1 January 1855 – 7 January 1855

P. M. — To Great Meadows. Saw one of those silver-gray cocoons which are so securely attached by the silk being wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig. This was more than a year old and empty and, having been attached to a red maple shoot, a foot or more above the meadow, it had girdled it just as a wire might, it was so unyield- ing, and the wood had overgrown it on each side. What is that small insect with large, slender wings, which I see on the snow or fluttering in the air these days? Also some little black beetles on the ice of the meadow, ten rods from shore. In many places near the shore the water has over- flowed the ice to a great extent and frozen again with water between of a yellowish tinge, in which you see motes moving about as you walk. The skating is for the most part spoiled by a thin, crispy ice on top of the old ice, which is frozen in great crystals and crackles under your feet. ‘This is apparently the puddles pro- duced by the late thaw and rain, which froze thinly while the rest of the water was soaked up. A fine snow is falling and drifting before the wind over the ice and lodging in shallow drifts at regular intervals. I see where a woodpecker has drilled a hole about two inches over in a decayed white maple; quite re- cently, for the chippings are strewn over the ice be- neath and were the first sign that betrayed it. The tree was hollow. Is it for a nest next season?! There was an old hole higher up. , I see that the locust pods are still closed, or but partially open, but they open wider after lying in my chamber.

Sunday. P. M.—J. P. Brown road and Hubbard’s Bridge. Cloudy and misty. On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind, contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw. The channel of the river is quite open in many places, and in others I remark that the ice and water alter- nate like waves and the hollow between them. ‘There are long reaches of open water where I look for musk- rats and ducks, as I go along to Clamshell Hill. I hear the pleasant sound of running water. I see that black scum on the surface of water above the ice. The delicious soft, spring-suggesting air, — how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me. A certain dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love nature again. Here is my Italy, my hea- ven, my New England. I understand why the Indians hereabouts placed heaven in the southwest, — the soft south.’ On the slopes the ground is laid bare and radical leaves revealed, — crowfoot, shepherd’s-purse, clover, etc., —a fresh green, and, in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds, with a bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow saxifrage; and these and the many withered plants laid bare remind me of spring and of botany. On the same bare sand is revealed a new crop of arrowheads. I pick up two perfect ones of quartz, sharp as if just from the hands of the maker. Still birds are very rare. Here comes a little flock of titmice, plainly to keep me company, with their black caps and throats making them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along the alders, with a sharp, clear, lisping note. There begin to be greenish pools in the fields where there 1s a bottom of icy snow. I saw what looked like clay-colored snow-fleas on the under side of a stone. The bank is tinged with a most delicate pink or bright flesh-color — where the Beomyces roseus grows. It is a lichen day. The ground is covered with cetrarie, etc., under the pines. How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark! It would not be worth the while to die and leave all this life behind one. The hillsides covered with the bear scrub oak, me- thinks, are of the deepest red at a distance. The pitch pine tops were much broken by the damp snow last month. I see where the birches which were weighed down and lay across the road have been cut off; and all their scales and seeds, shaken off by the sleighs, in one spot color the snow like thick sawdust. The sky, seen here and there through the wrack, bluish and greenish and, perchance, with a vein of red in the west, seems like the inside of a shell deserted of its tenant, into which I have crawled.’ The willow catkins began to peep from under their scales as early as the 26th of last month. Many buds have lost their scales.