15 December 1851 – 21 December 1851

The pitch pine woods on the right of the Corner road. A piercing cold afternoon, wading in the snow. R. Rice was going to Sudbury to put his bees into the cellar for fear they would freeze. He had a small hive; not enough to keep each other warm. The pitch pines hold the snow well. It lies now in balls on their plumes and in streaks on their branches, their low branches rising at a small angle and meeting each other. A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a sombre twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade. The winter morning is the time to see the woods and shrubs in their perfection, wearing their snowy and frosty dress. Even he who visits them half an hour after sun- rise will have lost some of their most delicate and fleet- ing beauties. The trees wear their snowy burden but coarsely after midday, and it no longer expresses the character of the tree. I observed that early in the morn- ing every pine-needle was covered with a frosty sheath, but soon after sunrise it was all gone. You walk in the pitch pine wood as under a penthouse. The stems and branches of the trees look black by contrast. You wan- der zigzag through the aisles of the wood, where stillness and twilight reign. Improve every opportunity to express yourself in writing, as if it were your last. I do not know but a pine wood is as substantial and as memorable a fact as a friend. Iam more sure to come away from it cheered, than from those who come nearest to being my friends. It is unfortunate for the chopper and the walker when the cold wind comes from the same side with the sun, for then he cannot find a warm recess in which to sit. It is pleasant to walk now through open and stately white pine woods. ‘Their plumes do not hold so much snow commonly, unless where their limbs rest or are weighed down on toa neighboring tree. It is cold but still in their midst, where the snow is untracked by man, and ever and anon you see the snow-dust, shone on by the sun, falling from their tops and, as it strikes the lower limbs, producing innumerable new showers. For, as after a rain there is a second rain in the woods, so after a light snow there is a second snow in the woods, when the wind rises. The branches of the white pine are more horizontal than those of the pitch, and the white streaks of snow on them look accordingly. I perceive that the young black oaks and the red oaks, too, me- thinks, still keep their leaves as well as the white. ‘This piercing wind is so nearly from the west this afternoon that, to stand at once in a sheltered and a sunny place, you must seek the south-southeast side of the woods. What slight but important distinctions between one creature and another! What little, but essential, advan- tages one enjoys over another! I noticed this afternoon a squirrel’s nest high in the fork of a white pine. Thither he easily ascends, but many creatures strive in vain to get at him. The lower branches of the hemlock point down, and even trail on the ground, the whole tree making a per- fect canopy. When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder. One of the best men I know often offends me by utter- ing made words —the very best words, of course, or din- ner speeches, most smooth and gracious and fluent re- partees, a sort of talking to Buncombe, a dash of polite conversation, a graceful bending, as if I were Master Slingsby of promising parts, from the University. O would you but be simple and downright! Would you but cease your palaver! It is the misfortune of being a gentleman and famous. The conversation of gentle- men after dinner! One of the best of men and wisest, to whom this diabolical formality will adhere. Repeat- ing himself, shampooing himself! Passing the time of day, as if he were just introduced! No words are so tedi- ous. Never a natural or simple word or yawn. It pro- duces an appearance of phlegm and stupidity in me the auditor. I am suddenly the closest and most phlegmatic of mortals, and the conversation comes to naught. Such speeches as an ex-Member of Congress might make to an ex-Member of Parliament. To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what pur- pose will you explain? My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that com- pany, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them.

In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper’s axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year, men having come out for fuel to the forests, — as if men had stolen forth in the arctic night to get fuel to keep their fires a-going. Men go to the woods now for fuel who never go there at any other time. Why should it be so pleasing to look into a thick pine wood where the sunlight streams in and gilds it? The sound of the axes far in the horizon sounds like the dropping of the eaves. Now the sun gets suddenly without a cloud, and with scarcely any redness following, so pure is the atmosphere, — only a faint rosy blush — along the horizon.

Saturday. 2 p. Ms —To Fair Haven Hill and plain below. Saw a large hawk circling over a pine wood below me, ‘and screaming, apparently that he might discover his prey by their flight. Travelling ever by wider circles. What a symbol of the thoughts, now soaring, now descending, taking larger and larger circles, or smaller and smaller. It flies not directly whither it is bound, but advances by circles, like a courtier of the skies. No such noble pro- gress! How it comes round, as with a wider sweep of thought! But the majesty is in the imagination of the beholder, for the bird is intent on its prey. Circling and ever circling, you cannot divine which way it will incline, till perchance it dives down straight as an arrow to its mark. It rises higher above where I stand, and I see with beautiful distinctness its wings against the sky, — pri- maries and secondaries, and the rich tracery of the out- line of the latter (?), its inner wings, or wing-linings, within the outer, — like a great moth seen against the sky. A will-o’-the-wind. Following its path, as it were through the vortices of the air. The poetry of motion. Not as preferring one place to another, but enjoying each as long as possible. Most gracefully so surveys new scenes and revisits the old. As if that hawk were made to be the symbol of my thought, how bravely he came round over those parts of the wood which he had not surveyed, taking in a new segment, annexing new terri- tories! Without “heave-yo!” it trims its sail. It -goes about without the creaking of a block. That America yacht of the air that never makes a tack, though it rounds the globe itself, takes in and shakes out its reefs without a flutter,— its sky-scrapers all under its control. Holds up one wing, as if to admire, and sweeps off this way, then holds up the other and sweeps that. If there are two concentrically circling, it is such a regatta as South- ampton waters never witnessed. Flights of imagination, Coleridgean thoughts. So a man is said to soar in his thought, ever to fresh woods and pastures new. Rises as in thought. Snow-squalls pass, obscuring the sun, as if blown off from a larger storm. Since last Monday the ground has [been] covered half a foot or more with snow; and the ice also, before I have had a skate. Hitherto we had had mostly bare, frozen ground. Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape. I view it now from the cliffs. The red shrub oaks on the white ground of the plain beneath make a pretty scene. Most walkers are pretty effectually shut up by the snow. I observe that they who saw down trees in the woods with a cross-cut saw carry a mat to kneel on. It is no doubt a good lesson for the woodchopper, the long day alone in the woods, and he gets more than his half dollar a cord. Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste. The red oak leaves are even more fresh and glossy than the white. A clump of white pines, seen far westward over the shrub oak plain, which is now lit up by the setting sun, a soft, feathery grove, with their gray stems indistinctly seen, like human beings come to their cabin door, stand- ing expectant on the edge of the plain, impress me with a mild humanity. The trees indeed have hearts: With a certain affection the sun seems to send its farewell ray far and level over the copses to them, and they silently receive it with gratitude, like a group of settlers with their children. ‘The pines impress me as human. A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon. Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree. The dull and blundering behavior of clowns will as surely polish the writer at last as the criticism of men of thought. It is wonderful, wonderful, the unceasing demand that Christendom makes on you, that you speak jrom a moral point of view. Though you be a babe, the cry is, Repent, repent. The Christian world will not admit that a man has a just perception of any truth, unless at the same time he cries, “ Lord be merciful to me a sinner.” What made the hawk mount? Did you perceive the manceuvre? Did he fill himself with air? Before you were aware of it, he had mounted by his spiral path into the heavens. Our country is broad and rich, for here, within twenty miles of Boston, I can stand in a clearing in the woods and look a mile or more, over the shrub oaks, to the dis- tant pine copses and horizon of uncut woods, without a house or road or cultivated field in sight. Sunset in winter from a clearing in the woods, about Well Meadow Head. They say that the Indians of the Great Basin live on the almonds of the pine. Have not I been fed by the pine for many a year? Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset.

Sunday. My difficulties with my friends are such as no frankness will settle. ‘There is no precept in the New Testament that will assist me. My nature, it may [be], is secret. Others can confess and explain; I cannot. It is not that I am too proud, but that is not what is wanted. Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that results to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize; and natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fit- ted to sympathize there is no veil and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining. I feel sometimes as if I could say to my friends, “‘ My friends, I am aware how I have outraged you, how I have seemingly preferred hate to love, seemingly treated others kindly and you unkindly, sedulously concealed my love, and sooner or later expressed all and more than all my hate.”” I can imagine how I might utter something like this in some moment never to be realized. But let me say frankly that at the same time I feel, it may be with too little regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be what I am. If the truth were known, which I do not know, I have no concern with those friends whom I mis- understand or who misunderstand me. The fates only are unkind that keep us asunder, but my friend is ever kind. I am of the nature of stone. It takes the summer’s sun to warm it. My acquaintances sometimes imply that I am too cold; but each thing is warm enough of its kind. Is the stone too cold which absorbs the heat of the summer sun and does not part with it during the night? Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold to melt, but it was in melting that they were formed. Cold! I am most sensible of warmth in winter days. It is not the warmth of fire that you would have, but everything is warm and cold according to its nature. It is not that I am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness are not of the same nature; hence when I am absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you. Crystal does not complain of crystal any more than the dove of its mate. You who complain that I am cold find Nature cold. 'To me she is warm. My heat is latent to you. Fire itself is cold to whatever is not of a nature to be warmed by it. A cool wind is warmer to a feverish man than the air of a furnace. That I am cold means that I am of another nature. The dogwood and its berries in the swamp by the rail- road, just above the red house, pendent on long stems which hang short down as if broken, betwixt yellowish (?) and greenish (?), white, ovoid, pearly (?) or waxen (?) berries. What is the color of them? Ah, give me to walk in the dogwood swamp, with its few coarse branches! Beautiful as Satan. The prinos or black alder berries appear to have been consumed; only the skins left, for the most part, sticking to the twigs, so that I thought there were fewer than usual. Is it that our woods have had to entertain arctic visitors in unusual numbers, who have exhausted their stores ? Sunlight on pine-needles is the phenomenon of a winter day. Who ever saw a partridge soar over the fields? To every creature its own nature. They are very wild; but are they scarce? or can you exterminate them for that? As I stand by the edge of the swamp (Ministerial), a heavy-winged hawk flies home to it at sundown, just over my head, in silence. I cross some mink or musk- rat’s devious path in the snow, with mincing feet and trailing body. To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long conver- ging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig. It would serve for a permanent description of the sunset. Such is the morning and such the evening, converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day. Long after the sun has set, and downy clouds have turned dark, and the shades of night have taken possession of the east, some rosy clouds will be seen in the upper sky over the portals of the darkening west. How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at sunset, which at midday appears to rest on its axle!