12 February 1855 – 18 February 1855

All trees covered this morning with a hoar frost, very handsome looking toward the sun, — the ghosts of trees. Is not this what was so blue in the atmosphere yesterday afternoon ? P. M. — To Walden. A very pleasant and warm afternoon. There is a softening of the air and snow. The eaves run fast on the south side of houses, and, as usual in this state of the air, the cawing of crows at a distance and the crowing of cocks fall on the air with a peculiar soft- ness and sweetness; they come distinct and echoing musically through the pure air. What are those crows about, which I see from the railroad causeway in the middle of a field where no grass appears to rise above the snow, — apparently feeding? I observe no mouse- | tracks in the fields and meadows. The snow is so light and deep that they have run wholly underneath, and I see in the fields here and there a little hole in the crust where they have come to the surface. In Trillium Woods I see, as usual, where a squirrel has scratched along from tree to tree. His tracks cease at the foot of a pine, up which he has ascended within these few hours. He may be concealed now amid the thickest foliage. It is very pleasant to stand now in a high pine wood where the sun shines in amid the pines and hemlocks and maples as in a warm apartment. I see at Warren’s Crossing where, last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. ‘They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out. The dog scared them out of similar holes yesterday in the open orchard. I watched for a long time two chickadee-like birds, — only, I thought, a good deal larger, — which kept ascending the pitch pines spirally from the bottom lke the nuthatch. They had the markings and the common faint note of the chickadee, yet they looked so large and confined themselves so to the trunk that I cannot but feel still some doubt about them. They had black chins, as well as top of head; tail, black above; back, slate; sides, dirty-white or creamy; breast, etc., white. Set a trap in the woods for wild mice. I saw where they had run over the snow, making a slight im- pression, thus: 2 eee the tracks some five inches apart," “" °° "frequently with a very distinct mark of the tail. -These tracks commonly came together soon and made one beaten trail where two or three had passed, or one several times; as if they had hopped along, two, three, or four in company. The whole trail would be five or six inches wide. Under the birches, where the snow is covered with birch seeds and scales, I see the fine tracks, undoubt- edly of linarias. The track of one of these birds in the light surface looks like a chain, or the ova of toads. Where a large flock has been feeding, the whole sur- face is scored over by them.

10 a. Ms — To Walden Woods. Not cold; sky somewhat overcast.

Another rather warm morning, still more overcast than yesterday’s. There is also another leaf or feather frost on the trees, weeds, and rails, — slight leaves or feathers, a quarter to a half inch long by an eighth wide, standing out around the slightest core. I think it is owing to the warmer nights. At nine last evening and at nine this morning, the thermometer stood at 20°. These ghosts of trees are very handsome and fairy-like, but would be handsomer still with the sun on them, — the thickened, clubbed tansy and the goldenrods, etc., and the golden willows of the railroad causeway, with spiring tops shaped like one of the frost leaves, and the white telegraph-wire, and the hoary sides of pine woods. That ‘cold weather of the 6th and 7th was preceded by two days (the 4th and 5th) much colder weather than we had been having. It moderated sufficiently to snow again on the evening of the 7th and the 8th and 9th. On the morning of the 11th was down to— 22°. Aunt Louisa says that her cousin Nahum Jones, son to that Nathan whom her mother and sisters visited with her down east, carried a cat to the West Indies, sold his vessel there; and though the same vessel did not return, and he came back in another vessel without the cat, the cat got home to Gouldsboro somehow, unaccountably, about the same time that he did. Captain Woodard told her that he carried the same cat three times round the world. I said to Therien, “ You did n’t live at Smith’s last summer. Where did you live? At Baker’s?” “Yes,” said he. “Well, is that a good place?” “Oh, yes.” “Ts that a better place than Smith’s?” “Oh, a change of pasture makes a fatter calf.”

Commenced a fine half snow half rain yes- terday afternoon. All rain and harder in the night, and now quite a thaw, still raining finely, with great dark puddles amid the snow, and the cars detained by wet rails. Does not a thaw succeed that blue atmos- phere observed on the llth? —a thaw, as well as warmer nights and hoar frosts? All day a steady, warm, imprisoning rain carrying off the snow, not unmusical on my roof. It is a rare time for the student and reader who cannot go abroad in the afternoon, provided he can keep awake, for we are wont to be drowsy as cats in such weather. Without, it is not walking but wading. It is so long since I have heard it that the steady, soaking, rushing sound of the rain on the shingles is musical. The fire needs no replenishing, and we save our fuel. It seems like a distant forerunner of spring. It is be- cause I am allied to the elements that the sound of the rain is thus soothing to me. The sound soaks into my spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me of the season when snow and ice will be no more, when the earth will be thawed and drink up the rain as fast as it falls.

Still rains a little this morning. Water at the Mill-Dam higher than ever since the new block was built—or longer. Ground half bare, but frozen and icy yet. P. M. — To Chiff via Spanish Brook. A thick fog without rain. Sounds sweet and musi- cal through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance. In the woods by the Cut, in this soft air, under the pines draped with mist, my voice and whistling are peculiarly distinct and echoed back to me, as if the fog were a ceiling which made this hollow an apartment. Sounds are not dissipated and lost in the immensity of the heavens above you, but your voice, being confined by the fog, is distinct, and you hear yourself speak. It is a good lichen day. Every crust is colored and swollen with fruit, and C. is constantly using his knife and filling his pockets with specimens. I have caught a mouse at last, where were tracks like those of February 12th, but it is eaten half up, apparently by its fellow (?). All the flesh is eaten out and part of the skin; one fore foot eaten off, but the entrails left. No wonder we do not find their dead bodies in the woods. The rest of the trap is not moved or sprung, and there is no track of a large animal or bird in the snow. It may have been a weasel. The sand is flowing fast in forms of vege- tation in the Deep Cut. The fog is so thick we cannot see the engine till it is almost upon us, and then its own steam, hugging the earth, greatly increases the mist. As usual, it is still more dense over the ice at the pond.

It is still cloudy and a very fine rain. The river very high, one inch higher than the evening of January 3lst. The bridge at Sam Barrett’s caved in; also the Swamp Bridge on back road. Muskrats driven out. Heard this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). The jays were uttering their unusual notes, and this made me think of a woodpecker. It reminds me of the pine warbler, vetier vetter vetier vetter vet, except that it is much louder, and I should say had the sound of / rather than ¢, — veller, etc., perhaps. Can it be a jay? ora pigfeon| woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird? In the damp misty air. Was waked up last night by the tolling of a bell about 11 o’clock, as if a child had hold of the rope. Dressed and went abroad in the wet to see if it was a fire. It seems the town clock was out of order, and the striking part ran down and struck steadily for fifteen minutes. If it had not been so near the end of the week, it might have struck a good part of the night. P. M.—A riparial excursion over further railroad bridge; return by Flint’s Bridge. At 2 p. M. the water at the Sam Wheeler Bridge is three inches above straight truss, or two inches higher than at 9 a. M. The ice is not broken over the channel of this stream, but is lifted up and also for a good distance over the meadows, but, for a broad space over the meadows on each side, the freshet stands over the ice, which is flat on the bottom. It rains but a trifle this afternoon, but the snow which is left is still melting. The water is just beginning to be over the road beyond this stone bridge. The road beyond the opposite, or Wood’s, bridge is already impassable to foot-travellers. I see no muskrats in the Assabet from the Tommy Wheeler bank. Perhaps they provided themselves holes at the last freshet. It is running over both sides of Derby’s Bridge for a dozen rods (each side), as over a dam. The ice in the middle of this stream is for the most part broken up. Great cakes of ice are wedged against the railroad bridge there, and still threaten its existence. They are about twenty feet in diameter and some twenty inches thick, of greenish ice, more or less tilted up and commonly another, if not two more, of equal size, forced directly under- neath the first by the current. They stretch quite across the river, and, being partly tilted up against the spiles of the bridge, exert a tremendous power upon it. They form a dam between and over which the water falls, so that it is fully ten inches higher on the upper side of the bridge than on the lower. Two maples a little above the bridge — one a large one — have been levelled and carried off by the ice. The track-repairers have been at work here all day, protecting the bridge. They have a man on the ice with a rope round his body, — the other end in their hands, — who is crack- ing off the corners of the cakes with a crowbar. One great cake, as much as a dozen rods long, is slowly whirling round just above the bridge, and from time to time an end is borne against the ice which lies against the bridge. The workmen say that they had cleared the stream here before dinner, and all this had collected since. (Now 3 p.m.) If Derby’s Bridge should yield to the ice which lies against it, this would surely be swept off. ‘They say that three (?) years ago the whole of the east end of the bridge was moved some six inches, rails and all. Waded through water in the road for eight or ten rods, beyond Loring’s little bridge. It was a foot deep this morning on the short road that leads to Heywood’s house. I had to go a quarter of a mile up the meadow there and down the college road. Sam Barrett’s bridge is entirely covered and has slumped. They cross a broad bay in a boat there. I went over on the string-piece of the dam above. It is within eight or nine inches of the top of the little bridge this side of Flint’s Bridge at 5.30 p. M. So, though it is within five and a half inches of where it was three years ago in the spring at the new stone bridge, it is not so high comparatively here. The fact is, the water is in each case dammed not only by the bridges and causeways but by the ice, so that it stands at as many levels as there are causeways. It is per- haps about a foot lower at Flint’s Bridge now, than when it stood where it does now at the new stone bridge three years ago. So that a metre at one point alone will not enable you to compare the absolute height or quantity of water at different seasons and under dif- ferent circumstances. Such a metre is the more to be relied on in proportion as a river is free from obstruc- tions, such as ice, causeways, bridges, etc. Everywhere now in the fields you see a green water standing over ice in the hollows. Sometimes it is a very delicate tint of green. Would this water look green on any white ground? It is commonly yellow on meadows in spring. The highway surveyor is on the alert to see what damage the freshet has done. As they could not dig in the frozen ground, they have upset a cartload of pitch pine boughs into the hole at the Swamp Bridge.

8 a. mM. — Water four and three quarters inches above truss, nearly two inches higher than yes- terday at 2 p. m. It may have risen one inch higher during the day, then went down. Surface of ground and snow slightly frozen; no flowing now. At 9 a. m. sun comes out; rather warm; sunlight peculiarly yellow and spring-suggesting. Mountains in horizon dark-blue, the wooded parts, with snow below and between. P. M.—To Great Meadows and around Beck Stow’s.