The river froze over last night.

 December 13

The river froze over last night, – skimmed over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1850

The river froze over last night, – skimmed over. See  December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over"):  December 13, 1856 ("The river is generally open again."); December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. . . . Going over black ice three or four inches thick . . . Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also."); December 16, 1850 ("The river is probably open again.") See also November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places."); November 30, 1855 ("River skimmed over behind Dodd’s and elsewhere. Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day."); November 30, 1858 ("The river may be said to have frozen generally last night."); December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow"); December 5, 1856 ("The river is well skimmed over in most places,"); December 6, 1856 ("The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. "); December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond"); December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

Early rising and a morning walk.

December 13

Walk early through the woods to Lincoln to survey. 

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday. River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. 

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? 

As we walked over the Cedar Hill, Mr. Weston asked me if I had ever noticed how the frost formed around a particular weed in the grass, and no other. It was a clear cold morning. We stooped to examine, and I observed, about the base of the larger pin-weed [cistus], the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. They were very conspicuous, dotting the grass white. But what was most remarkable was that, though there were plenty of other dead weeds and grasses about, no other species exhibited this phenomenon. 

I think it can hardly be because of the form of its top, and that therefore the moisture is collected and condensed and flows down its stem particularly. It may have something to do with the life of the root, which I noticed was putting forth shoots beneath. Perhaps this growth generates heat and so steam. He said that his cows never touched that weed. 

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. 

I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher's), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (?) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, perhaps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse.

Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1852

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? See  December 13, 1851 ("It seems an age since I took walks and wrote in my journal.");  See also January 10, 1851 ("I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily."); February 25, 1859 ("Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.”); Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

About the base of the [cicstus] the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. See November 11, 1858 ("Frost. . . forming a sort of fool’s cap of different thicknesses, or cockles, or sugar-plums. It seems it is so cool that the frost about the cistus does not melt all day."); See also November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character."); November 20, 1858 ("The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields."); November 30, 1856 ("Several inches of snow . . . Now see . . . the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust."); December 5 1856 ("The johnswort and the larger pinweed are conspicuous above the snow.");  December 6, 1856 ("Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides . . . What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! . . . Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed."); December 23, 1859 ("The pinweed — the larger (say thymifolia) — pods open, showing their three pretty leather-brown inner divisions open like a little calyx, a third or half containing still the little hemispherical or else triangular red dish-brown seeds.")

Pinweed (GoBotany)

I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. See December 5, 1852 ("Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is . . . distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter"); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years . . . and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”)

River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. See  December 13, 1850 (“The river froze over last night, — skimmed over;”);   December 13, 1857 ("[Goose Pond] and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny 'sides.’’); December 13, 1859 (“My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it.”);  See also December 4, 1853 ("Goose Pond apparently froze over last night, all but a few rods, but not thick enough to bear.”); December 8, 1853 ("Goose Pond now firmly frozen.”); 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 had neatly covered over a bird's nest and lined it warmly with  green moss. See  February 3, 1856 (“Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest, a double handful, consisting, four ninths, of fine shreds of inner bark, perhaps willow or maple; three ninths, the greenish moss, apparently, of button-bush; two ninths, the gray-slate fur, apparently, of rabbits or mice."); February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow. It is about five inches wide and three or four high, with one, if not two, small round indistinct entrances on the side . . . It is made very firmly and round, far more so than an oven-bird's nest, of the rye and grass stubble which was at hand under the snow, gnawed off to convenient lengths. A very snug and warm nest, where several might have lain very cosily under the snow in the hardest winter . . . Is it not the nest of a different mouse from the Mus leucopus of the woods?") See also note to October 8, 1853 (“Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest ”)

Maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse. Compare August 25, 1858 (“The short-tailed meadow mouse, or Arvicola hirsuta. . . . above, it is very dark brown, almost blackish, being browner forward. It is also dark beneath.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse ("Most of Thoreau's observations of wild mice are either the meadow mouse or deer mouse.  Thoreau calls the meadow mouse or  "short-tailed meadow mouse," Arvicola hirsuta -- now known as Microtus  pennsylvanicus,  meadow Vole.")

Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday . . . Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days. See November 16, 1852 ("Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow."); November 23, 1852 ("This morning the ground is white with snow, and it still snows. This is the first time it has been fairly white this season, though once before, many weeks ago, it was slightly whitened for ten or fifteen minutes.”) Νου.  29, 30, and Dec. 1, 1852 ("The snow which fell the 23d whitened the ground but a day or two." December 1, 1852 ("The snow keeps off unusually."); December 2, 1852 ("Still no snow."); December 12, 1852 ("Cold at last . . . I see snow on the mountains. Last night's rain was snow there, then.)"

Why have I ever 

omitted early rising 

and a morning walk?

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Early rising and a morning walk

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/hdt521213

These trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky.

December 13. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

There is a fine mizzling rain, which rests in small drops on your coat, but on most surfaces is turning to a glaze. 

Yet it is not cold enough for gloves even, and I think that the freezing may be owing to the fineness of the rain, and that, if it should rain much harder, even though it were colder, it would not freeze to what it fell on. It freezes on the railroad rails when it does not on the wooden sleepers. 

Already I begin to see, on the storm side of every twig and culm, a white glaze (reflecting the snow or sky), rhyming with the vegetable core. And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads, being not yet run together. 

There is little if any wind, and the fine rain is visible only against a dark ground. 

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. 

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves, somewhat as of lichens. They are of a brighter and deeper leather-color, richer and more wholesome, hanging more straightly down than ever. They look peculiarly clean and wholesome, their tints brought out and their lobes more flattened out, and they show to great advantage, these trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky. They are again as it were full-veined with some kind of brown sap.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1858
                 
And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads. See December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen .”)

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. See December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over."); December 18, 1858 ("The pond is merely frozen a little about the edges. I see various little fishes lurking under this thin, transparent ice, close up to the edge or shore, especially where the shore is flat and water shoal."); December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle."); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!"); December 25, 1858 (" Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves. See December 18, 1859 (“The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color.”) See also December 1, 1856 (“The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm,. . .Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath. ”);  December 13, 1856 (“A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . .The leaves have a little redness in them.”); December 21, 1856 (“The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.”);December 31, 1854 ("The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’); January 2, 1859 (“The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown”)

Leather-colored leaves

seen against the misty sky

in this mizzling rain.

What is lost in time is gained in power.

December 13. 

P. M. – To Goose Pond. 

This and the like ponds are just covered with virgin ice just thick enough to bear, though it cracks about the edges on the sunny sides. You may call it virgin ice as long as it is transparent. I see the water-target leaves frozen in under the ice in Little Goose Pond. 

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d), moving about in the same place under the ice, which I can not crack with my feet. The Emerson children see six under the ice of Goose Pond to-day. Apparently many winter in the mud of these ponds and pond-holes. 

In sickness and barrenness it is encouraging to believe that our life is dammed and is coming to a head, so that there seems to be no loss, for what is lost in time is gained in power. All at once, unaccountably, as we are walking in the woods or sitting in our chamber, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. 

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. 

I find one white birch standing and two fallen. The latter were faced at one end, for the numbers, and at the other rotten and broken off as short, apparently, as if sawed, because the bark so tears. At first I did not know but they had been moved, but thinking that if they had fallen where they stood I should find some hole or looseness in the ground at the rotten end, I felt for it and in each case found it; in one, also, the rotten point of the stake. 

Thus in six years two out of three stout (two-and-a-half-inch) birch stakes were flat. The hickory stake I set on R. W. E.'s town line in March, ’50, was flat this last summer, or seven years, but a white stake set in ’49–50 on Moore and Hosmer's lot was standing aslant this month. 

A surveyor should know what stakes last longest. 

I hear a characteristic anecdote respecting Mrs. Hoar, from good authority. Her son Edward, who takes his father's place and attends to the same duties, asked his mother the other night, when about retiring, 

“Shall I put the cat down cellar?” 

“No,” said she, “you may put her outdoors.” 

The next night he asked, “Shall I put the cat outdoors?” 

“No,” answered she, “you may put her down cellar.”

The third night he asked, “Shall I put the cat down cellar or outdoors?” 

“Well,” said his mother, “you may open the cellar door and then open the front door, and let her go just which way she pleases.” 

Edward suggested that it was a cold night for the cat to be outdoors, but his mother said, 

“Who knows but she has a little kitten somewhere to look after?” 

Mrs. H. is a peculiar woman, who has her own opinion and way, a strong-willed, managing woman.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1857

Water target or water shield: an aquatic plant, Brasenia schreberi, of thewater lily family, having purple flowers, floating, elliptic leaves, and ajellylike coating on the underwater stems and roots.

I see those same two tortoises (of Dec. 2d). See December 2, 1857 ("Measuring Little Goose Pond, I observed two painted tortoises moving about under the thin transparent ice.")

All at once, after a worthless fortnight, we cease to feel mean and barren. See December 13, 1851 ("By stepping aside from my chosen path so often, I see myself better and am enabled to criticise myself. Of this nature is the only true lapse of time.")

I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51. See  November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town."); November 18, 1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot."); November 24, 1851("Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial).")

A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak.

December 13. 

December 13, 2016

P. M. — To Hill and round by J. Hosmer woodland and Lee house. 

I see some of those great andromeda puffs still hanging on the twigs behind Assabet Spring, black and shrivelled bags. 

The river is generally open again. The snow is mostly gone. In many places it is washed away down to the channels made by the mice, branching galleries. 

I go through the lot where Wheeler's Irishmen cut last winter. Though they changed hands, they did not cut twice in a place, and the stump, instead of having a smooth surface, is roughly hacked. 

There is a fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak between Muhlenbergii Brook and the Assabet River watering-place, in the open land. It is about thirty- five feet high and spreads twenty-five, perfectly regular. It is very full of leaves, excepting a crescent of bare twigs at the summit about three feet wide in the middle. The leaves have a little redness in them.

There is a dense growth of young birches from the seed in the sprout-land lot just beyond on the riverside, now apparently two or three years old,

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1856

The river is generally open again.   See December 13, 1850 ("The river froze over last night, — skimmed over."); December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open."); December 13, 1859 (" Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also.)

Though they changed hands, they did not cut twice in a place. . .  See December 11, 1856 ("[Minott] complains that the choppers make a very long carf nowadays, doing most of the cutting on one side, to avoid changing hands so much.")

A  fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . . very full of leaves, . . . a little redness in them. See October 30, 1855 ("I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); October 21, 1855 ("Up Assabet. . . . [T]he scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! . . .)

There is a dense growth of young birches from the seed in the sprout-land lot . . . See December 8, 1859 ("The birches, seen half a mile off toward the sun, are the purest dazzling white of any tree.")

A sense of preparedness for the winter.

December 13

This morning it is snowing, and the ground is whitened. 

The countless flakes, seen against the dark evergreens like a web that is woven in the air, impart a cheerful and busy aspect to nature. It is like a grain that is sown, or like leaves that have come to clothe the bare trees. 

Now, by 9 o’clock, it comes down in larger flakes, and I apprehend that it will soon stop.

It does. 

How pleasant a sense of preparedness for the winter, — plenty of wood in the shed and potatoes and apples, etc., in the cellar, and the house banked up! 

Now it will be a cheerful sight to see the snows descend and hear the blast howl.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1855

The countless flakes, seen against the dark evergreens like a web that is woven in the air, impart a cheerful and busy aspect to nature. December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified . . .That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side . . .A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused."); December 15. 1855 ("This morning it has begun to snow apparently in earnest. The air is quite thick and the view confined. It is quite still, yet some flakes come down from one side and some from another, crossing each other like woof and warp apparently, as they are falling in different eddies and currents of air.")

How pleasant a sense of preparedness for the winter . . .Now it will be a cheerful sight to see the snows descend and hear the blast howl. See December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."); January 12, 1852 ("I sometimes think that I may go forth and walk hard . . . be much abroad in heat and cold, day and night; live more, expend more atmospheres, be weary often, etc., etc.” ); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin.");  March 8, 1859 ("If there is a good chance to be cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words to feel weather-beaten, you may consume the afternoon to advantage.").

Decembeer 13.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 13

Prepared for winter –

cheerful to see snows descend

and hear the blast howl.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A sense of preparedness for the winter.

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551213

A Book of the Seasons: December 13.

December 13.

Why have I ever
omitted early rising
and a morning walk?
December 13, 1852

Prepared for winter,
cheerful to see snows descend
and hear the blast howl.
December 13, 1855

Fine dewdrops frozen
on grass bent over the path
like a string of beads.
December 13, 1858


Leather-colored leaves
seen against the misty sky
in this mizzling rain.
December 13, 1858

And now I first take
that peculiar winter walk,
sky under my feet.
December 13, 1859

I see that the fox
has already taken the
same walk before me.
December 13, 1859

It was a clear cold morning. December 13, 1852

My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. December 13, 1859

It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. December 13, 1859

Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also December 13, 1859

I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time. December 13, 1859

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 © 2009-2020

Travelling locally

December 13, 2014

December 13.

While surveying to-day, saw much mountain laurel for this neighborhood in Mason's pasture, just over the line in Carlisle. Its bright yellowish-green shoots are agreeable to my eye.

We had one hour of almost Indian summer weather in the middle of the day. I felt the influence of the sun. It melted my stoniness a little. The pines looked like old friends again. Cutting a path through a swamp where was much brittle dogwood, etc., etc., I wanted to know the name of every shrub.

This varied employment, to which my necessities compel me, serves instead of foreign travel and the lapse of time. If it makes me forget some things which I ought to remember, it no doubt enables me to forget many things which it is well to forget.

By stepping aside from my chosen path so often, I see myself better and am enabled to criticise myself. Of this nature is the only true lapse of time.


It seems an age since I took walks and wrote in my journal, and when shall I revisit the glimpses of the moon? To be able to see ourselves, not merely as others see us, but as we are?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1851

This varied employment, to which my necessities compel me, serves instead of foreign travel and the lapse of time. See April 8, 1854 ("A day or two surveying is equal to a journey"); November 18 1851 ("The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work."); November 20, 1851("Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man")

My first true winter walk

December 13

December 13, 2015

P. M. — On river to Fair Haven Pond.

My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer.

It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it.

I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time.

Going over black ice three or four inches thick, only reassured by seeing the thickness at the cracks, I see it richly marked internally with large whitish figures. The work of crystallization.

Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also.

I see, in the Pleasant Meadow field near the pond, some little masses of snow, such as I noticed yesterday in the open land by the railroad causeway at the Cut. I could not account for them then, for I did not go to them, but thought they might be the remainders of drifts which had been blown away, leaving little perpendicular masses six inches or a foot higher than the surrounding snow in the midst of the fields. Now I detect the cause. 

These (which I see to-day) are the remains of snowballs which the wind of yesterday rolled up in the moist snow. The morning was mild, and the snow accordingly soft and moist yet light, but in the middle of the day a strong northwest wind arose, and before night it became quite hard to bear. 

These masses which I examined in the Pleasant Meadow field were generally six or eight inches high — though they must have wasted and settled considerably — and a little longer than high, presenting a more or less fluted appearance externally. They were hollow cylinders about two inches in diameter within, like muffs. Here were a dozen within two rods square, and I saw them in three or four localities miles apart, in almost any place exposed to the sweep of the northwest wind. There was plainly to be seen the furrow in the snow produced when they were rolled up, in the form of a very narrow pyramid, commencing perhaps two inches wide, and in the course of ten feet (sometimes of four or five only) becoming six or eight inches wide, when the mass was too heavy to be moved further. 

The snow had been thus rolled up even, like a carpet. This occurred on perfectly level ground and also where the ground rose gently to the southeast. The ground was not laid bare. That wind must have rolled up masses thus till they were a foot in diameter. 

It is certain, then, that a sudden strong wind when the snow is moist but light (it had fallen the afternoon previous) will catch and roll it up as a boy rolls up his ball. These white balls are seen far off over the fields.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1859

On river to Fair Haven Pond. See December 13, 1850 ("The river froze over last night, — skimmed over. "); December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open."); December 13, 1856 ("The river is generally open again.")  See also  December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen over thinly in most places . . . Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); December 5, 1856 ('The river is well skimmed over in most places, though it will not bear,"); December 7, 1856 (" Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”);  December 8, 1850 ("A week or two ago Fair Haven Pond was frozen and the ground was still bare. Now  the Pond is open and ground is covered with snow and ice."); December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden"); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business. "); December 14, 1854 ("The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautiful smooth mirror within an icy frame"); December 15, 1855 ("The boys have skated. a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to fbear a man yet.")

My first true winter walk is . . . where I cannot go in the summer. See February 10, 1860 ("No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice"); February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. Not till winter do we take possession of the whole of our territory. I have three great highways raying out from one centre, which is near my door."); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer.")

Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet. See February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, i. e. sky-reflecting, ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds . . .You have seen those purple fortunate isles in the sunset heavens, and that green and amber sky between them. Would you believe that you could ever walk amid those isles? You can on many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times. The ice is a solid crystalline sky under our feet."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Inverted Head experiment.

I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me. See December 8, 1854 (" Go over the fields on the crust to Walden, over side of Bear Garden. Already foxes have left their tracks. How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting!");  December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge . . . and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice.  "); December 14, 1855 ("Then I came upon a fox-track made last night, leading toward a farmhouse . . . Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell."); December 20, 1855 ("I see . . . in now hard, dark ice, the tracks apparently of a fox, made when it was saturated snow."); December 24, 1856 ("It is very pleasant walking thus before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light. . . .Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes, one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path"); December 25, 1858 (“I notice that a fox has taken pretty much my own course along the Andromeda Ponds.”); December 31, 1854 (" I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Fox

December 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  December 13

And now I first take

that peculiar winter walk –

sky under my feet.

(I see that the fox has already taken the same walk before me.)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, My first true winter walk 

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 © 2009-2024

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