12 December 1859 – 18 December 1859

P. M.— To Pine Hill and round Walden. Seeing a little hole in the side of a dead white birch, about six feet from the ground, I broke it off and found it to be made where a rotten limb had broken off. The hole was about an inch over and was of quite irregular and probably natural outline, and, within, the rotten wood had been removed to the depth of two or three inches, and on one side of this cavity, under the hole, was quite a pile of bird-droppings. The diameter of the birch was little more than two inches, —if at all. Probably it was the roosting- place of a chickadee. The bottom was an irregular surface of the rotten wood, and there was nothing like a nest. There is a certain Irish woodchopper who, when I come across him at his work in the woods in the win- ter, never fails to ask me what time it is, as if he were in haste to take his dinner-pail and go home. This is not as it should be. Every man, and the woodchopper among the rest, should love his work as much as the poet does his. All good political arrangements pro- ceed on this supposition. If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it’ indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community. The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky. The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, — his comings and goings from copse to copse, — and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. So, perchance, if a still finer substance should fall from heaven (iodine?), something delicate enough to receive the trace of their footsteps, we should see where un- suspected spirits and faery visitors had hourly crossed our steps, had held conventions and transacted their affairs in our midst. No doubt such subile spirits trans- act their affairs in our midst, and we may perhaps in- vent some sufficiently delicate surface to catch the im- pression of them. If in the winter there are fewer men in the fields and woods, — as in the country generally, — you see the tracks of those who had preceded you, and so are more reminded of them than in summer. As I talked with the woodchopper who had just cleared the top of Emerson’s I got a new view of the mountains over his pile of wood in the foreground. They were very grand in their snowy mantle, which had a slight tinge of purple. But when afterward I looked at them from a higher hill, where there was no wood- pile in the foreground, they affected me less. It is now that these mountains, in color as well as form, most resemble the clouds.

P. M. — On river to Fair Haven Pond. My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it. I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button- bushes, where not even he can goin the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time. There is now, at 2.30 p. M., the melon-rind arrange- ment of the clouds. Really parallel columns of fine mackerel sky, reaching quite across the heavens from west to east, with clear intervals of blue sky, and a fine- grained vapor like spun glass extending in the same direction beneath the former. In half an hour all this mackerel sky is gone. What an ever-changing scene is the sky with its drift- ing cirrhus and stratus! ‘The spectators are not re- quested to take a recess of fifteen minutes while the scene changes, but, walking commonly with our faces to the earth, our thoughts revert to other objects, and as often as we look up the scene has changed. Now, I see, it is a column of white vapor reaching quite across the sky, from west to east, with locks of fine hair, or tow that is carded, combed out on each side, — sur- prising touches here and there, which show a peculiar state of the atmosphere. No doubt the best weather- signs are in these forms which the vapor takes. When I next look up, the locks of hair are perfect fir trees with their recurved branches. (These trees extend at right angles from the side of the main column.) This appearance is changed all over the sky in one. minute. Again it is pieces of asbestos, or the vapor takes the curved form of the surf or breakers, and again of flames. But how long can a man be in a mood to watch the heavens? That melon-rind arrangement, so very com- mon, is perhaps a confirmation of Wise the balloonist’s statement that at a certain height there is a current of air moving from west to east. Hence we so commonly see the clouds arranged in parallel columns in that direction. What a spectacle the subtle vapors that have their habitation in the sky present these winter days! You have not only ever-varying forms of a given type of cloud, but various types at different heights or hours. It is a scene, for variety, for beauty and grandeur, out of all proportion to the attention it gets. Who watched the forms of the clouds over this part of the earth a thousand years ago? Who watches them to-day ? Now that the river is frozen we have a sky under our feet also. Going over black ice three or four inches thick, only reassured by seeing the thickness at the cracks, I see it richly marked internally with large whit- ish figures suggesting rosettes of ostrich-feathers or coral. . These at first appear to be a dust on the surface, but, looking closely, are found to be at various angles with it internally, in the grain. The work of crystallization. Often you see as it were a sheaf of feathered arrows five or six feet long, very delicate but perfectly straight, their planes making a very slight angle with the sur- face of the ice, and yet no seam is to be detected. The black floor is by these divided into polygonal segments, for the most part geometrically straight-sided. Their position merely suggests a cleavage which has no exist- ence. Perhaps it is the angle of excidence answering to the angle of incidence at which the sun’s light and heat strikes the ice at different hours!! I walk thus along the riverside, perhaps between the button-bushes and the meadow, where the bleached and withered grass —the Panicum virgatum and blue-joint and wool-grass — rustle amid the osiers which have saved them from the scythe. When the snow is only thus deep, the yellowish straw- color of the sedge in the meadows rising above the snow is now first appreciated, seen between the ice and the snow-clad land. Near the mouth of Well Meadow Brook, I see a mus- quash under the black ice of the pond. It is ten or twelve rods from a cabin, which must be the nearest open place, and it moves off slowly, pushing against the ice with its feet, toward the middle of the pond, and as I follow, it at length sinks to the bottom and is lost. Did it go down for concealment or for air? Here was a musquash at least a dozen rods from any hole, and it did not swim toward its cabin. I see, in the Pleasant Meadow field near the pond, some little masses of snow, such as I noticed yester- day in the open land by the railroad causeway at the Cut. I could not account for them then, for I did not go to them, but thought they might be the remainders of drifts which had been blown away, leaving little perpendicular masses six inches or a foot higher than the surrounding snow in the midst of the fields. Now I detect the cause. These (which I see to-day) are the remains of snowballs which the wind of yesterday rolled up in the moist snow. The morning was mild, and the snow accordingly soft and moist yet light, but in the middle of the day a strong northwest wind arose, and before night it became quite hard to bear. These masses which I examined in the Pleasant Meadow field were generally six or eight inches high — though they must have wasted and settled considerably —and a little longer than high, presenting a more or less fluted appearance externally. They were hollow cylinders about two inches in diameter within, like muffs. Here were a dozen within two rods square, and Isaw them in three or four localities miles apart, in almost any place exposed to the sweep of the northwest wind. There was plainly to be seen the furrow in the snow produced when they were rolled up, in the form of a very narrow pyramid, commencing perhaps two inches wide, and in the course of ten feet (sometimes of four or five only) becoming six or eight inches wide, when the mass was too heavy to be moved further. The snow had been thus rolled up even, like a car- pet. This occurred on perfectly level ground and also where the ground rose gently to the southeast. The ground was not laid bare. That wind must have rolled up masses thus till they were a foot in diameter. Itis certain, then, that a sudden strong wind when the snow ws X ( J ’ 2 9 ~ a ® oS ~~ - er *X ® = ~ . is moist but light (it had fallen the afternoon previous) will catch and roll it up as a boy rolls up his ball. These white balls are seen far off over the fields. When I reach the causeway at the Cut, returning, the sun has just set, —a perfect winter sunset, so fair and pure, with its golden and purple isles. I think the summer rarely equals it. ‘There are real damask- colored isles or continents north of the sun’s place, and further off northeast they pass into bluish purple. Hayden’s house, over which I see them, seems the abode of the blessed. The east horizon also is purple. But that part of the parallel cloud-columns overhead is now invisible. At length the purple travels west- ward, as the sun sinks lower below the horizon, the clouds overhead are brought out, and so the purple glow glides down the western sky. Virgil’s account of winter occupations in the First Georgic, line 291, applies well enough to New Eng- land: — “Some keep at work by the late light of the winter Fire, and point torches with a sharp iron. In the meanwhile the wife, relieving her long labor with her Singing, thickens the webs with the shrill slay; © Or boils down the liquor of sweet must with fire, And skims off the foam of the boiling kettle with leaves. Wimter.i is an ide tisbe to sles bayicdidincden dies In cold weather they commonly enjoy what they have laid up, And jovial they give themselves up to mutual feasting: Genial winter invites this and relaxes their cares; As when now the laden keel has touched its port, And the joyful sailors have placed a crown on the stern. However, now is the time to gather acorns, And laurel berries, and the olive, and bloody (colored) myrtle berries; Now to set snares for cranes,' and deer, And chase the long-eared hares; When the snow lies deep, and the rivers are full of drifting ice.’’ I saw yesterday where fox-hunters with a sleigh and hounds had improved the first shallow snow to track their game. They thread the woods by old and grown-up and forgotten paths, where no others would think to drive.

At 2 Pp. M. begins to snow again. I walk to Walden. Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow, drifting nearly horizontally from the north, so that it is quite blinding to face, almost as much so as sand. It is cold also. It is drifting but not accumulating fast. T can see the woods about a quarter of a mile distant through it. That of the 11th was a still storm, of large flakes falling gently in the quiet air, like so many white feathers descending in different directions when seen against a wood-side, —the regular snow-storm such as is painted. A myriad falling flakes weaving a coarse garment by which the eye is amused. The snow was a little moist and the weather rather mild. Also I remem- ber the perfectly crystalline or star snows, when each flake is a perfect six(? )-rayed wheel. This must be the chef-d’euvre of the Genius of the storm. Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it. Also there is sleet, which is half snow, half rain. The Juncus tenurs, with its conspicuous acheniums, is very noticeable now, rising above the snow in the wood-paths, commonly aslant.

The first kind of snow-storm, or that of yesterday, which ceased in the night after some three inches had fallen, was that kind that makes handsome drifts behind the walls. There are no drifts equal to these behind loosely built stone walls, the wind passing between the stones. Slight as this snow was, these drifts now extend back four or five feet and as high as | the wall, on the north side of the Corner Bridge road. The snow is scooped out in the form of easy-chairs, or of shells or plinths, if that is the name for them. @ 6 @ a ® ¢ .. rye 8 > a’ e, of 5 6 5 e e ‘ie Bis fms) a C pus The backs of the chairs often inclining to fall off. wena x A man killed a wild goose a day or two since in Spencer Brook, near Legross’s. I hear from J. [? ] Moore that one man in Bedford has got eighteen minks the last fall.* Philosophy is a Greek word by good mghts, and it stands almost for a Greek thing. Yet some rumor of it has reached the commonest mind. M. Miles, who came to collect his wood bill to-day, said, when I objected to the small size of his wood, that it was necessary to split wood fine in order to cure it well, that he had found that wood that was more than four inches in diameter would not dry, and moreover a good deal depended on the manner in which it was corded up in the woods. He piled his high and tightly. If this were not well done the stakes would spread and the wood lie loosely, and so the rain and snow find their way into it. And he added, “I have handled a good deal of wood, and I think that I understand the philosophy of it.”

A. M.—'To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard’s Herbal.? His admirable though quaint de- scriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not accord- ing to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. tie brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves. It suggests that we can- not too often get rid of the barren assumption that is ee ND a Ep LEN, Se aC et TR A A TO EE ET Ce OC A STO TTT, ee ie erent a TT LEM SN TR RT ARC tre in our science. His leaves are leaves; his flowers, flowers; his fruit, fruit. They are green and colored and fragrant. It is a man’s knowledge added to a child’s delight. Modern botanical descriptions ap- proach ever nearer to the dryness of an algebraic formula, as if 2 + y were = to a love-letter. It is the keen joy and discrimination of the child who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends. How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in these conventional Latinisms! He has really seen, and smelt, and tasted, and reports his sensa- tions. Bought a book at Little & Brown’s, paying a nine- pence more on a volume than it was offered me for elsewhere. The customer thus pays for the more ele- gant style of the store.

P. M. —'To Walden. The snow being some three or four inches deep, I see rising above it, generally, at my old bean-field, only my little white pines set last spring in the midst of an immense field of Solidago nemoralis, with a lit- tle sweet-fern (7. e. a large patch of it on the north side). What a change there will be in a few years, this little forest of goldenrod giving place to a forest of pines! By the side of the Pout’s Nest, I see on the pure white snow what looks like dust for half a dozen inches under a twig. Looking closely, I find that the twig is hardhack and the dust its slender, light-brown, chaffy- looking seed, which falls still in copious showers, dust- ing the snow, when I jar it; and here are the tracks of a sparrow which has jarred the twig and picked the minute seeds a long time, making quite a hole in the snow. The seeds are so fine that it must have got more snow than seed at each peck. But they prob- ably look large to its microscopic eyes. I see, when I jar it, that a meadow-sweet close by has quite sim- lar, but larger, seeds. This the reason, then, that these plants rise so high above the snow and retain their seed, dispersing it on the least jar over each suc- cessive layer of snow beneath them; or it is carried to a distance by the wind. What abundance and what variety in the diet of these small granivorous birds, while I find only a few nuts still! These stiff weeds which no snow can break down hold their pro- vender. What the cereals are to men, these are to the sparrows. ‘The only threshing they require is that the birds fly against their spikes or stalks. A little further I see the seed-box (?) (Ludwigia) full of still smaller, yellowish seeds. And on the ridge north is the track of a partridge amid the shrubs. It has hopped up to the low clusters of smooth sumach berries, sprinkled the snow with them, and eaten all but a few. Also, here only, or where it has evidently jarred them down — whether intentionally or not, I am not sure — are the large oval seeds of the stiff-stalked lespedeza, which I suspect it ate, with the sumach berries. There is much solid food in them. When the snow is deep the birds could easily pick the latter out of the heads as they stand on the snow. I observe, then, eaten by birds to-day, the seed of hardhack and meadow-sweet, sumach, and probably lespedeza, and even seed-box. Under the hill, on the southeast side of R. W. E.’s lot, where the hemlock stands, I see many tracks of squirrels. ‘The dark, thick green of the hemlock (amid the pines) seems to attract them as a covert. The snow under the hemlock is strewn with the scales of its cones, which they (and perhaps birds?) have stripped off, and some of its little winged seeds. It is pleasant to see the tracks of these squirrels (I am not sure whether they are red or gray or both, for I see none) leading straight from the base of one tree to that of another, thus leaving untrodden triangles, squares, and polygons of every form, bounded by much trodden highways. One, two, three, and the track is lost on the upright bole of a pine, — as if they had played at base-running from goal to goal, while pine cones were thrown at them on the way. The tracks of two or three suggest a multitude. You come thus on the tracks of these frisky and volatile (semivolitant) creatures in the midst of perfect stillness and solitude, as you might stand in a hall half an hour after the dancers had departed. i) a EO IT see no nests "We ow Fee in the trees, v. aa nr ee ay, Y) but numerous holes through the snow into the earth, whence they have emerged. They have loitered but little on the snow, spending their time chiefly on the trees, their castles, when abroad. The snow is strewn not only with hemlock scales, but, under other trees, with the large white pine scales for rods together where there is no track, the wind having scattered them as they fell, and also the shells of hickory-nuts. It reminds me of the plat- form before a grocery where nuts are sold. You see many places where they have probed the snow for these white pine cones, evidently those which they cut off green and which accordingly have not opened so as to drop the seeds. ‘This was perhaps the design in cut- ting them off so early, —thus to preserve them under the snow (not dispersed). Do they find them by the scent? At any rate they will dig down through the snow and come right upon a pine cone or a hickory-nut or an acorn, which you and I cannot do. Two or three acres of Walden, off the bar, not yet frozen. Saw in [it] a good-sized black duck, which did not dive while I looked. I suspect it must have been a I’uligula, though I saw no white.

Rains. P. M.— To Assabet opposite Tarbell’s, via Abel Hosmer’s. It rains but little this afternoon, though there is no sign of fair weather. Only the mist appears thinner here and there from time to time. It is a lichen day. The pitch pines on the south of the road at the Colburn farm are very Inspiriting to behold. Their green is as much enlivened and freshened as that of the lichens. It sug- gests a sort of sunlight on them, though not even a patch of clear sky is seen to-day. As dry and olive or slate-colored lichens are of a fresh and living green, so the already green pine-needles have acquired a far livelier tint, as if they enjoyed this moisture as much as the lichens do. They seem to be lit up more than when the sun falls on them. Their trunks, and those of trees generally, being wet, are very black, and the bright lichens on them are so much the more remark- able. I see three shrikes in different places to-day, — two on the top’ of apple trees, sitting still in the storm, on the lookout. They fly low to another tree when dis- turbed, much like a bluebird, and jerk their tails once or twice when they alight. Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their Juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.* The thick, low cloud or mist makes novel prospects for us. In the southwest horizon I see a darker mass of it stretched along, seen against itself. ‘The oak woods a quarter of a mile off appear more uniformly red than ever. They are not only redder for being wet, but, through the obscurity of the mist, one leaf runs into an- other and the whole mass makes one impression. The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color. Also some of the most withered white oak leaves with roundish black spots like small lichens are quite interesting now.