4 January 1858 – 10 January 1858

P. M.—The weather still remarkably warm; the ice too soft for skating. I go through by the Andromeda Ponds and down river from Fair Haven. I am encouraged by the sight of men fishing in Fair Haven Pond, for it reminds me that they have animal spirits for such adventures. I am glad to be reminded that any go a-fishing. When I get down near to Car- dinal Shore, the sun near setting, its light is wonder- fully reflected from a narrow edging of yellowish stubble at the edge of the meadow ice and foot of the hill, an edging only two or three feet wide, and the stubble but a few inches high. (I am looking east.) It is re- markable because the ice is but a dull lead-color (it is so soft and sodden), reflecting no light, and the hill be- yond is a dark russet, here and there patched with snow, but this narrow intermediate line of stubble is all aglow. I get its true color and brightness best when I do not look directly at it, but a little above it toward the hill, seeing it with the lower part of my eye more truly and abstractly. It is as if all the rays slid over the ice and lodged against and were reflected by the stubble. It is surprising how much sunny light a little straw that survives the winter will reflect. . The channel of the river is open part of the way. The Cornus sericea and some quite young willow shoots are the red-barked twigs so conspicuous now along the riversides. That bright and warm reflection of sunlight from the insignificant edging of stubble was remarkable. I was coming down-stream over the meadows, on the ice, within four or five rods of the eastern shore. The sun on my left was about a quarter of an hour above the horizon. ‘The ice was soft and sodden, of a dull lead-color, quite dark and reflecting no light as I looked eastward, but my eyes caught by accident a singular sunny brightness reflected from the narrow border of stubble only three or four inches high (and as many feet wide perhaps) which rose along the edge of the ice at the foot of the hill. It was not a mere brighten- ing of the bleached stubble, but the warm and yellow light of the sun, which, it appeared, it was peculiarly fitted to reflect. It was that amber light from the west which we sometimes witness after a storm, concen- trated on this stubble, for the hill beyond was merely a dark russet spotted with snow. All the yellow rays seemed to be reflected by this insignificant stubble alone, and when I looked more generally a httle above it, seeing it with the under part of my eye, it appeared yet more truly and more bright; the reflected light made its due impression on my eye, separated from the proper color of the stubble, and it glowed almost like a low, steady, and serene fire. It was precisely as if the sunlight had mechanically slid over the ice, and lodged against the stubble. It will be enough to say of something warmly and sunnily bright that it glowed like lit stubble. It was remarkable that, look- ing eastward, this was the only evidence of the light in the west. Here and there in the meadow, etc., near springy places, you see where the thinner ice has been pushed up tentwise ( A & a. ) and cracked, either for want of room, two fields crowding together, or sree with heat from below.

P. M.—TI see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt’s Bridge causeway. Mr. Hosmer is loading hay in his barn. It is meadow- hay, and I am interested in it chiefly as a botanist. If meadow-hay is of less worth in the market, it is more interesting to the poet. In this there is a large propor- tion of Osmunda regalis. But I fear that in the long run it is not so interesting to the cattle to contem- plate and chew this as English hay and clover. How completely a load of hay in the winter revives the memory of past summers! Summer in us is only a little dried like it. The rowen in Hosmer’s barn has a finer and greener look than the first crop. And so the ferns in coal remind us of summer still longer past.

The first snow-storm of much importance. By noon it may be six inches deep. P. M. — Up railroad to North River. The main stream, barely skimmed over with snow, which has sunk the thin ice and is saturated with water, is of a dull-brown color between the white fields. I detect a very tall and slender tupelo by its thorny- looking twigs. It is close by a white oak, at the yellow gerardia up railroad. It is nearly fifty feet high and only one foot through at the ground. I derive a certain excitement, not to be refused, even from going through Dennis’s Swamp on the opposite side of the railroad, where the poison-dogwood abounds. ‘This simple- stemmed bush is very full of fruit, hanging in loose, dry, pale-green drooping panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It impresses me as the most fruitful shrub thereabouts. I cannot refrain from plucking it and bringing home some pretty sprigs. Other fruits there are there which belong to the hard season, the endur- ing panicled andromeda and a few partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the bare midribs of cinna- mon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. I was feeling very cheap, nevertheless, reduced to make the most of dry dogwood berries. Very little evidence of God or man did I see just then, and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested un- melting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart? Sometimes the pines were worn and had lost their branches, and again it appeared as if several stars had impinged on one an- other at various angles, making a somewhat spherical mass. ‘These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. ‘There were mingled with these starry flakes small downy pellets also. This was at mid-afternoon, and it has not quite ceased snowing yet (at 10 p. m.). We are rained and snowed on with gems. I confess that I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe that Nature was poor and mean, and I was now con- vinced that she turned off as good work as ever. What a world we live in! Where are the jewellers’ shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechani- cally coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthu- siasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist’s utmost skill.’ The North River is not frozen over. I see tree spar- rows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds, but soon I see their bright-chestnut crowns and clear white bars; as the poet says, “a thousand feeding like one,”’ ? — though there are not more than a dozen here. Jan. '7. The storm is over, and it is one of those beautiful winter mornings when a vapor is seen hang- ing in the air between the village and the woods. Though the snow is only some six inches deep, the yards ap- pear full of those beautiful crystals (star or wheel shaped flakes), lying light, as a measure is full of grain. 9 a. mM.— To Hill. It snowed so late last night, and so much has fallen from the trees, that I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown. The fox has been beating the bush along walls and fences. The surface of the snow in the woods is thickly marked by the snow which has fallen from the trees on to it. The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated. By 10.30 a. m. it begins to blow hard, the snow comes down from the trees in fine showers, finer far than ever falls direct from the sky, completely obscuring the view through the aisles of the wood, and in open fields it is rapidly drifting. It is too light to make good sleigh- ing. By 10 o’clock I notice a very long level stratum of cloud not very high in the southeastern sky, — all the rest being clear, — which I suspect to be the vapor from the sea. This lasts for several hours. These are true mornings of creation, original and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the past. ‘There is no lingering of yesterday’s fogs, only such a mist as might have adorned the first morning. P. M.—TI see some tree sparrows feeding on the fine grass seed above the snow, near the road on the hillside below the Dutch house. They are flitting along one at a time, their feet commonly sunk in the snow, uttering occasionally a low sweet warble and seemingly as happy there, and with this wintry prospect before them for the night and several months to come, as any man by his fireside. One occasionally hops or flies toward another, and the latter suddenly jerks away from him. They are reaching or hopping up to the fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the snow. At length the whole ten have collected within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, being alarmed, they utter a different and less musical chirp and flit away into an apple tree.

P. M.— To that small meadow just above the Boaz Brown meadow. Going through the swamp, the snow balled so as to raise me three inches higher than usual.

Snows again. P. M. — To Deep Cut. The wind is southwest, and the snow is very moist, with large flakes. Looking toward Trillium Wood, the nearer flakes appear to move quite swiftly, often mak- ing the impression of a continuous white line. They are also seen to move directly and nearly horizontally, but the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the air, as if uncertain how they will approach the earth, or even to cross the course of the former, and are always seen as simple and distinct flakes. I think that this difference is simply owing to the fact that the former pass quickly over the field of view, while the latter are much longer in it. This moist snow has affected the yellow sulphur parmelias and others. They have all got a green hue, and the fruit of the smallest lichen looks fresh and fair. And the wet willow bark is a brighter yellow. Some chickadees come flitting close to me, and one utters its spring note, phe-be, for which I feel under obligations to him.

Sunday. P. M.— To Goose Pond across Walden. The north side of Walden is a warm walk in sunny weather. If you are sick and despairing, go forth in winter and see the red alder catkins dangling at the extremities of the twigs, all in the wintry air, like long, hard mulberries, promising a new spring and the ful- fillment of all our hopes. We prize any tenderness, any softening, in the winter, — catkins, birds’ nests, insect life, etc., etc. The most I get, perchance, is the sight of a mulberry-like red catkin which I know has a dormant life in it, seemingly greater than my own.