lengthened dimly one third in the reflection. Is this phenomenon peculiar to this season?
[ The next night but one just like this, a little later. I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside. ]
Goose Pond now firmly frozen. It had melted since it froze before. I see there a narrow open channel in the ice, two and a half rods long and six inches wide, leading straight to a muskrat-house by the shore, apparently kept open by them.
Snow will soon come, in a measure to restore the equilibrium between night and day by prolonging the twilight.
I was amused by R. W. E.’s telling me that he drove his own calf out of the yard, as it was coming in with the cow, not knowing it to be his own, a drove going by at the time.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1853
I often see this, and at woodchuck-holes. Yet you may see the same over the edge of many a hole, however shallow. See November 13, 1858 (“There is frost . . .thick and white and handsome around the throat of every hole and chink in the earth’s surface,. . . so that you would think at first it was the entry to some woodchuck’s, or squirrel’s, or mouse’s, retreat. But it is the great dormant earth gone into winter quarters here, the earth letting off steam after the summer’s work is over.”)
See an owl fly from toward the river and alight on Mrs. Richardson's front-yard fence. See December 16, 1853 (“Some creature has killed ten, at least, of H. Wheeler's doves and left them together in the dove-house. I think it was my short-eared owl, which flew thither.”)
I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside. See December 11, 1853 ("In the case of the reflections. . .we see terrestrial objects with the sky or heavens for a background or field."); December 9, 1856 ("As I look now over the pond westward, I see in substance the now bare outline of Fair Haven Hill a mile beyond, but in the reflection I see not this, only the tops of some pines, which stand close to the shore but are invisible against the dark hill beyond.") See also October 16, 1858 (“[Objects] appear in the reflection as they would if viewed from that point on the surface from which they are reflected to my eye, so that it is as if I had another eye placed there to see for me.”)
Goose Pond now firmly frozen. See December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.”); December 13, 1857 (“This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges”);(December 27, 1857 ("Goose Pond is not thickly frozen yet . . .in many places water has oozed out and spread over the ice, mixing with the snow and making dark places.”)
He drove his own calf out of the yard, a drove going by at the time. See December 8, 1850 (“”A week ago I saw cows being driven home from pasture. Now they are kept at home. Here 's an end to their grazing.); October 28, 1858 ("Cattle coming down from up country.")
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