1 December 1856 – 7 December 1856

P. M. — By path around Walden. With this little snow of the 29th wit. there is yet pretty good sledding, for it lies solid. I see the old pale-faced farmer out again on his sled now for the five-thousandth time,t— Cyrus Hub- bard, a man of a certain New England probity and worth, immortal and natural, like a natural product, like the sweetness of a nut, like the toughness of hick- ory. He, too, is a redeemer for me. How superior actually to the faith he professes! He is not an office- seeker. What an institution, what a revelation is a man! We are wont foolishly to think that the creed which a man professes is more significant than the fact he is. It matters not how hard the conditions seemed, how mean the world, for a man is a preva- lent force and a new law himself. He is a system whose law is to be observed. ‘The old farmer condescends to countenance still this nature and order of things. It is a great encouragement that an honest man makes this world his abode. He rides on the sled drawn by oxen, world-wise, yet comparatively so young, as if they had seen scores of winters. The farmer spoke to me, I can swear, clean, cold, moderate as the snow. He does not melt the snow where he treads. Yet what a faint impression that encounter may make on me after all! Moderate, natural, true, as if he were made of earth, stone, wood, snow.! I thus meet in this uni- verse kindred of mine, composed of these elements. I see men like frogs; their peeping I partially under- stand. I go by Hayden’s and take A. Wheeler’s wood-path to railroad. | Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broad- cast upon the surface of the snow. Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. ‘Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground. Will wonder become extinct in me? Shall I become insensible as a fungus? A ridge of earth, with the red cockscomb lichen on it, peeps out still at the rut’s edge. The dear whole- some color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immor- tality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well- tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy be- neath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields.

P. M. — Got in my boat, which before I had got out and turned up on the bank. It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow, I am so unused to ' the work of late. Then walked up the railroad. The clear straw- colored grass and some weeds contrasting with the snow it rises above. Saw little in this walk. Saw Mel- vin’s lank bluish-white black-spotted hound, and Melvin with his gun near, going home at eve. He follows hunting, praise be to him, as regularly in our tame fields as the farmers follow farming. Persistent Genius! How I respect him and thank him for him! [szc] I trust the Lord will provide us with another Melvin when he is gone. How good in him to follow his own bent, and not continue at the Sabbath-school all his days! What a wealth he thus becomes in the neighborhood! Few know how to take the census. I thank my stars for Melvin. I think of him with gratitude when I am going to sleep, grateful that he exists, — that Melvin who is such a trial to his mother. Yet he is agreeable to me as a tinge of russet on the hillside. I would fain give thanks morning and evening for my blessings. Awk- ward, gawky, loose-hung, dragging his legs after him. He is my contemporary and neighbor. He is one tribe, I am another, and we are not at war. I saw but little in my walk. Saw no bird, only a crow’s track in the snow. How quickly men come out on to the highways with their sleds and improve the first snow! The farmer has begun to play with his sled as early as any of the boys. See him already with mittens on and thick boots well greased — been soaking in grease all summer, perhaps — and fur cap and red comforter about his throat, though it is not yet cold, walking beside his team with contented thoughts. This drama every day in the streets! This is the theatre I go to. There he goes with his venture behind him, and often he gets aboard for a change. As for the sensuality in Whitman’s “ Leaves of Grass,” I do not so much wish that it was not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read it without harm.

About as much more snow as fell on the 29th November has fallen in the night upon that, so stilly that we were not aware of it till we looked out: It has not even lodged on the window-sashes, and I am first convinced it has fallen by seeing the old tracks in the road covered and the roofs uniformly white. It is now somewhat misty, or perhaps a fine rain beginning.

Ceased raining and mizzling last evening, and cleared off, with a high northwest wind, which shook the house, coming in fitful gusts, but only they who slept on the west sides of houses knew of it. 7.30 a. M.—= Take a run down the riverside. Scare up a few sparrows, which take shelter in Keyes’s arbor-vitee row. ‘The snow has now settled, owing to the rain, and presents no longer a level surface, but a suc- cession of little hills and hollows, as if the whole earth had been a potato or corn field, and there is a slight crust to it. Dark waves are chasing each other across the river from northwest to southeast and breaking the edge of the snow ice which has formed for half a rod in width along the edge, and the fragments of broken ice, what arctic voyagers call “brash,” carry forward the undulation. I am pleased to see from afar the highest water-mark of a spring freshet on Cheney’s boat-house, a level light-colored mark about an inch wide running the whole length of the building, now several years old, where probably a thin ice chafed it. 2 p. M. — By Clamshell and back over Hubbard’s Bridge. I notice that the swallow-holes in the bank behind Dennis’s, which is partly washed away, are flat-ellip- tical, three times or more as wide horizontally as they are deep vertically, or about three inches by one. Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white- barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf. I love the few homely colors of Nature at this season, — her strong wholesome browns, her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious green, her pure, cold, snowy white.’ An F. hyemalis also. In the sprout-land by the road, in the woods this side of C. Miles’s, much gray goldenrod is mixed with the shrub oak. It reminds me of the color of the rab- bits which run there. Thus Nature feeds her children chiefly with color. Ihave no doubt that it is an impor- tant relief to the eyes which have long rested on snow, to rest on brown oak leaves and the bark of trees. We want the greatest variety within the smallest compass, and yet without glaring diversity, and we have it in the colors of the withered oak leaves. The white, so curled and shrivelled and pale; the black (?), more flat and glossy and darker brown; the red, much like the black, but perhaps less dark, and less deeply cut. The scarlet still occasionally retains some blood in its veins.

Clear, cold winter weather. What a contrast between this week and last, when I talked of setting out apple trees! P. M. — Walked over the Hill. The Indians have at length got a regular load of wood. It is odd to see a pile of good oak wood beside their thin cotton tents in the snow, the wood-pile which is to be burnt within is so much more substantial than the house. Yet they do not appear to mind the cold, though one side the tent is partly open, and all are flapping in the wind, and there is a sick child in one. The children play in the snow in front, as before more substantial houses. The river is well skimmed over in most places, though it will not bear, — wherever there is least current, as in broad places, or where there is least wind, as by the bridges. The ice trap was sprung last night. As I walk along the side of the Hill, a pair of nut- hatches flit by toward a walnut, flying low in mid- course and then ascending to the tree. I hear one’s faint tut tut or gnah gnah —no doubt heard a good way by its mate now flown into the next tree — as it is ascending the trunk or branch of a walnut in a zigzag manner, hitching along, prying into the crevices of the bark; and now it has found a savory morsel, which it pauses to devour, then flits to a new bough. It is a chubby bird, white, slate-color, and black. It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky. A white moon, half full, in the pale or dull blue heaven and a whiteness like the reflection of the snow, extend- ing up from the horizon all around a quarter the way up to the zenith. I can imagine that I see it shooting up like an aurora. This at 4 p.m. About the sun it is only whiter than elsewhere, or there is only the faintest possible tinge of yellow there. There are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has scattered many over the snow-crust. It would be easier gather- ing them now than ever. The johnswort and th the larger pinweed are e conspicuous above the snow. Some fine straw- colored grasses, as deli- cate as the down on a young man’s cheek, still rise above this crusted snow, and even a recess is melted around them, so gently has it been deposited. The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky. This morning I saw Riordan’s cock thrust out the window on to the snow to seek his sustenance, and now, as I go by at night, he is waiting on the front door-step to be let in. My themes shall not be far-fetched. I will tell .of homely every-day phenomena and adventures. Friends! Society! It seems to me that I have an abundance of it, there is so much that I rejoice and sympathize with, and men, too, that I never speak to but only know and think of. What you call bareness and poverty is to me simplicity. God could not be unkind to me if he should try. I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold, for it compels the prisoner to try new fields and resources. I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating, to be obliged to get my boat in. I shall launch it again in the spring with so much more pleasure. This is an advantage in point of abstinence and moderation compared with the seaside boating, where the boat ever lies on the shore. I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times. It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. I find it invariably true, the poorer I am, the richer Iam. What you consider my disadvantage, I consider my advantage. While you are pleased to get knowledge and culture in many ways, I am delighted to think that I am get- ting rid of them. I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.’ ! (Channing, p. 89.]

Saturday. 2 p.m. — To Hubbard’s Bridge and Holden Swamp and up river on ice to F. Pond Crossing, Just below pond; back on east side of river. Skating is fairly begun. The river is generally frozen over, though it will bear quite across in very few places. Much of the ice in the middle is dark and thin, having been formed last night, and when you stamp you see the water trembling in spots here and there. I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca. I feel an affection for the rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda. growing about the swamp, hard, dry, in- edible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries are of a handsome form, made to endure, lasting often over two seasons, only becoming darker and gray. | How handsome every one of these leaves that are blown about the snow-crust or lie neglected beneath, soon to turn to mould! Not merely a matted mass of fibres like a sheet of paper, but a perfect organism and system in itself, so that no mortal has ever yet discerned or explored its beauty. Against this swamp I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday. On the meadows, where this overflow was so deep that it did not freeze solid, it cracks from time to time with a threatening squeak. I see here and there very faint tracks of musk- rats or minks, made when it was soft and sloshy, lead- ing from the springy shore to the then open middle, — the faintest possible vestiges, which are ao seen in a favorable light. Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remark- able track of an otter, made undoubtedly December 3d, when this snow ice was mere slosh. It had come up through a hole (now black ice) by the stem of a button-bush, and, apparently, pushed its way through the slosh, as through snow on land, leaving a track eight inches wide, more or less, with the now frozen snow shoved up two inches high on each side, 2. e. two inches above the general level. Where the ice was firmer are seen only the tracks of its feet. It had crossed the open middle (now thin black ice) and continued its singular trail to the opposite shore, as if a narrow sled had been drawn bottom upward. At Bittern Cliff I saw where they had been playing, sliding, or fishing, apparently to-day, on the snow- covered rocks, on which, for a rod upward and as rouch in width, the snow was trodden and worn quite smooth, as if twenty had trodden and slid there for sev- eral hours. Their droppings are a mass of fishes’ scales and bones, — loose, scaly black masses. At this point the black ice approached within three or four feet of the rock, and there was an open space just there, a foot or two across, which appeared to have been kept open by them. I continued along up that side and crossed on white ice just below the pond. The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge- wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks. I saw one place where there was a zigzag piece of black ice two rods long and one foot wide in the midst of the white, which I was surprised to find had been made by an otter pushing his way through the slosh. He had left fishes’ scales, etc., at the end. These very conspicuous tracks generally commenced and terminated at some button-bush or willow, where a black ice now masked the hole of that date. It is surprising that our hunters know no more about them. I see also what I take to be rabbit’s tracks made in that slosh, shaped like a horse’s track, only rather longer and saci -)) larger. They had set out to cross the river, but, coming to open water, turned back. Each pinweed, etc., has melted a little hollow or rough cave in the snow, in which the lower part at least snugly hides. They are never more interesting than now on Lechea Plain, since they are perfectly relieved, brown on white. Far the greater part of the shrub oak leaves are fallen. When I speak of the otter to our oldest village doc- tor, who should be ex officio our naturalist, he is greatly surprised, not knowing that such an animal is found in these parts, and I have to remind him that the Pil- grims sent home many otter skins in the first vessels that returned, together with beaver, mink, and black fox skins, and 1156 pounds of otter skins in the years 1631-36, which brought fourteen or fifteen shillings a pound, also 12,530 pounds of beaver skin. Vide Bradford’s History. Though so many oak leaves hang on all winter, you will be surprised on going into the woods at any time, only a short time after a fall of snow, to see how many have lately fallen on it and are driven about over it, so that you would think there could be none left till spring. Where I crossed the river on the roughish white ice, there were coarse ripple-marks two or three feet apart and convex to the south or up-stream, extending quite a across, and many sees Js. spots of black ice Cn<is Mazin + Be +t « foot wide, more SP oe or less in the midst ati P- saage of the white, where probably was water yesterday. The water, apparently, had been blown southerly on to the ice already formed, and hence the ripple-marks. In many places the otters appeared to have gone floundering along in the sloshy ice and water. On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmz or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits. Our eyes go searching along the stems for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters. For we are hunters pursuing the summer on snow-shoes and skates, all winter long. ‘There is really but one season in our hearts. What variety the pinweeds, clear brown seedy plants, give to the fields, which are yet but shallowly covered with snow! You were not aware before how extensive these grain-fields. Not till the snow comes are the beauty and variety and richness of vegetation ever fully revealed. Some plants are now seen more simply and distinctly and to advantage. The pinweeds, etc., have been for the most part confounded with the russet or brown earth beneath them, being seen against a back- ground of the same color, but now, being seen against a pure white background, are as distinct as if held up to the sky. Some plants seen, then, in their prime or perfection, when supporting an icy burden in their empty chalices.

Sunday. P. M.— Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond. It takes my feet a few moments to get used to the skates. I see the track of one skater who has preceded me this morning. This is the first skating. I keep mostly to the smooth ice about a rod wide next the shore commonly, where there was an overflow a day or two ago. There is not the slightest overflow to-day, and yet it is warm (thermometer at 25 at 4.30 pP. M.). It must be that the river is falling. Now I go shaking over hobbly places, now shoot over a bridge of ice only a foot wide between the water and the shore at a bend, — Hubbard Bath, — always so at first there. Now I suddenly see the trembling surface of water where I thought were black spots of ice only around me. The river is rather low, so that I cannot keep the river above the Clamshell Bend. I am confined to a very narrow edging of ice in the meadow, gliding with unexpected ease through withered sedge, but slipping sometimes on a twig; again taking to the snow to reach the next ice, but this rests my feet; straddling the bare black willows, winding between the button-bushes, and fol- lowing narrow threadings of ice amid the sedge, which bring me out to clear fields unexpectedly. Occasionally I am obliged to take a few strokes over black and thin- looking ice, where the neighboring bank is springy, and am slow to acquire confidence in it, but, returning, how bold Iam! Where the meadow seemed only sedge and snow, I find a complete ice connection. At Cardinal Shore, as usual, there is a great crescent of hobbly ice, where, two or three days ago, the north- ua a — a OOM ee ~ : — & @ a oo & 7 7 ? wo = er is @ a p 2 a So = =~ eo o 0 7 4 eo — - ~ = ~ ~ 8 @ — — = = = a ( w Y get <a = ee us * .~ ¢ 7 3 A Bin ° 1 2. ii “ . i ys ci @ 7 = * { ¥ * . ae! 5 ° “ 5 4o¢ ( ‘s &- ° ® ¢ ae ® *. 6 & 8 @ e ee & . * x x west wind drove the waves back up-stream and broke up the edge of the ice. This crescent is eight or ten rods wide and twice as many long, and consists of cakes of ice from a few inches to half a dozen feet in diameter, with each a raised edge all around, where apparently the floating sludge has been caught and ac- cumulated. (Occasionally the raised edge is six inches high!) This is mottled black and white, and is not yet safe. It is like skating over so many rails, or the edges of saws. Now I glide over a field of white air-cells close to the surface, with coverings no thicker than egg-shells, cutting through with a sharp crackling sound. There are many of those singular spider-shaped dark places amid the white ice, where the surface water has run through some days ago. As I enter on Fair Haven Pond, I see already three pickerel-fishers retreating from it, drawing a sled through the Baker Farm, and see where they have been fishing, by the shining chips of ice about the holes. Others were here even yesterday, as it appears. The pond must have been frozen by the 4th at least. Some fisherman or other is ready with his reels and bait as soon as the ice will bear, whether it be Saturday or Sunday. Theirs, too, is a sort of devotion, though it be called hard names by the preacher, who perhaps could not endure the cold and wet any day. Perhaps he dines off their pickerel on Monday at the hotel. The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick.