A few simple colors now prevail.

December 21.

Going to the post-office at 9 A. M. this very pleasant morning, I hear and see tree sparrows on Wheildon’s pines, and just beyond scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company, from near the base of a small elm within three feet of me. 

The former dashes off with a loud rippling of the wing, and the creeper flits across the street to the base of another small elm, whither I follow. At first he hides behind the base, but ere long works his way upward and comes in sight. He is a gray-brown, a low curve from point of beak to end of tail, resting flat against the tree. 

P. M. —Via Hubbard’s Grove and river to Fair Haven Pond. Return by Andromeda Ponds. 

Hubbard’s barren pasture under Fair Haven Hill, whose surface now tinged with the pale leather or cinnamon color of the second-sized pinweed, which thickly covers it. 

I here take to the riverside. The broader places are frozen over, but I do not trust them yet. Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days. Already some eager fisherman has been here, this morning or yesterday, and I hear that a great pickerel was carried through the street. 

I see, close under the high bank on the east side, a distinct tinge of that red in the ice for a rod. 

I remark the different pale colors to which the grasses have faded and bleached. Those coarse sedges amid the button- bushes are bleached particularly light. Some, more slender, in the Pleasant Meadow, is quite light with singular reddish or pinkish radical blades making a mat at the base. Some dense sedge or rushes in tufts in the Andromeda Ponds have a decided greenish tinge, somewhat like well-cured hay. 

A few simple colors now prevail.

Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  December 21, 1855

The broader places are frozen over, but I do not trust them yet. ...See A Book of the Seasons: First Ice.

A few simple colors now prevail. See December 21, 1854 ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color.") See also December 20, 1851 ("Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape."); December 20, 1854 ("It has been a glorious winter day, its elements so simple, —the sharp clear air, the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice.")

Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove. See December 20, 1858 (“Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle.”; December 21, 1854 (“Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick.”). Also A Book of the Seasons, First Ice.

To Pleasant Meadow

July 10.

Jully 10, 2014

2 p. m. — To Pleasant Meadow via Lincoln Bridge. 

The Festuca ovina is a peculiar light-colored, whitish grass, as contrasted with the denser dark-green sod of pastures; as on the swells by the tin-hole near Brister's. 

Entering J. Baker's great mud-hole, this cloudy, cool afternoon, I was exhilarated by the mass of cheerful bright-yellowish light reflected from the sedge (Carex Pennsylvanica) growing densely on the hillsides laid bare within a year or two there. 

It is of a distinct cheerful yellow color even this overcast day, even as if they were reflecting a bright sunlight, though no sun is visible. It is surprising how much this will light up a hillside or upland hollow or plateau, and when, in a clear day, you look toward the sun over it late in the afternoon, the scene is incredibly bright and elysian. 

These various lights and shadows of the grass make the charm of a walk at present. 

I find in this mud-hole a new grass, Eatonia Pennsylvanica, two and a half feet high. 

Juncus, apparently marginatus, say ten days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 10, 1860