29 December 1856 – 31 December 1856

The snow is softened yet more, and it thaws somewhat. The cockerels crow, and we are reminded of spring. P. M. — To Warren Miles’s mill. We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital. A night and a forenoon is as much confinement to those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I recover some sanity which I had lost almost the instant that I come abroad. Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the nwmer- ous tree sparrows foretell an open winter? The fields behind Dennis’s have but little snow on them; the weeds rising above it imbrown them. It is collected in deep banks on the southeast slopes of the hills, — the wind having been northwest, — and there no weeds rise above it. By Nut Meadow Brook, just beyond Brown’s fence crossing, I see a hornets’ nest about seven inches in diameter on a thorn bush, only eighteen inches from the ground. Do they ever return to the same nests? White oaks standing in open ground will commonly have more leaves now than black or red oaks of the same size, also standing exposed. ) Miles is sawing pail-stuff. Thus the full streams and ponds supply the farmer with winter work. I see two trout four or five inches long in his brook a few rods below the mill. The water is quite low, he having shut it off. Rich copper-brown fish darting up and down the fast-shoaling stream. When I return by Clamshell Hill, the sun has set, and the cloudy sky is reflected in a short and narrow open reach at the bend there. The water and reflected sky are a dull, dark green, but not the real sky.