13 February 1854 – 19 February 1854

Monday. 7 a. m.—To Walden. A warm morning, overcast. The ice does not ring when I strike it with an axe. Tried to drive a stake in two places outside a wood, but found it frozen. Failed also in two places within the wood, but suc- ceeded in a third. P. M. — It snows again, spoiling the skating, which has lasted only one day. I do not remember the winter when the ice remained uncovered a week.

P. M. — Down railroad. A moist, thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain.

By this time in the winter I do not look for those clear, sparkling mornings and delicate leaf frosts, which, methinks, occur earlier in the winter, as if the air of winter was somewhat tarnished and de- bauched, — had lost its virgin purity. Every judgment and action of a man qualifies every other, 7. e. corrects our estimate of every other, as, for instance, a man’s idea of immortality who is a member of a church, or his praise of you coupled with his praise of those whom you do not esteem. For in this sense a man is awfully consistent, above his own consciousness. All a man’s strength and all his weakness go to make up the authority of any particu- lar opinion which he may utter. He is strong or weak with all his strength and weakness combined. If he is your friend, you may have to consider that he loves you, but perchance he also loves gingerbread. It must [be] the leaves of the Chimaphila umbel- lata, spotted wintergreen, which Channing left here day before yesterday. I have not seen F. hyemalis since last fall, the snow buntings only during the great and severe snow-storm, no pine grosbeaks nor F. linaria this winter. Snows again this morning. For the last month the weather has been remarkably changeable; hardly three days together alike. That is an era not yet arrived, when the earth, be- ing partially thawed, melts the slight snows which fall on it. P. M.—To Walden and Filint’s; return by Turn- pike. Saw two large hawks circling over the woods by Wal- den, hunting, — the first I have seen since December 15th. That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden was revealed with remarkable distinctness to me stand- ing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It was quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it be- fore. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto- relievo.'’ Went to the locality of the Chimaphila macu- lata by Goose Pond. Columella, after saying that many authors had be- lieved that the climate (‘‘qualitatem caeli statumque’’) was changed by lapse of time (‘longo aevi situ’’), refers to Hipparchus as having given out that the time would be when the poles of the earth would be moved from their place (‘‘tempus fore, quo cardines mundi loco mo- verentur”); and, as confirmatory of this, he (C.) goes on to say that the vine and olive flourish now in some places where formerly they failed. He gives the names of about fifty authors who had treated de rusticis rebus before him.

P. M.— To Gowing’s Swamp. On the hill at the Deep Cut on the new road, the ground is frozen about a foot deep, and they carry off lumps equal nearly to a cartload at a time. Moore’s man is digging a ditch by the roadside in his swamp. I am surprised to see that the earth there — under some snow, it is true — is frozen only about four inches. It may be owing to warm springs beneath. The hill was comparatively bare of snow (and of trees there) and was more exposed. ‘The Irishman showed me small stumps, — larch, methinks, — which he dug and cut out from the bottom of the ditch, — very old ones. At Gowing’s Swamp I see where some one hunted white rabbits yesterday, and perhaps the day before, with a dog. The hunter has run round and round it on firm ground, while the hare and dog have cut across and circled about amid the blueberry bushes. The track of the white rabbit is gigantic com- pared with that of the gray one. Indeed few, if any (? ), of our wild animals make a larger track with their feet alone. Where I now stand, the track of all the feet has an expanse of seven to fifteen inches,— this at inter- vals of from two to three feet, — and the width at the two fore feet is five inches. There is a considerable but slighter impression of the paw behind each foot. The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal in their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored with them. I see, too, where they have run over the ice in the swamp, — there is a mere sugaring of snow on it,—ever trying to make an en- trance, —— to get beneath it. You see deep and dis- tinct channels in the snow in some places, as if a whole colony had long travelled to and fro in them, —a highway, a well-known trail, — but suddenly they will come to an end; and yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for you see where the single travel- ler who did it all has nimbly hopped along as if sud- denly scared, making but a slight impression, squirrel- like, on the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will make a channel for a short distance. These mice- tracks are of various sizes, and sometimes, when they are large and they have taken long and regular hops nine or ten inches apart in a straight line, they look at a little distance like a fox-track. I suspect that the mice sometimes build their nests in bushes from the foundation, for, in the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were, at the same height and also on prinos bushes, — plainly the work of mice wholly. In the open part of Gowing’s Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow’s does it grow very near the shore, in places accessible in wet weather. Some larch cones are empty, others contain seeds. In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. ‘The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp- pink, etc., etc. (I did not examine them particularly), and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space, not yet quite given up to water, where the An- dromeda calyculata and a few A. Polzfolva reign almost alone. These are pleasing gardens. In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January, perhaps, when the snow-banks had settled and their surfaces, many times thawed and frozen, become indurated, in fact, you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well.

P. M. — To Yellow Birch Swamp. As I remember January, we had one (? ) great thaw, succeeded by severe cold. It was harder getting about, though there may have been no more snow because it was light, and there was more continuous cold and clear sparkling weather. But the last part of January and all February thus far have been alternate thaw and freeze and snow. It has more thaws, even as the 6¢é 99 running “r” (root of féw) occurs twice in it and but once in January. I do not know but the more light and warmth plainly accounts for the difference. It does not take so much fuel to keep us warm of late. I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring. I see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett’s, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with gray- ish folded wings reaching far behind and two antenne. Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps. At the old mill-site, saw two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. Saw the yellow under sides of their wings. It is barely possible I am mistaken, but, since Wilson makes them common in Pennsylva- nia in winter, I feel pretty sure. Such sights make me think there must be bare ground not far off south. It is a little affecting to walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer lichens here and there amid the snow, and remember that ere long we shall find violets also in their midst. What an odds the season makes! The birds know it. Whether a rose-tinted water lily is sail- ing amid the pads, or Neighbor Hobson is getting out his ice with a cross-cut saw, while his oxen are eat- ing their stalks. I noticed that the ice which Garrison — cut the other day contained the lily pads and stems within it. How different their environment now from when the queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface, exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects! Hubbard’s wooded hill is now almost bare of trees. . Barberries still hang on the bushes, but all shrivelled. I found a bird’s nest of grass and mud in a barberry | bush filled full with them. It must have been done by . some quadruped or bird. The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest [sic] bursts and blows open. Rabbit-tracks numerous there, some- times quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow-covered brook. How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other. The Mitchella repens berries look very bright amid the still fresh green leaves. In the birch swamp west of this are many red (?) squirrel nests high in the birches. They are composed within of fibres of bark. I see where the squirrels have eaten walnuts along the wall and left the shells on the snow. Channing has some microscopic reading these days. But he says in effect that these works are purely ma- terial. The idealist views things in the large. I read some of the speeches in Congress about the Nebraska Bill, — a thing the like of which I have not done for a year. What trifling upon a serious subject! while honest men are sawing wood for them outside. Your Congress halls have an ale-house odor, —a place for stale jokes and vulgar wit. It compels me to think of my fellow-creatures as apes and baboons.

Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little in with pleasure and profit. For several weeks the fall has seemed far behind, spring comparatively near. Yet I cannot say that there is any positive sign of spring yet; only we feel that we are sloping toward it. The sky has sometimes a warmth in its colors more like summer. A few birds have possibly strayed northward further than they have wintered. P. M. — To Fair Haven by river, back by railroad. Though the wind is cold, the earth feels the heat of the sun higher in the heavens and melts in plowed fields. The willow twigs rise out of the ice beside the river, the silvery down of each catkin just peeping from under each scale in some places, — the work probably of last fall’s sun, — like a mouse peeping from under its covert. I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. I am struck by the greenness of the green- briar at this season, still covering the alders, etc., twelve feet high and full of shining and fresh berries. The greenness of the sassafras shoots makes a similar impression. | The large moths apparently love the neighborhood of water, and are wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of the meadow and river, places more or less inaccessible, to men at least. I saw a button-bush with what at first sight looked like the open pods of the locust or of the water asclepias attached. They were the light ash-colored cocoons of ‘the A. Prome- thea, four or five, with the completely withered and faded leaves wrapped around them, and so artfully and admirably secured to the twigs by fine silk wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig, — which last add nothing to its strength, being deciduous, but aid its deception, — they are taken at a little distance for a few curled and withered leaves left on. Though the particular twigs on which you find some cocoons may never or very rarely retain any leaves, — the maple, for instance, — there are enough leaves left on other shrubs and trees to warrant their adopting this dis- guise. Yet it is startling to think that the inference has in this case been drawn by some mind that, as most other plants retain some leaves, the walker will suspect these also to. ach and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm’s instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end. It was long ago, in a full senate of all intellects, deter- mined how cocoons had best be suspended, — kindred mind with mine that admires and approves decided it so. The hips of the late rose, though more or less shrivelled, are still red and handsome. It outlasts other hips. The sweet-briar’s have lost their color and begun to decay. The former are still very abun- dant and showy in perfect corymbs of a dozen or so amid the button-bushes. It might be called the water- rose. ‘The trees in the maple swamp squeak from time to time like the first fainter sounds made by the red squirrel. I have little doubt the red squirrel must lay up food, since I see them so rarely abroad. On the cherry twigs you see the shining clasp of caterpillars’ eggs. The snow not only reveals a track but some- times hands it down to the ice that succeeds it. The sled-track which I saw in the slight snow over the ice here February 2d, though we have had many snows since and now there is no snow at all, is still perfectly marked on the ice. Much study a weariness of the flesh, eh ? But did not they intend that we should read and ponder, who covered the whole earth with alphabets, — primers or bibles,—coarse or fine print? The very débris of the cliffs—the stivers [?] of the rocks—are covered with geographic lichens: no surface is permitted to be bare long. As by an inevitable decree, we have come to times at last when our very waste paper is printed. Was not He who creates lichens the abettor of Cadmus when he invented letters ? Types almost arrange themselves into words and sentences as dust arranges itself under the magnet. Print! it is a close- hugging lichen that forms on a favorable surface, which paper offers. The linen gets itself wrought into paper that the song of the shirt may be printed on it. Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world ? There are so many rocks under Grape-vine Cliff that apparently for this reason the chopper saws in- stead of cuts his trees into lengths. The wood fern (Dryopteris marginalis?) still green there. And are they not small saxifrages so perfectly green and fresh, as if just started, in the crevices? I wait till sundown on Fair Haven to hear it boom, but am disappointed, though I hear much slight crackling. But, as for the previous cracking, it is so disruptive and produces such a commotion that it extends itself through snow- drifts six inches deep, and is even more distinct there than in bare ice, even to the sharpest angle of its fork- ing. Saw an otter-track near Walden.