13 December 1852 – 19 December 1852

Walk early through the woods to Lincoln to survey. Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday. River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over. Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk? As we walked over the Cedar Hill, Mr. Weston asked me if I had ever noticed how the frost formed around a particular weed in the grass, and no other. It was a clear cold morning. We stooped to examine, and I observed, about the base of the Lechea major (?), or larger pin- weed,! the frost formed into little flattened trumpets or bells, an inch or more long, with the mouth down about the base of the stem. They were very conspicu- ous, dotting the grass white. But what was most re- markable was that, though there were plenty of other dead weeds and grasses about, no other species ex- hibited this phenomenon. I think it can hardly be because of the form of its top, and that therefore the moisture is collected and condensed and flows down its stem particularly. It may have something to do with the life of the root, which I noticed was putting forth shoots beneath. Perhaps this growth generates heat and so steam. He said that his cows never touched that weed. I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint’s Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden.! I observed a mouse run down a bush by the pond-side. I approached and found that he had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird’s nest (it was made partly of sticks like a thrasher’s), about four or five feet from the ground, and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss (? ) which grows about the base of oaks, but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool, per- haps from the wool-grass. He appeared to be a red- dish brown above and cream-colored beneath, and ran swiftly down the stems. I think it must be the Gerbil- lus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse.? Began to snow at noon. This the third snow; the first lasted half an hour on ground; the second, two or three days.

Tuesday. P. M.— To Assabet Stone Bridge. We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. The dried chalices of the Rhexia Virginica stand above the snow, and the cups of the blue-curls and the long sharp red capsules of the small (?) hypericum, ete., etc., johnswort; and a new era commences with the dried herbs.

Saw a small flock of geese go over. One’s life, the enterprise he is here upon, should certainly be a grand fact to consider, not a mean or insignificant one. A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one. But is this fact of “our life’’ commonly but a puff of air, a flash in the pan, a smoke, a nothing? It does not afford arena for a tragedy.

Observed the reflection of the snow on Pine Hill from Walden, extending far beyond the true limits of a reflection, quite across the pond; ] > g Grane e gdm PLEZ also, less obviously, of sorts pines. The sky over- 2 ~: oe we — &, ry VIO. qi butte east with thick seud, § which, in the reflection, the snow ran into.

P. M.—To Annursnack. Sedum Telephium, garden orpine or live-for-ever; I think this is the plant with a sort of pineapple-leaved and sheathed bulbs, on a rock between Cox’s and Hey- wood’s.! Saw where a red squirrel (tinged gray) had been eating the hips of a sweet-briar, which had appar- ently grown recently, leaves still fresh and green. Very cold, windy day. The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds. Loring’s Pond beautifully frozen. So polished a surface, I mistook many parts of it for water. It was waved or watered with a slight dust nevertheless. Cracked into large squares like the faces of a reflector, it was so exqui- sitely polished that the sky and scudding dun-colored clouds, with mother-o’-pearl tints, were reflected in it as in the calmest water. I slid over it with a lit- tle misgiving, mistaking the ice before me for water. This is the first skating. Still the little ruby-crowned birds about.