26 December 1853 – 31 December 1853

Monday. This forenoon it snowed pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep. I go out at 2.30, just as it ceases. Now is the time, before the 1853) | SNOW ON THE TREES 27 wind rises or the sun has shone, to go forth and see the snow on the trees. The clouds have lifted some- what, but are still spitting snow a little. The vapor of the steam-engine does not rise high in the misty air. I go around Walden via the almshouse. The branches of deciduous trees,—oaks and maples, etc., — espe- cially the gray oaks of Hubbard’s Close on the side-hill, support long lightning-like arms of snow, many times their own thickness. It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. The agreeable maze which the branches make is more obvi- ous than ever. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. The pitch pines are covered with rich globular masses. The effect of the snow is to press down the forest, confound it with the grasses, and create a new surface to the earth above, shutting us in with it, and we go along somewhat like moles through our galleries. The sight of the pure and trackless road up Brister’s Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side, would tempt us to begin life again. The ice is covered up, and skating gone. The bare hills are so white that I cannot see their outlines against the misty sky. The snow lies handsomely on the shrub oaks, like a coarse braiding in the air. They have so many small and zigzag twigs that it comes near to filling up with a light snow to that depth. The hunters are already out with dogs to follow the first beast that makes a track.

High wind with more snow in the night. The snow is damp and covers the panes, darkening the room. At first I did not know that more snow had fallen, it was so drifted. Snowy ridges cross the village street and make it look as wild and bleak as a pass of the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevada. P. M.— To Fair Haven Pond up meadows and river. The snow blows like spray, fifteen feet high, across the fields, while the wind roars in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is altogether like the ocean in a storm. The snow blowing over the ice is like a vapor rising or curling from a roof. Most plowed fields are quite bare, but I am surprised to find behind the walls on the south side, like a skulking company of rangers in ambuscade or regular troops that have retreated to another parallel, a solid column of snow six or eight feet deep. The wind, eddying through and over the wall, is scooping it out in fantastic forms, — shells and troughs and glyphs of all kinds. Sometimes the drift is pierced with many holes as big as one’s fist, where the fine snow-drift is passing through like steam. As it flows over, it builds out eaves to the bank of razor sharpness.

Perhaps the coldest night. The pump is slightly frozen. : I hear and see tree sparrows about the weeds in the garden. ‘They seem to visit the gardens with the earli- est snow; or is it that they are more obvious against the white ground? By their sharp silvery chip, per- chance, they inform each other of their whereabouts and keep together. Joe Brown owned those pigs I saw to root up the old pasture behind Paul Adams’s. N. Stow tells me this morning that “he has sold and brought to the butcher’s three loads of pork containing twenty-five hundred pounds each, the least; at eight cents per pound amounting to more than $600. E. W——,, who got the premium on farms this year, keeps twenty-eight cows, which are milked before break- fast, or 6 o’clock, his hired men rising at 4.30 a. M.; but he gives them none of the milk in their coffee. I noticed the other day that the ice on the river and pond was cracked very coarsely, and lay in different planes a rod or two in diameter. It being very smooth and the light differently reflected from the different surfaces, this arrangement was very obvious. In one place where the river was open yesterday, the water, tossed into waves, looked exceedingly dark and angry.

P. M.— Around Walden. The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. I carried a two-foot rule and measured the snow of yesterday in Abiel Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, near the pond. In going a quarter of a mile it varied from fourteen to twenty-four inches. Then went to Potter’s wood, by Lincoln road, near Lincoln line, and paced straight through a level wood where there was no drift percepti- ble, measuring at every ten paces for two hundred paces, and the average was twenty and one half inches.

Four more inches of snow fell last night, making in all now two feet on a level. P. M.— Down railroad to Walden and circle round to right, through Wheeler’s woods out to railroad again. It is a remarkable sight, this snow-clad landscape, with the fences and bushes half buried and the warm sun on it. The snow lies not quite level in the fields, but in low waves with an abrupt edge on the north or wind side, as it lodges on ice. The town and country are now so still, there being no rattle of wagons nor even jingle of sleigh-bells, every tread being as with woolen feet, I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the loco- motive on the Lowell road. For the same reason, in such a day as this the crowing of a cock is heard very far and distinctly. I frequently mistake at first a very distant whistle for the higher tones of the telegraph harp by my side. The telegraph and railroad are closely allied, and it is fit and to be expected that at a little distance their music should be the same. There are a few sounds still which never fail to affect me. The notes of the wood thrush and the sound of a vi- brating chord, these affect me as many sounds once did often, and as almost all should. The strains of the . zeolian harp and of the wood thrush are the truest and loftiest preachers that I know now left on this earth. I know of no missionaries to us heathen comparable to them. They, as it were, lift us up in spite of ourselves. They intoxicate, they charm us. Where was that strain mixed into which this world was dropped but as a lump of sugar to sweeten the draught? I would be drunk, drunk, drunk, dead drunk to this world with it forever. He that hath ears, let him hear. The contact of sound with a human ear whose hearing is pure and unim- paired is coincident with an ecstasy. Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear;' the hearing of it makes men brave.