6 February 1860 – 12 February 1860

To Cambridge. A rainy day.

2 p.M.— To Walden and Flint’s. Thermometer 43°. Fair, with many clouds, mostly obscuring the sun. Wind northwest, growing cooler. The sand has begun to flow on the west side of the cut, the east being bare. Nature has some bowels at last. I notice over the ditch near the Turnpike bridge, where water stands an inch or two deep over the ice, that the dust which had blown on to the ice from the road is now very regularly and handsomely dis- tributed over the ice by the water, 2. ¢., is broken into prettily shaped small black figures equally distant from one another, —so that what was a - deformity is now a beauty. Some kinds of worms or caterpillars have apparently crawled over it and left their trails on it, white or clear trails.

2 p. M.— Up river to Fair Haven Hill. Thermometer 43. 40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring. February may be called earine (springlike). There is a peculiarity in the air when the temperature is thus high and the weather fair, at this sea- son, which makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if they trusted themselves abroad further in this genial state of the air. A different sound comes to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, as from the cawing crows, etc. Sound is not abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet and musical. It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird’s warble can be heard.

A hoar frost on the ground this morning — for the open fields are mostly bare —was quite a novel sight. I had noticed some vapor in the air late last evening.

A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. M., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney. I see that Wheildon’s pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. P. M. — The river, where open, is very black, as usual when the waves run high, for each wave casts a shadow.' Theophrastus notices that the roughened water is black, and says that it is because fewer rays fall on it and the light is dissipated. : It is a day for those rake and horn icicles; the water, dashing against the southeast shores where they chance to be open, 7. e. free of ice, and blown a rod inland, freezes to the bushes, forming rakes and oftener horns. If twigs project above the ice-belt thus: \ \ { the water freezes over them thus: — The very grass stubble is completely encased for a rod in width along the shore, and the trunks of trees for two or three feet up. Any sprig lying on the edge of the ice is completely crusted. Sometimes the low button-bush twigs with their few remaining small dark balls, and also the drooping corymbs of the late rose hips, are completely encased in an icicle, and you see their bright scarlet reflected through the ice in an exaggerated manner. If a hair is held up above the ice where this spray is blowing, it is sufficient to start a thick icicle rake or horn, for the ice forming around it becomes at once its own support, and gets to be two or three inches thick. Where the open water comes within half a dozen feet of the shore, the spray has blown over the intervening ice and covered the grass and stubble, looking like a glaze, — countless loby fingers and horns over some fine stubble core, — and when the grass or stem is horizontal - mer “re my = . ) 4. eye have a rake. Just as those great organ-pipe icicles ~ that drip from rocks have an annular structure growing .... downward, so these on the horizontal stubble ~-% and weeds, when directed to the point toward which the wind was blowing; 1. e., they grow thus southeast. Then there is the thickened edge of the ice, like a cliff, on the southeast sides of openings against which the wind has dashed the waves, especially on the south- east side of broad meadows. ee ee: No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice. If the ice is wet, you slip in rubbers; but when it is dry and cold, rubbers give you a firm hold, and you walk with a firm and elastic step. I do not know of any more exhilarating walking than up or down a broad field of smooth ice like this in a cold, glittering winter day when your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice. I see that the open places froze last night only on the windward side, where they were less agitated, the waves not yet running so high there. A little snow, however, even the mere shavings or dust of ice made by skaters, hinders walking in rubbers very much, for though the rubber may give a good hold on clear ice, when you step on a little of the ice dust or snow you slide on that. Those little gyrinus-shaped bugs of the 8th, that had come out through a crevice in the ice about a boat frozen in, and were swimming about in the shallow water above the ice, I see are all gone now that that water is frozen, — have not been frozen in; so they must have returned back under the ice when it became cold, and this shows that they were not forced up ac- cidentally in the first place, but attracted by the light and warmth, probably as those minnows were some time ago. That is, in a thaw in the winter some water- insects — beetles, etc. — will come up through holes in the ice and swim about in the sun.

Saturday. 2 P.M., 20°.

Sunday. 2 p. M., 22°. Walk up river to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy, — northwest. About a quarter of an inch of snow fell last evening. This scarcely colors that part of the ground that was bare, and on all icy surfaces which are exposed to the sweep of the wind it is already distributed very regu- larly in thin drifts. It lies on the ice in waving lines or in lunar or semicircular, often spread-eagle, patches with very regular intervals, quite like the openings lately seen in the river when breaking up. The whole surface of the icy field is thus watered. That is, it is not collected in one place more than another, but very evenly distributed in these patches over the whole sur- face. I speak of what lies on the open ice. It comes flowing like a vapor from the northwest, low over the ice and much faster than a man walks, and a part is ever catching and lodging here and there and building a low drift, the northwest side of which will be abrupt ~ with a sharp, beetling edge an inch or a half-inch high. No doubt these drifts are constantly changing their ground or rolling over. I see now that this vapor-like snow-dust is really sometimes blown up six or eight feet into the air, though for the most part it merely slides low over the ice. The greater part of this snow is lodged a foot deep amid the button-bushes, and there it continues to ac- cumulate as long as the wind blows strong. aS ena 2 — ae C7 pug A In this cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.