No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common..

February 20.

P. M. - To Flint's Pond. 

The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter, though not so cold as a few weeks ago. 

I notice, in the low ground covered with bushes near Flint’s Pond, many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other's tracks, or many times back and forth  six inches wide. This, too, is probably their summer habit. 

The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria (?). 

I saw a mole (?) run along under the bank by the edge of the pond, but it was only by watching long and sharply that I glimpsed him now and then, he ran so close to the ground and under rather than over any thing, as roots and beds of leaves and twigs, and yet without making any noise. No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common. 

I have been astonished to observe before, after holding them in my hand, how quickly they will bury themselves and glide along just beneath the surface, whatever it may be composed of, - grass or leaves or twigs or earth or snow. . . . The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1852

The last two or three days have been among the coldest in the winter. See January 2, 1856 ("Probably the coldest morning yet, our thermometer 6° below zero at 8 A.M."); January 2, 1860 ("8 a.m. -15° below . . . the coldest thus far."); January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording"); February 6, 1855 ("The coldest morning this winter. Our thermometer stands at -14° at 9 A.M"); February 7, 1854 ("This morning was one of the coldest in the winter."); February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time."); February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock.");; February 8, 1851 ("Coldest day yet; – 22 ° at least (all we can read ), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day."); February 19, 1858 ("Coldest morning this winter by our thermometer, -3° at 7.30.")

Many little rabbit-paths in the snow, where they have travelled in each other's tracks, or many times back and forth six inches wide. See January 2, 1856 ("There were many white rabbits’ tracks in those woods, and many more of the gray rabbit . . . The latter run very much in the same path, which is well trodden, and you would think you were in the midst of quite a settlement of them.")

The rock by the pond is remarkable for its umbilicaria. See February 20, 1857 ("I am that rock by the pond-side.");  April 16, 1855 ("At Flint’s, sitting on the rock."). See also January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer.")

No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common. See February 20, 1855 ("Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles.. . .The cat brings in a mole from time to time, and we see where they have heaved up the soil in the meadow. We see the tracks of mice on the snow in the woods, or once in a year one glances by like a flash through the grass or ice at our feet, and that is for the most part all that we see of them."); February 25, 1860 ("Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice."); March 8, 1860 ("I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least."); April 6, 1859 (" I see where moles have rooted in a meadow and cast up those little piles of the black earth."); April 11, 1858 ("Yesterday saw moles working in a meadow, throwing up heaps") ;June 6, 1856 ("In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star-nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. . . . It is blue-black with much fur, a very thick, plump animal, apparently some four inches long. . . .I carry him along to plowed ground, where he buries himself in a minute or two.")