7 February 1859 – 13 February 1859

Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter, and is not this connected with the blue in snow in similar days ? Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with oureyes.* That’s the true use of the study of lichens. TI expect that the lichenist will have the keenest relish for Nature in her every-day mood and dress. He will have the appetite of the worm that never dies, of the grub. To study lichens is to get a taste of earth and health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This product of the bark is the essence of all times. The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very crust of the earth. A taste for this study is an evidence of titanic health, a sane earthi- ness. It makes not so much blood as soil of life. It fits a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest experi- ence. A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom like the rose. As some strong animal appetites, not satisfied with starch and muscle and fat, are fain to eat that which eats and di- gests, — the contents of the crop and the stomach and entrails themselves, — so the lichenist loves the tripe of the rock, — that which eats and digests the rocks. He eats the eater. “Eat-all’’ may be his name. A lichen- ist fats where others starve. His provender never fails. What is the barrenest waste to him, the barest rocks ? A rail is the sleekest and fattest of coursers for him.? He picks anew the bones which have been picked a gen- eration since, for when their marrow is gone they are clothed with new flesh for him. What diet drink can be compared with a tea or soup made of the very crust of the earth? There is no such collyrium or salve for sore eyes as these brightening lichens in a moist day. Go and bathe and screen your eyes with them in the softened light of the woods.

P. M. — To Ball’s Hill over ice. Among the common phenomena of the ice are those triangular points of thick ice heaved up a couple of feet where the ice has recently settled about a rock. The rock looks somewhat like a dark fruit within a gaping shell or bur. Also, now, as often after a freshet in cold weather, the ice which had formed around and frozen to the trees and bushes along the shore, settling, draws them down to the ground or water, often breaking them extensively. It reminds you of an alligator or other evil genius of the river pulling the trees and bushes which had come to drink into the water. If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to dip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying with it, their fate is sealed, for the water, freezing that night, takes fast hold on them like a vise, and when the water runs out from beneath, an irresisti- ble weight brings them down to the ground and holds them there. Only the spring sun will soften the heart of this relentless monster, when, commonly, it is too late. How the ice far in ee.) ae the meadows, thus set- WY f GY ae tling, spreads the clumps “~~ NZ —— of willows, etc., on every side! Nature works by contraries. That which in summer was most fluid and unresting is now most solid and motionless. If in the summer you cast a twig into the stream it instantly moved along with the current, and nothing remained as it was. Now I see yonder a long row of black twigs standing erect in mid-channel where two months ago a fisherman set them and fastened his lines to them. They stand there motionless as guide-posts while snow and ice are piled up about them. Such is the cold skill of the artist. He carves a statue out of a material which is fluid as water to the ordi- nary workman. His sentiments are a quarry which he works.’ I see only the chain of sunken boats passing round a tree above the ice. The south side of Ball’s Hill, which is warm and half bare, is tracked up with partridges, and I start several there. So is it next Sunday with the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. These birds are sure to be found now on such slopes, where only the ground and dry leaves are exposed. The water lately went down, and the ice settled on the meadows, and now rain has come, and cold again, and this surface is alternate ice and snow. Looking from this hill toward the sun, they are seen to be hand- somely watered all over with alternate waves of shining ice and white snow-crust, literally “watered” on the grandest scale, — this palace floor.

Saturday. You may account for that ash by the Rock having such a balanced and regular outline by the fact that in an open place their branches are equally drawn toward the light on all sides, and not because of a mutual understanding through the trunk. south of a large elm. It grows wholly south- wy ward, and in form is just half a tree. So with Ss —~4#3,, the tupelos under the ‘ Hill shore, east of Fair Haven "Pond. They terminate abruptly like a bull’s horn, having no up- ward leading shoot, and bend off over the water, — are singularly one-sided. In short, trees appear to grow regularly because the sky and diffusion of light are commonly regular. There is a peculiarly drooping elm at George Pres- cott’s great gate just north of his house, very different from the common or upright stiff-branched ones near by it. For there is Cheney’s abele, which stands just wih \)

P. M. — On ice to Fair Haven Pond. Yesterday there was no skating, unless you swept the snow from the ice; but to-day, though there has been no rain nor thaw, there is pretty good skating. Yester- day the water which had flowed, and was flowing, back over the ice on each side of the river and the meadows, a rod or two in width, was merely skimmed over, but last night it froze so that there is good skating there. Also the wind will generally lay bare some portion of the ice, unless the snow is very deep.