He who fishes a pond first in the season expects to succeed best.

January  20. 

P. M. — To Walden.

I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow in the yard — and some are large and bushlike — for its seeds, their well-filled granary now. There are a few tracks reaching from weed to weed, where some have run, but under the larger plants the snow is entirely trodden and blackened, proving that a large flock has been there and flown. 

Ah, our indescribable winter sky, pure and continent and clear, between emerald (?) and amber (?), such as summer never sees! What more beautiful or soothing to the eye than those finely divided or minced clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton-batting, now reaching up from the west above my head! Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends are curved like spray or wisps, All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint. 

No sooner has Walden frozen thick enough to bear than the fishermen have got out their reels and minnows, for he who fishes a pond first in the season expects to succeed best.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1853

I see where snowbirds in troops have visited each withered chenopodium that rises above the snow. See August 31, 1859 (" Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds."); January 6. 1858 ("I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow"); see also January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them!")

Our indescribable winter sky, pure and continent and clear, See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind . . .serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."); December 25, 1858 ("In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour."); January 27, 1860 ("What hieroglyphics in the winter sky!"); June 24, 1852 ("What could a man learn by watching the clouds?")

No sooner has Walden frozen thick enough to bear than the fishermen have got out their reels and minnows. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it"); January 6, 1853 (Walden apparently froze over last night. . . .. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking.")