31 January 1853 – 6 February 1853

Surveying the Hunt farm. Saw a duck in the river; different kind from the last. Dr. Bartlett tells me that it was Adam Win- throp, a grandson of the Governor, who sold this farm to Hunt in 1701. I saw the old window, some eight- een inches square, of diamond squares, four or five inches across, set in lead, on the back side [of] the house.

The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.

Saw three ducks in the river. They resort to those parts necessarily which are open, which are near the houses. I always see them in the fall as long as the river and ponds are open, and, that being the case all this winter (almost), they have not all gone further south. ‘The shallow and curving part of the river be- hind Cheney’s being open all this winter, they are confined for the most part to this, in this neighbor- hood. The thickest ice I have seen this winter is full nine inches.

To Walden, Pp. Mm. A thick fog. The trees and woods look well through it. You are inclined to walk in the woods for objects. They are draped with mist, and you hear the sound of it dripping from them. It is a lichen day. Not a bit of rotten wood lies on the dead leaves, but it is covered with fresh, green cup lichens, etc., etc. All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, —a sudden humid growth. I remember now that the mist was much thicker over the pond than elsewhere. I could not distinguish a man there more than ten rods off, and the woods, seen dimly across a bay, were mis- taken for the opposite side of the pond. I could almost fancy a bay of an acre in extent the whole pond. Else- where, methinks, I could see twice as far. I felt the greater coolness of the air over the pond, which it was, I suppose, that condensed the vapor more there. ~ Somebody has been fishing in a rude way and left some of their lines, apparently by mistake. They have laid branches of alders over the holes, and, after tying their lines to a stick two feet long to prevent their being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder a foot or more above the ice and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, will show when they have a bite. These sprigs or boughs are arranged all around the pond. At the eastern shore I see at last how those ridges or ramparts are formed along the edges of ponds. The sand has been recently cast up there, six or eight inches high, by a foot or two in width, just on the edge of the t (Walden, p. 314; Riv. 439.] ice, in the form of waves just breaking on the shore, as if the ice had crowded against the shore and forced it up, or it had been washed down by the rain and lodged against the edge of the ice. On a close exami- nation, I found that apparently the ice had not moved, but rather had melted a foot or two, and left bare ground, the water having subsided since it froze, and its edge was exceedingly thin and rotten. The sand was forced or puffed up in the form of a pent roof for a long distance, and under this roof there was no frost in the ground, though all the shore above was still frozen, and even below, if the ice happened to be very thin and there was no water between it and the sand. Apparently the water of the pond, warmed by the rain which had run into it, especially next the shore, pene- trating under the frozen shore, produced this expan- sion and puffing up of the shore there. Sometimes the ice itself, lying on the shore, was raised. The stones as big as one’s fist, which for the most part compose the shore, were heaved up into a less conspicuous ridge, all loose, beneath which also there was no frost; also the dead wood, chips, twigs, and other rubbish. Within a limited space, just on the edge of the ice, was the phe- nomenon so common in the spring, of the frost coming out of the ground. No matter how large the rocks superimposed, or what the depth of sand that had accumulated, it was heaved up, so that the pitch pines by my shore were literally tipped or pried over by a force applied beneath, and many may now be seen slanted at an angle of forty-five degrees. Taking up some masses of this shore heaved up, which were still frozen, I found that, as in stones a vein of a different kind often passes through and through them, so the frozen sand alternated with sparkling veins of clear ice. Where the water had stood over the sand and frozen, and then fresh sand been worked into it, these veins of ice sur- rounded by sand were black. The ice of Sam Barrett’s pond has a greenish tinge. The bottom of the ice on the edge of the pond next the sand had a singularly reticulated appearance, like tripe or the coats of the stomach, and I thought I detected the effects of ae countless air-bubbles of all sizes which had melted it there. The frost is out of the ground in many places. A Stellaria media in blossom in the garden, and were of course last month.

Observed some buds on a young apple tree, partially unfolded at the extremity and apparently swollen. Probably blossom-buds.