19 December 1853 – 25 December 1853

The rain of yesterday concluded with a whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. To- day is cold and quite windy. P. M. — To the field in Lincoln which I surveyed for Weston the 17th. Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint’s Pond; for the most part smooth but with rough spots where the rain had not melted the snow. From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The * [“ White” is crossed out and “ black ’’ written over it, evidently at a later date. In view of Thoreau’s confusion of the two spruces for so many years, the next sentence may be thought amusing.] mountains are of a cold slate-color. It is as if they bounded the continent toward Behring’s Straits. In Weston’s field, in springy land on the edge of a swamp, I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons within a rod or two, and prob- ably there are many more about a foot from the ground, commonly on the main stem — though sometimes on a branch close to the stem— of the alder, sweet-fern, brake, etc., etc. The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. The worm has evi- dently said to itself: ‘‘ Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it.” Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dan- gling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it.

P. M.—Skated to Fair Haven and above. At seven this morning the water had already oozed out at the sides of the river and flowed over the ice. It appears to be the result of this bridging of the river in the night and ‘so obstructing the channel or usual outlet. About 4 Pp. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint’s. It was perfectly silent before. The weather in both cases clear, cold, and windy. It is a sort of belching, and, as C. said, is somewhat frog-like. I suspect it did not continue to whoop long either night. It is a very pleasing phe- nomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off, for I have no cousins in the back alleys. The water and the vessels are novel and interesting. What are our maritime cities but the shops and dwellings of mer- chants, about a wharf projecting into the sea, where there is a convenient harbor, on which to land the pro- duce of other climes and at which to load the exports of our own? Next in interest to me is the market where the produce of our own country is collected. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and many others are the names of wharves projecting into the sea. They are good places to take in and to discharge a cargo. Everybody in Boston lives at No. so-and-so, Long Wharf. I see a great many barrels and fig-drums and piles of wood for umbrella-sticks and blocks of granite and ice, etc., and that is Boston. Great piles of goods and the means of packing and conveying them, much wrapping-paper and twine, many crates and hogsheads and trucks, that is Boston. The more barrels, the more Boston. The museums and scientific societies and libraries are accidentals. ‘They gather around the barrels, to save carting.’ Apparently the ice is held down on the sides of the river by being frozen to the shore and the weeds, and so is overflowed there, but in the middle it is lifted up and makes room for the tide. I saw, just above Fair Haven Pond, two or three places where, just before the last freezing, when the ice was softened and partly covered with sleet, there had been a narrow canal, about eight inches wide, quite across the river from meadow to meadow. I am constrained to believe, from the peculiar character of it on the meadow end, where in one case it divided and crossed itself, that it was made either by muskrats or otters or minks repeatedly crossing there. One end was for some distance like an otter trail in the soft upper part of the ice, not worn through.