2 January 1860 – 8 January 1860

P. M. — Via Turnpike to Smith’s and back by Great Road. How much the snow reveals! I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice, even like a woodchuck’s. Also I have occasionally seen where (probably) a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock’s top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod. And now, about the hill in front of Smith’s, I see where the quails have run along the roadside, and can count the number of the bevy better than if I saw them. Are they not peculiar in this, as compared with partridges, — that they run in company, while at this season I see but [one] or two partridges together ? A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as ani- mals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by gen- ius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phe- nomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now. I find, for example, in Aristotle some- thing about the spawning, etc., of the pout and perch, because I know something about it already and have my attention aroused; but I do not discover till very late that he has made other equally important observa- tions on the spawning of other fishes, because I am not interested in those fishes. I see the dead stems of the water horehound just rising above the snow and curving outward over the bank of the Assabet, near the stone-heaps, with its brown clusters of dry seeds, etc., every inch or two. These, stripped off or rubbed between the fingers, look somewhat like ground coffee and are agreeably aromatic. ‘They have the fragrance of lemon-peel. * Jan.7. A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. From having been about 20° at midday, it is now (the thermometer) some 35° quite early, and at 2 p. m. 45°. At once the snow, which was dry and crumbling, is softened all over the country, not only in the streets, but in the remotest and slightest sled-track, where the farmer is hauling his wood; not only in yards, but in every woodland hollow and on every hill. There is a softening in the air and a softening underfoot. The softness of the air is something tangible, almost gross. Some are making haste to get their wood home before the snow goes, sledding, 2. e. sliding, it home rapidly. Now if you take up a handful, it holds together and is readily fashioned and compressed into a ball, so that an endless supply of one kind of missiles is at hand. I find myself drawn toward this softened snow, even that which is stained with dung in the road, as to a friend. I see where some crow has pecked at the now thawing dung here. How provident is Nature, who permits a few kernels of grain to pass undigested through the entrails of the ox, for the food of the crow and dove, etc.! As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., where, me- thinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen. The frozen apples are thawed again. You hear (in the house) the unusual sound of the ~ eaves running. Saw a large flock of goldfinches ' running and feed- ing amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. Then flitted to birch trees, whose seeds probably they eat.?, Heard their twitter and mew. Nature so fills the soil with seeds that I notice, where travellers have turned off the road and made a new track for several rods, the intermediate narrow space is soon clothed with a little grove which just fills it. See, at White Pond, where squirrels have been feed- ing on the fruit of a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. The snow for a great space is covered with the outer shells, etc.; and, especially, close to the base of this and the neighboring trees of other species, where there is a little bare ground, there is a very large collection of the shells, most of which have been gnawed quite in two. 1 'These were goldfinches [see p. 82].

Began to rain last evening, and rained some in the night. To-day it is very warm and pleasant. 2 p. mM. — Walk to Walden. Thermometer 48 at 2 p. mM. We are suddenly sur- rounded by a warm air from some other part of the globe. What a change! Yesterday morning we walked on dry and squeaking snow, but before night, without any rain, merely by the influence of that warm air which had migrated to us, softening and melting the snow, we began to slump in it. Now, since the rain of last night, the softest portions of the snow are dissolved in the street, revealing and leaving the filth which has ac- cumulated there upon the firmer foundation, and we walk with open coats, charmed with the trickling of ephemeral rills. After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! When I get to the railroad I listen from time to time to hear some sound out of the distance which will express this mood of Nature. The cock and the hen, that pheasant which we have domesticated, are perhaps the most sensitive to atmospheric changes of any domestic animals. You cannot listen a moment . such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, ~ the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind, or the drawl- ing note of the hen dreaming of eggs that are to be. These are the sounds that fill the air, and no hum of insects. They are affected like voyagers on approach- ing the land. We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. Walden, which was covered with snow, is now cov- ered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. We see no fresh tracks. The old tracks of the rab- bit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse- . shoe, an unbroken curve. Those of the fox which has . run along the side of the pond are now so many white snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water- darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. Indeed, I see far across the pond, half a mile distant, what looks like a perfectly straight row of white stones, — some fence or other work of art, — stretching twenty rods along the bare shore. There are a man’s tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated owing to the looming, and are re- ferred to the dark background against which they are seen. When I know that they are on the ice, they look like white stepping-stones. I hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they dis- tinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! * We have a fine moonlight evening after, and as by day I have noticed that the sunlight reflected from this moist snow had more glitter and dazzle to it than when the snow was dry, so now I am struck by the brighter sheen from the snow in the moonlight. All the impuri- ties in the road are lost sight of, and the melting snow shines like frostwork. When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly con- forming to the outline of Wachusett, — which it con- cealed, —as if on that mountain only the universal moisture was at that moment condensed. The commonest difference between a public speaker who has not enjoyed the advantage of the highest education in the popular sense, at school and college, and one who has, is that the former will pronounce a few words, and use a few more, in a manner in which the scholars have agreed not to, and the latter will occasionally quote a few Latin and even Greek words with more confidence, and, if the subject is the deri- vation of words, will maintain a wise silence.