18 December 1854 – 24 December 1854

P. M.— Down railroad via Andromeda Ponds to river. Snowed a little finely last night and this forenoon. I see a few squirrels’ tracks in the woods and, here and there in one or two places, where a mouse’s gal- lery approached the surface. The powdery surface is broken by it. I am surprised to find in the Andromeda Ponds, especially the westernmost one, north side, an abundance of decodon, or swamp loosestrife. Where a partridge took to wing I find the round red buds of the high blueberry plucked about the swamps.

P. M.—Skated a half-mile up Assabet and then to foot of Fair Haven Hill. This is the first tolerable skating. Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before. First there is the snow ice on the sides, somewhat rough and brown or yellowish spotted where the water overflowed the ice on each side yesterday, and next, over the middle, the new dark smooth ice, and, where the river is wider than usual, a thick fine gray ice, marbled, where there was probably a thin ice yesterday. Probably the top froze as the snow fell. Iam surprised to find how rapidly and easily I get along, how soon I am at this brook or that bend in the river, which it takes me so long to reach on the bank or by water. I can go more than double the usual distance before dark. It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice. I look for cracks to see how thick it is. Near the island I saw a muskrat close by swimming in an open reach. He was always headed up-stream, a great proportion of the head out of water, and his whole length visible, though the root of the tail is about level with the water. Now and then he [stopped] swimming and floated down-stream, still keeping his head pointed up with his tail. It is surprising how dry he looks, as if that back was never immersed in the water. It is apt to be melted at the bridges about the piers, and there is a flow of water over the ice there. There is a fine, smooth gray marbled ice on the bays, which apparently began to freeze when it was snowing night before last. There is a marbling of dark where there was clear water amid the snow. Now and then a crack crosses it, and the water, oozing out, has frozen on each side of it two or three inches thick, and some- times as many feet wide. These give you a slight jolt. Off Clamshell I heard and saw a large flock of Fringilla linaria over the meadow. No doubt it was these I saw on the 15th. (But I saw then, and on the 10th, a larger and whiter bird also; may have been the bunting.) Suddenly they turn aside in their flight and dash across the river to a large white birch fifteen rods off, which plainly they had distinguished so far. I afterward saw many more in the Potter swamp up the river. They were commonly brown or dusky above, streaked with yellowish white or ash, and more or less white or ash beneath. Most had a crimson crown or frontlet, and a few a crimson neck and breast, very handsome. Some with a bright-crimson crown and clear-white breasts. I suspect that these were young males. They keep up an incessant twittering, varied from time to time with some mewing notes, and oc- casionally, for some unknown reason, they will all suddenly dash away with that universal loud note (twitter) like a bag of nuts. They are busily clustered in the tops of the birches, picking the seeds out of the catkins, and sustain themselves in all kinds of atti- tudes, sometimes head downwards while about this. Common as they are now, and were winter before last, I saw none last winter.

7 a. M. — To Hill. Said to be the coldest morning as yet. The river appears to be frozen everywhere. Where was water last night is a firm bridge of ice this morning. The snow which has blown on to the ice has taken the form of regular star-shaped crystals, an inch in diameter. Sometimes these are arranged in a spear three feet long quite straight. I see the mother-o’-pearl tints now, at sunrise, on the clouds high over the eastern horizon before the sun has risen above the low bank in the east. The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown, as if it were of perfectly clear glass, — with the green tint of a large mass of glass. Here are some crows already seeking their breakfast in the orchard, and I hear a red squirrel’s reproof. The woodchop- pers are making haste to their work far off, walking fast to keep warm, before the sun has risen, their ears and hands well covered, the dry, cold snow squeaking under their feet. They will be warmer after they have been at work an hour. P. M. — Skated to Fair Haven with C. C.’s skates are not the best, and beside he is far from an easy skater, so that, as he said, it was killing work for him. Time and again the perspiration actually dropped from his forehead on to the ice, and it froze in long icicles on his beard. Yet he kept up his spirits and his fun, said he [had] seen much more suffering than I, etc., etc.

P. M.—To Walden and Fair Haven Ponds and down river. It snowed slightly this morning, so as to cover the [ground] half an inch deep. Walden is frozen over, ap- parently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th, — probably the night of the 18th. It is very thickly [covered with] what C. calls ice-rosettes, 7. e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, — as thickly as if it had snowed in that form. I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clus- tered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday. We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year. Take Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a per- fectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. I see the feathers of a partridge strewn along on the snow a long distance, the work of some hawk perhaps, for there is no track. What a grovelling appetite for profitless jest and amusement our countrymen have! Next to a good dinner, at least, they love a good joke, — to have their sides tickled, to laugh sociably, as in the East they bathe and are shampooed. Curators of lyceums write to me: — Dear Sir, — I hear that you have a lecture of some humor. Will you do us the favor to read it before the Bungtown Institute ?

Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning, concluding with a fine rain, which produced a slight glaze, the first of the winter. This gives the woods a hoary aspect and increases the still- ness by making the leaves immovable even in con- siderable wind.