11 December 1854 – 17 December 1854

P. M.— To Bare Hill. C. says he found Fair Haven frozen over last Friday, 1. e. the 8th.! I find Flint’s frozen to-day, and how long? We have now those early, still, clear winter sunsets over the snow. It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that pecu- liar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem. The day is short; it seems to be com- posed of two twilights merely; ? the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. You must make haste to do the work of the day before it is dark. I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow. A gray rabbit scuds away over the crust in the swamp on the edge of the Great Meadows be- yond Peter’s. .A partridge goes off, and, coming up, I see where she struck the snow first with her wing, making five or six as it were finger-marks.

P. M. — With C. up north bank of Assa- bet to bridge. Good sleighing still, with but little snow. A warm, thawing day. The river is open almost its whole length. It is a beautifully smooth mirror within an icy frame. It is well to improve such a time to walk by it. This strip of water of irregular width over the channel, between broad fields of ice, looks like a polished silver mirror, or like another surface of polished ice, and often is distinguished from the surrounding ice only by its reflections. I have rarely seen any reflections ! How much before? 2 (Channing, p. 99.] — of weeds, willows, and elms, and the houses of the village — so distinct, the stems so black and distinct; for they contrast not with a green meadow but clear white ice, to say nothing of the silvery surface of the water. Your eye slides first over a plane surface of smooth ice of one color to a water surface of silvery smoothness, like a gem set in ice, and reflecting the weeds and trees and houses and clouds with singular beauty. The reflections are particularly simple and distinct. These twigs are not referred to and confounded with a broad green meadow from which they spring, as in summer, but, instead of that dark-green ground, absorbing the light, is this abrupt white field of ice. We see so little open and smooth water at this season that I am inclined to improve such an opportunity to walk along the river, and moreover the meadows, being more or less frozen, make it more feasible than in summer. I am singularly interested by the sight of the shrubs which grow along rivers, rising now above the snow, with buds and catkins, — the willows, alders, sweet- gale, etc. At our old bathing-place on the Assabet, saw two ducks, which at length took to wing. They had large dark heads, dark wings, and clear white breasts. I think they were buffle-headed or spirit ducks.

Up riverside via Hubbard Bath, p. m. I see again a large flock of what I called buntings on the 10th, also another flock surely not buntings, perhaps Fringilla linarta. May they not all be these ? How interesting a few clean, dry weeds on the shore a dozen rods off, seen distinctly against the smooth, reflecting water between ice! I see on the ice, half a dozen rods from shore, a small brown striped grub, and again a black one five eighths of an inch long. The last has apparently melted quite a cavity in the ice. How came they there? I saw on the 11th an abundance of dried huckle- berries on Bare Hill, still holding. ‘They are such as dried ripe prematurely on account of the drought. I do not perceive any sweetness. How handsome the narrow, regularly toothed brown leaves of the sweet- fern now above the snow! — handsome -in their sere state! The buds of the bass are pretty now, they are a clear light red on short ash (?) twigs.