3 January 1859 – 9 January 1859

Having had rain within a few days on the four or five inches of snow there was, making slosh of it without melting the hard frozen ground, the slosh and surface water have now frozen, making it pretty good skating in the roads generally. I walked to Ac- ton, but might have skated well half or two thirds the way. ; Many of the clusters of the smooth sumach are now a very dark crimson.

A northeast snow-storm, or rather a north snow-storm, very hard to face. P. M. to Walden in it. It snows very hard, driving along almost horizontally, falling but a foot or two in a rod. Nobody is in the street, or thinks of going out far except on important business. Most roads are trackless. The snow may be now fifteen to eighteen inches deep. As I go along the causeway, I find it is one thing to go south, or from the wind, another to face it. I can see through the storm a house or large tree only a quarter of a mile; beyond all is white falling snow. Woods and single trees seen through this air are all dark or black. The surface of the snow is in great waves whose ridges run from east to west, about a rod apart, or generally less, — say ten feet, — low and gentle swells. The small white pines stand thus, the lower branches loaded and bent down the ground, while the upper are commonly free and erect: — XL & =* ee 7 v ~ 3 ae tf ~, \ ~ 7 ~ iL , TS < cc Sy pS =, But the pitch pines near Thrush Alley are the most interesting objects, for they hold much more snow. The snow lodges on their plumes, and, bending them down, it accumulates more and more on the angle generally at the base of the several plumes, in little conical heaps shaped somewhat like this: — One a Ve Ne a y Uy Pp > differing according to the number and position of the plumes. They look as if a child had stuck up its elbow under a white sheet. Some small ones stand stiffly up- right like a soldier’s plume. Several trees will be so fallen together and inter- \N4% mingled that you do not see them dis- : tinctly. At the same time the lowermost small black and dead horizontal limbs near the ground, where there 1s least wind and jar, —these almost exclusively, — say for six or eight feet up, are covered with upright walls of snow five or six times their own height and zigzagging with them like the Wall of China; or like great white cater- pillars they lie along them, these snowy sloths; or rather it is a labyrinth, a sort of cobweb, of broad white belts in the air. Only a dim twilight struggles through to this lower region, and the sight of these snowy walls or labyrinths suggests a rare stillness, freedom from wind and jar. Ifyou try to stoop and wind your way there, you get your neck and ears full of snow. ao”? ie oe e ¢ o° = > = & we. fe ° e o c @ 7 ~~ od « we? oe e see — gels o ~ * @ oe ee I can’t draw it. That is, for each dead pine branch you have a thin flat branch of snow resting on it, an exaggeration of the former. It is a still white labyrinth of snowy purity, and you can look far into its recesses under the green and snowy canopy, —a labyrinth of which, perchance, a rabbit may have the clue. I noticed one pitch pine about three feet high so snowed up, and its branches all drooping, it looked like a draped statue or a white-ant hill. In the woods the snow is often two feet deep, and you must walk at a very deliberate pace if you would keep it up. Still the withered hoary goldenrods (chiefly S. nemoralis) and asters (perhaps oftenest A. dumosus) rise above the snow here and there, — gray weeds, sufhi- ciently dry and everlasting. The oak leaves, especially the black oak leaves, are very agreeable and wholesome colors. The deeper the snow, the more universal the whiteness, the more agreeable is this color. Your breath causes the snow to turn to ice in your beard; a shaggy mass of icicles it becomes, which makes you look like a man from the extreme north. When it grew late, the air being thick and unelastic in this storm, I mistook the distant sound of the loco- motive whistle for the hoot of an owl. It was quite like it. I see, nevertheless, a few tree sparrows about, look- ing chubbier than ever, their feathers being puffed up, and flitting and twittering merrily along the fence. Turning north, the large rather moist flakes actually put out your eyes, and you must manage to look through the merest crack. Even in the midst of the storm I see where great clouds of fine snowroll down the wood-side, the wind shaking the snow from the trees. It looks like the vapor from the locomotive.

As I go over the causeway, near the railroad bridge, I hear a fine busy twitter, and, looking up, see a nuthatch hopping along and about a swamp white oak branch, inspecting every side of it, as readily hang- ing head-downwards as standing upright, and then it utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion. Indeed, that other, finer twitter seemed designed to keep some companion in tow, or else it was like a very busy man talking to himself. The companion was a single chickadee, which lisped six or eight feet off. There were, perhaps, no other birds than these two within a quarter of a mile. And when the nuthatch flitted to another tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly followed.

P. M. — To M. Miles’s. Near Nut Meadow Brook, on the Jimmy Miles road, I see a flock of snow buntings. They are feeding ex- clusively on that ragged weed which I take to be Roman wormwood.' Their tracks where they sink in the snow are very long, 2. e., have a very long heel, thus: — 4 Ta, ll nel ‘ or sometimes almost in a single straight line. They made notes when they went, — sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring. ‘hey had run about to every such such [sic], leaving distinct tracks raying from and to them, while the snow immediately about the weed was so tracked and pecked where the seeds fell that no track was distinct. we Pf Lt I” oe ee af Bo ae ES st ~ ang NES = Ca 7 aN x So aS SI »~- “e = Wie \ i~ i o | as Pe ‘ Bs es oe ~ 7 ‘ And much more tracked up Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl (Strix Acadica) which he caught alive with his hands about a week ago. He had forced it to eat, but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, spotted with white, seven and a half inches long to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the claws, by nineteen in alar extent, — not so long by considerable as a robin, though much stouter. This one had three (not two)’ white bars on its tail, but no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet were feathered quite to the extremity of the toes, looking like whitish (or tawny-white) mice, or as when one pulls stockings over his boots. As usual, the white spots on the upper sides of the wings are smaller and a more distinct white, while those beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny white. Even a bird’s wing has an upper and under side, and the last admits only of more subdued and tender colors. ? Nuttall says three.

At sundown to Walden. Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the form and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. This I can never do in the summer, when the leaves are thick and the ground is nearly the same color with them. These white hills are now seen as through a veil of stems. Immediately after the wood was cut off, this outline, of course, was visible at all seasons, but the wood, springing up again, concealed it, and now the snow has come to reveal the lost outline. The sun has been set some minutes, and as I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing. It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky. I am inclined to measure the angle at which [a] pine bough meets the stem. That soft, still, cream-colored sky seems the scene, the stage or field, for some rare drama to be acted on. C. says the winter is the sabbath of the year. The perfect winter days are cold, but clear and bright.