THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL

March 10, 1856

I have not seen a tree sparrow, methinks, since January. Probably the woods have been so generally buried by the snow this winter that they have migrated further south. There has not been one in the yard the past winter, nor a redpoll. I saw perhaps one redpoll in the town; that is all. The pinched crows are feeding in the road to-day in front of the house and alighting on the elms, and blue jays also, as in the middle of the hardest winter, for such is this weather. The blue jays hop about in yards. 

 The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days. 

 I go over the fields now in any direction, sinking but an inch or two to the old solid snow of the winter. In the road you are on a level with the fences, and often considerably higher, and sometimes, where it is a level causeway in summer, you climb up and coast down great swells of hard-frozen snow, much higher than the fences. I may say that I have not had to climb a fence this winter, but have stepped over them on the snow. 

 

March 5, 1856

Snowed an inch or two in the night.

 Went to Carlisle, surveying.

 It is very hard turning out, there is so much snow in the road. Your horse springs and flounders in it. The snow in the wood-lot which I measured was about two feet on a level. 

 

March 4, 1856

To Carlisle, surveying.

 I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation. He would not meet me on equal terms, but only be to some extent my patron. He would not come to see me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He would not readily accept a favor, but would gladly confer one. He treated me with ceremony occasionally, though he could be simple and downright sometimes; and from time to time acted a part, treating me as if I were a distinguished stranger; was on stilts, using made words. Our relation was one long tragedy, yet I did not directly speak of it. I do not believe in complaint, nor in explanation. The whole is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that we do not love each other, that we cannot confide in each other. I could not bring myself to speak, and so recognize an obstacle to our affection. 

 I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuseness, perchance, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever. 

 

March 2, 1856

Has snowed three or four inches - very damp snow - in the night; stops about 9 A. M. This will probably help carry off the old snow, so solid and deep.

 P. M. - Walking up the river by Prichard’s, was surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring. There was one seed or scale to a square foot, yet the nearest birches were, about fifteen of them, along the wall thirty rods east. As I advanced toward them, the seeds became thicker and thicker, till they quite discolored the snow half a dozen rods distant, while east of the birches there was not one. The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet. As I went home up the river, I saw some of the seeds forty rods off, and perhaps, in a more favorable direction, I might have found them much further. It suggested how unwearied Nature is, spreading her seeds. Even the spring does not find her unprovided with birch, aye, and alder and pine seed. A great proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over the river, and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows. 

 The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places.

 I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be beginning to build their nests now, yet their young were a fortnight old the last of April last year. 

 

January 20, 1856

It is now good walking on the river, for, though there has been no thaw since the snow came, a great part of it has been converted into snow ice by sinking the old ice beneath the water, and the crust of the rest is stronger than in the fields, because the snow is so shallow and has been so moist. The river is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in summer and when the ice is bare in the winter, but even when the snow lies very deep in the fields. It is invaluable to the walker, being now not only the most interesting, but, excepting the narrow and unpleasant track in the highways, the only practicable route. The snow never lies so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks the ice and is soon converted into snow ice to a great extent, beside being blown out of the river valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter. But what a different aspect the river’s brim now from what it wears in summer! I do not this moment hear an insect hum, nor see a bird, nor a flower. That museum of animal and vegetable life, a meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it. 

 

January 14, 1856

Sunrise. - Snows again. I think that you can best tell from what side the storm came by observing on which side of the trees the snow is plastered.

The crows are flitting about the houses and alight upon the elms.

 After snowing an inch or two it cleared up at night. Boys, etc., go about straddling the fences, on the crust. 

 

January 8, 1856

P. M. - To Walden.

The snow is about a foot, or probably a little more, deep on a level, and considerably drifted, but on the pond it is not more than five inches deep on an average, being partly turned into snow ice by the sinking of the ice, and perhaps partly blown off.

Many catbird-nests about the pond. In apparently one I see a snake’s slough interwoven. The leaves of red oak shrubs are still quite bloody-colored. All of the pitch pine cones that I see, but one, are open. I see prying into the black fruit of the alder, along the pond-side, a single probably lesser redpoll (?). Yellowish breast and distinct white bar on wing.

Monroe is fishing there. As usual, a great pickerel had bitten and ran off, and was lost, he supposed, among the brush by the shore. He tells of an eel up the North Branch that weighed seven pounds; also that George Melvin, spearing one night, speared a large owl (probably cat owl) that sat near by.

For a couple of days the cars have been very much delayed by the snow, and it is now drifting somewhat. The fine dry snow is driving over the fields like steam, if you look toward the sun, giving a new form to the surface, spoiling the labor of the track-repairers, gradually burying the rails. The surface of the snow on the pond is finely scored in many places by the oak leaves which have been blown across it. They have furrowed deeper than a mouse’s track and might puzzle a citizen. They are more frisky than a squirrel. Many of the young oaks appear not to have lost any leaves yet. They are so full of them that they still sustain some masses of snow, as if there were birds’ nests for a core. I see the great tracks of white rabbits that have run and frisked in the night along the pond-side.

January 5, 1856

The thin snow now driving from the north and lodging on my coat consists of those beautiful star crystals, not cottony and chubby spokes, as on the 13th December, but thin and partly transparent crystals. They are about a tenth of an inch in diameter, perfect little wheels with six spokes without a tire, or rather with six perfect little leafets, fern-like, with a distinct straight and slender midrib, raying from the centre. On each side of each midrib there is a transparent thin blade with a crenate edge, thus: (illustration). How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

January 4, 1856

A clear, cold day.

P. M. - To Walden to examine the ice.

I think it is only such a day as this, when the fields on all sides are well clad with snow, over which the sun shines brightly, that you observe the blue shadows on the snow. I see a little of it to-day.

December 29th there were eight or ten acres of Walden still open. That evening it began to snow and snowed all night, and the remainder of the pond was frozen on that [and] the succeeding night. But on January 1st I was surprised to find all the visible ice snow ice, when I expected that only the eight or ten acres would be; but it appeared that the weight of the snow had sunk the ice already formed and then partly dissolved in the water, which rose above it and partly was frozen with it. The whole ice January 1st was about six inches thick, and I should have supposed that over the greater part of the pond there would be a clear ice about two inches thick on the lower side, yet where I cut through near the shore, I distinguished two kinds of ice, the upper two and a half inches thick and evidently snow ice, the lower about four inches thick and clearer, yet not remarkably clear.

January 2, 1856

P. M. - To Walden.

As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit, for tracing back the rabbit, I found that it had first been walking with alternate steps, fox-like.

There were many white rabbits’ tracks in those woods, and many more of the gray rabbit, but the former broke through and made a deep track, except where there was a little crust on the south slope, while the latter made but a faint impression on the surface. The latter run very much in the same path, which is well trodden, and you would think you were in the midst of quite a settlement of them.