Old growth blueberry bushes.

February 8.

 P. M. — To Walden and Goose Pond. 

The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden (Wheeler’s), and two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. 

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker. You can almost drive an axe through it at one blow. In many places about the shore it is open a dozen feet wide, as when it begins to break up in the spring. 

I observe, as usual, the shore heaved up near where my house was. It is evidently the result of its thawing. It is lifted up with an abrupt, nearly perpendicular edge nearly a foot high (but looks as if it had been crowded up by the ice), while the part under water probably has not been frozen, or has not been thawed. But in the water close to the shore I observe singular dimples in the sand, sometimes perfectly circular tunnels, etc., as if a stone had been turned round and round and then lifted out. Perhaps this ridge thus lifted up remains somewhat loose through the summer, not falling entirely back, and the next winter, therefore, freezes yet deeper and is heaved up yet higher, and so gains a little from year to year. Thus a pond may create a barrier for itself along an adjacent meadow. When it thus lifts up the shore, it lifts the trees with it, and they are upset.

 At Little Goose Pond, where I am surprised to find the ice no thicker than at Walden, I raked in the middle and brought up the branches of white pines two inches thick, but perfectly sound, four rods or more from the shore. The wood has been cut about seventeen years on one side, and at least twelve or fourteen on the other, pines that formerly fell into the pond. They would long since decayed on land.

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. I see many which have thirty rings of annual growth. These grow quite on the edge, where they have escaped being cut with the wood, and have all the appearance of age, gray and covered with lichens, commonly crooked, zigzag, and intertwisted with their neighbors,— so that when you have cut one off it is hard to extract it, —and bending over nearly to the ice, with lusty young shoots running up straight by their sides. I cut one, which measured eight and a half inches in circumference at the butt, and I counted pretty accurately forty-two rings. From another I cut a straight and sound club, four feet long and six and a half inches in circumference at the small end. It is a heavy and close-grained wood. 

This is the largest of the Vaccinieoa which grows here, or is described in Gray’s Botany. Some may have borne fruit before I was born, or forty and odd years ago. Older than my cultivated fruit trees. Nobody could tell me what kind of wood it was. 

The biggest panicled andromeda that I saw thereabouts was only a little more than an inch in diameter and apparently not half as old. It has a much more yellow wood, with a twist to its grain. 

Mrs. Monroe says that her mother respected my grandfather very much, because he was a religious man. She remembers his calling one day and inquiring where blue vervain grew, which he wanted, to make a syrup for his cough, and she, a girl, happening to know, ran and gathered some.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, February 8, 1858

The ground is so completely bare this winter.  See February 8, 1857 ("The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. ")

Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. See April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry.")

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick. See January 27, 1854 ("Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”); January 23, 1856 ("Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, ")

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. See December 27, 1857 ("I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond, . . . some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

Measuring to see how the snow has settled.

January 23.

Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, formed by the snow sinking the first under the water and freezing with the water. The same is the case at Walden. 

To get ice at all clear or transparent, you must scrape the snow off after each fall. Very little ice is formed by addition below, such a snowy winter as this. 

There was a white birch scale yesterday on the snowed-up hole which I made in the very middle of Walden. I have no doubt they blow across the widest part of the pond. 

When approaching the pond yesterday, through my bean-field, I saw where some fishermen had come away, and the tails of their string of pickerel had trailed on the deep snow where they sank in it. I afterward saw where they had been fishing that forenoon, the water just beginning to freeze, and also where some had fished the day before with red-finned minnows, which were frozen into an inch of ice; that these men had chewed tobacco and ate apples. All this I knew, though I saw neither man nor squirrel nor pickerel nor crow. 

I measure, this afternoon, the snow in the same fields which I measured just a week ago, to see how it has settled. It has been uniformly fair weather of average winter coldness, without any thaw. 

West of railroad it averages 11 1/2+. (On the 16th it was 12 1/4.) East of railroad, 14 inches (16th, 15 5/8). Or average of both 12 1/3+ — say 12 1/2. It has settled, therefore, in open fields 1 1/10 inches, showing how very solid it is, as many have remarked. 
Not allowing for what of the light snow above the crust may have drifted against the railroad embankment (though I measured on both sides of it). 

Trillium Woods, 13 1/4+;16th it was 17. Has settled 3 3/4.  It seems, then, that, as it lies light in the wood at first, it settles much faster there, so that, though it was nearly 3 1/2 inches the deepest there a week ago, it is less than 1 inch the deepest there now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1856

We wait until 730 to go out to take advantage of the full moon. It is clear and still and the snow seems light but not deep off we go this time to the northwest corner and down into the flood plain but not to the falls instead up the cliff to the corner in the stream but not to the fort instead south towards the big house until we can see its lights and then back over to the regular trail then up the ski trail mostly just zigzagging with edges of my pack boots in the snow until we get to the Ridge Loop Trail. Right at our property boundary Jane has just cleaned the dogs' feet when Acorn goes dancing crazy as if trying to shake one of her feet off Jane says it is because she is cold warms her feet and we head back. We are using the red lights which work in the shadows but in the moonlight you can see the whole woods around you. It turns out when we get back that it has been seven or 8°. I did not notice the cold. ~ zphx 20160123

Rose-colored ice

February 23

Clear, but a very cold north wind. 

I see great cakes of ice, a rod or more in length and one foot thick, lying high and dry on the bare ground in the low fields some ten feet or more beyond the edge of the thinner ice, washed up by the last rise (the 18th).

See at Walden this afternoon that the grayish ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge. 

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1855

Ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.  See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges ...") Also January 27, 1854 (" Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”)  See also note to January 24, 1855 (" Andromeda Ponds . . .This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?")

I see no cracks in the ground this year yet. See  February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”); February 26, 1855 ("I see some cracks in a plowed field”);  December 19, 1856 (“In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front.”); December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); January 11, 1859 (“The ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before, this winter. It was so when I went to Amherst a winter or two ago.”)

The sounds of skating in the dark.

February 2

Quite clear and colder, yet it could not refrain from snowing half an inch more in the night, whitening the ground now, as well as the ice. 

Brown is again filling his ice-house, which he commenced to do some weeks ago. 

I got another skate this afternoon, in spite of the thin coating of snow. This  then, is the fourth day of this rare skating, though since yesterday noon the slight whitening of snow has hurt it somewhat. 

The river at 4 P. M. has fallen some eight or ten inches. In some places there are thin flakes of ice standing on their edges within an inch or two of each other over more than a quarter of an acre, either ice blown into that position (which in this case is not likely, since there is a great deal too much for that surface) or crystallized so while the water suddenly ran off below. 

There are large tracts of thin white ice, where the water ran off before it had time to freeze hard enough to bear. This last half-inch of snow, which fell in the night, is just enough to track animals on the ice by. 

All about the Hill and Rock I see the tracks of rabbits which have run back and forth close to the shore repeatedly since the night. . . .

Snowed again half an inch more in the evening, after which, at ten o'clock, the moon still obscured, I skated on the river and meadows. The water falling, the ice on the meadow occasionally settles with a crack under our weight. It is pleasant to feel these. swells and valleys occasioned by the subsidence of the water, in some cases pretty abrupt. 

Also to hear the hollow, rumbling sound in such rolling places on the meadow where there is an empty chamber beneath, the water being entirely run out  Our skates make but little sound in this coating of snow about an inch thick, as if we had on woollen skates  and we can easily see our tracks in the night. 

We seem thus to go faster than before by day, not only because we do not see (but feel and imagine) our rapidity, but because of the impression which the mysterious muffled sound of our feet makes. 

In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl, and the distant rumbling of approaching or retreating cars sounds like a constant waterfall. 

Now and then we skated into some chippy, crackling white ice, where a superficial puddle had run dry before freezing hard, and got a tumble. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1855

Brown is again filling his ice-house, which he commenced to do some weeks ago. See January 23, 1856 ("Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, "); January 27, 1854 ("Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”);  February 8, 1858 ("The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick."); February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden this afternoon that the grayish ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.")

The moon still obscured, I skated on the river and meadows. See February 3, 1852 ("The landscape covered with snow two feet thick, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white."); February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.") See also 
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February Moonlight  and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

Now and then we skated into some chippy, crackling white ice . . . and got a tumble. See January 15, 1855 ("Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet. The river-channel dark and rough with fragments of old ice")

In the meanwhile we hear the distant note of a hooting owl, and the distant rumbling of approaching or retreating cars sounds like a constant waterfall. See February 3, 1852 ("I hear my old acquaintance, the owl . . . Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle, my owl sounds hoo hoo hoo, ho-O."); January 4, 1859 ("When it grew late . . . I mistook the distant sound of the locomotive whistle for the hoot of an owl. It was quite like it.");  December 9, 1856 ("I hear only the strokes of a lingering woodchopper at a distance, and the melodious hooting of an owl, which is as common and marked a sound as the axe or the locomotive whistle."); December 15, 1856 ("The melodious hooting of the owl, heard at the same time with the yet more distant whistle of a locomotive."); See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Voice of the Barred Owl

February 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 2

This coating of snow

mysterious muffled sounds

the moon still obscured. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The sounds of skating in the dark

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550202

The color of Walden ice.

January 27.

Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side. These lumps are not large enough to show the color. 

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. The river ice inclines to a more opaque white. 

Comparing the lumps, Walden ice was, you might say, more crystalline than the river, but both showed the effect of heat more than the Barrett ice of last year, the bubbles being very much elongated and advanced toward the honeycomb stage, while in the Barrett ice they were spherical and there were wide clear spaces.

I have some good friends who neither care what I think nor mind what I say. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 27, 1854

Walden ice has a green tint close by, but is distinguished by its blueness at a distance. See January 9, 1852 ("Is, then, the blue water of Walden snow-water?)"; January 24, 1852 ("Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown"); February 29, 1852 ("The ice on Walden is of a dull white as I look directly down on it, but not half a dozen rods distant on every side it is a light-blue color)"; January 30, 1854 ("Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers"); December 19, 1856 ("[T]he ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep.")

And Walden , The Pond in Winter ("Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers.")

A good friend. See October 23, 1852 ("My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am.")

January 27.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  January 27

\

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The color of Walden ice.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025