5 December 1853 – 11 December 1853

P. M.— Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow, which was sprinkled on it this noon. 4 p. mM. — To Cliffs. Many living leaves are very dark red now, the only effect of the frost on them, —the checkerberry, andro- meda, low cedar, and more or less lambkill, etc. Saw and heard a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? The chip of the tree sparrow, also, and the whistle of the shrike, are they not wintry in the same way? And the sonorous hooting owl? But not so the jay and Fringilla linaria, and still less the crow. Now for the short days and early twilight, in which I hear the sound of woodchop- ping. The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened. The partridge is budding on the apple tree and bursts away from the path-side. Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over. The ground has been frozen more or less about a week, not very hard. Probably stiffened the 3d so as to hinder spad- ing, but softened afterward. I rode home from the woods in a hay-rigging, with a boy who had been col- lecting a load of dry leaves for the hog-pen; this the third or fourth load. Two other boys asked leave to ride, with four large empty box-traps which they were bringing home from the woods. It was too cold and late to follow box-trapping longer. They had caught five rabbits this fall, baiting with an apple.’ Before I got home the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow yellowish light equally diffused, so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon cloud, fifteen minutes before. Apparently not till the sun had sunk thus far did I stand in the angle of reflection. It is a startling thought that the Assyrian king who with so much pains recorded his exploits in stone at Nineveh, that the story might come down to a distant generation, has indeed succeeded by those means which he used. All was not vanity, quite. Layard, at the lake of Wan, says: ‘‘ Early next morn- ing I sought the inscriptions which I had been assured were graven on the rocks near an old castle, standing on a bold projecting promontory above the lake. After climbing up a dangerous precipice by the help of two or three poles, in which large nails had been inserted to afford a footing, I reached a small natural cave in the rock. A few crosses and ancient Armenian letters were rudely cut near its entrance. There was nothing else, and I had to return as I best could, disappointed, as many a traveller has been under similar circumstances before me.’’ They were not old enough; that was all. Wait a thousand years and you will not be disap- pointed.

Wednesday. P. M.— To Trillium Woods and Hubbard’s Close. In the latter part of November‘ and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, an this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, surmounted by the effete spikes, some with a spiral or screw-like arrangement of the fan-like leaves, some spreading and drooping. It is like looking down on evergreen trees. And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green, with its curving fingers; also the pretty little fingers of the cylindrical L. clavatum, or club-moss, zig- zagging amid the dry leaves; not to mention the spread- ing openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-lov- ing) wmbellata, with its dry fruit. Not to mention the still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit; gold-thread; Pyrola secunda, with drooping curled-back leaves, and other pyrolas; and, by the brooks, brooklime (?) (I mean such as at Cliff Brook and at brook in E. Hubbard’s Swamp).? There is the mountain laurel, too. The terminal shield fern is quite fresh and green, and a common thin fern, though fallen. I observe the beds of greenish cladonia * [The words “the latter part of ’’ are crossed out in ink, but the word “retain,” followed by an interrogation-point, is written over them.] ? Golden saxifrage. [‘‘ Brooklime” is crossed out in pencil.) lichens. Saw a wood tortoise stirring in the now open brook in Hubbard’s Swamp.

7 A. M. — How can we spare to be abroad in the morning red, to see the forms of the leafless eastern trees against the dun sky and hear the cocks crow, when a thin low mist hangs over the ice and frost in meadows? I have come along the riverside in Mer- rick’s pasture to collect for kindling the fat pine roots and knots which the spearers dropped last spring, and which the floods have washed up. Get a heaping bushel-basketful. The thin, trembling sheets of im- perfectly cemented ice or ice-crystals, loosened by the warmth of the day, now go floating down the stream, looking like dark ripples in the twilight and grating against the edges of the firm ice. They completely fill the river where it is bridged with firmer ice below. I observed a place on the shore where a small circle of the withered grass was feathered white with frost, and, putting down my hand, felt the muskrat’s hole in the bank which was concealed to my eye. I often see this, and at woodchuck-holes. Yet you may see the same over the edge of many a hole, however shallow.

The third (at least) glorious day, clear and not too cold (this morning a leaf frost on the rails a third of an inch long), with peculiarly long and clear cloudless silvery twilights morn and eve, with a stately, withdrawn after-redness. Above all, deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, the materials of the one being the ruins of the other. There the dwellings of the liv- ing are in the cemeteries of the dead, and the soil is blanched and accursed.

Another still more glorious day, if possible; Indian-summery even. These are among the finest days in the year, on account of the wholesome bracing coolness and clearness. Paddled Cheney’s boat up Assabet.

Sunday. P.M. —To Heywood’s Pond and up brook. Almost a complete Indian-summer day, clear and warm. I am without greatcoat. Channing says he saw larks yesterday, a painted tortoise day before yesterday under ice at White Pond, and a ground- robin (?) last week. We find Heywood’s Pond frozen five inches thick. There have been some warm suns on it, and it is handsomely marbled. I find, on looking closely, that there is an indistinct and irregular crack or cleavage in the middle of each dark mark, and I have no doubt the marbling is produced thus, viz., the pond, at first all dark, cracks under a change of tem- perature, it is expanded and cracked in a thousand directions, and at the same time it gradually grows white as the air-bubbles expand, but wherever there is a crack in it, it interferes with the rays of heat, and the ice for a short distance on each side of it retains its original color. The forms into which the ice first cracks under a higher temperature determine the character of the marbling. This pond is bordered on the northeast with much russet sedge (?) grass beneath the bushes, and the sun, now falling on the ice, seems to slide or glance off into this grass and light it up wonderfully, filling it with yellowish light. This ice being whitened and made partially opaque by heat, while the surface is quite smooth, perhaps from new freezings then, it reflects the surrounding trees, their forms and colors, distinctly like water. The white air-bubbles are the quicksilver on the back of the mirror. R. W. E. told me that W. H. Channing conjectured that the landscape looked fairer when we turned our heads, because we beheld it with nerves of the eye unused before. Perhaps this reason is worth more for suggestion than explanation. It occurs to me that the reflection of objects in still water is in a similar manner fairer than the substance, and yet we do not employ unused nerves to behold it. Is it not that we let much more light into our eyes, — which in the usual position are shaded by the brows, —in the first case by turning them more to the sky, and in the case of the reflections by having the sky placed under our feet? 7. e. in both cases we see terrestrial objects with the sky or heavens for a background or field. Accordingly they are not dark and terrene, but lit and elysian. Saw a mink at Clamshell Hill on ice. They show the back in swimming.