THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL

December 31, 1859

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen, as if men, being further within, were just as far off as usual. This is a phenomenon of both cold weather and snowy. You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn.

December 28, 1856

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords.

December 27, 1854

To Nantucket via Hyannis in misty rain.

On Cape Cod saw the hills through the mist covered with cladonias. A head wind and rather rough passage of three hours to Nantucket, the water being thirty miles over. Captain Edward W. Gardiner (where I spent the evening) thought there was a beach at Barnegat similar to that at Cape Cod. Mr. Barney, formerly a Quaker minister there, who was at Gardiner’s, told of one Bunker of Nantucket in old times, “who had eight sons, and steered each in his turn to the killing of a whale.” Gardiner said you must have been a-whaling there before you could be married, and must have struck a whale before you could dance. They do not think much of crossing from Hyannis in a small boat, - in pleasant weather, that is, - but they can safely do it. A boy was drifted across thus in a storm in a rowboat about two years ago. By luck he struck Nantucket. The outline of the island is continually changing. The whalers now go chiefly to Behring’s Straits, and everywhere between 35 N. and S. latitude and catch several kinds of whales. It was Edmund Gardiner of New Bedford (a relative of Edward’s) who was carried down by a whale, and Hussey of Nantucket who, I believe, was one to draw lots to see who should be eaten. As for communication with the mainland being interrupted, Gardiner remembers when thirty-one mails were landed at once, which, taking out Sundays, made five weeks and one day. The snow ten days ago fell about two inches deep, but melted instantly.

At Ocean House I copied from William Coffin’s Map of the town (1834) this: 30,590 acres, including 3 isles beside. 1050 are fresh ponds; about 750, peat swamp. Clay in all parts. But only granite or gneiss boulders.

December 26, 1840

There is as good as a mine under my feet wherever I go. - When the pond is frozen and covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain. - The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. Now the sun and wind brush aside their curtain and they see the heavens again.

December 25, 1859

You may think that you need take no care to preserve your woodland, but every tree comes either from the stump of another tree or from a seed. With the present management, will there always be a fresh stump, or a nut in the soil, think you? Will not the nobler kinds of trees, which bear comparatively few seeds, grow more and more scarce? What is become of our chestnut wood? There are but few stumps for sprouts to spring from, and, as for the chestnuts, there are not enough for the squirrels, and nobody is planting them.

December 25, 1840

The thought there is in a sentence is its solid part, which will wear to the latest times.

December 24, 1856

Noticed, at east end of westernmost Andromeda Pond, the slender spikes of lycopus with half a dozen distant little spherical dark-brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like, or even like flagroot (?), when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them.

It was very pleasant walking thus before the storm was over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. Did not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I had a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path.

December 23, 1859

I have loitered so long on the meadow that before I get to Ball’s Hill those patches of bare ice (where water has oozed out and frozen) already reflect a green light which advertises me of the lateness of the hour. You may walk eastward in the winter afternoon till the ice begins to look green, half to three quarters of an hour before sunset, the sun having sunk behind you to the proper angle. Then it is time to turn your steps homeward. Soon after, too, the ice began to boom, or fire its evening gun, another warning that the end of the day was at hand, and a little after the snow reflected a distinct rosy light, the sun having reached the grosser atmosphere of the earth. These signs successively prompt us once more to retrace our steps. Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home; or perhaps he leaves them to freeze in.

December 21, 1856

Sunday. Think what a pitiful kind of life ours is, eating our kindred animals! and in some places one another! Some of us (the Esquimaux), half whose life is spent in the dark, wholly dependent on one of two animals not many degrees removed from themselves for food, clothing, and fuel, and partly for shelter; making their sledges “of small fragments of porous bones [of whale], admirably knit together by thongs of hide” (Kane’s last book, vol. i, page 205), thus getting about, sliding about, on the bones of our cousins.

December 20, 1859

A. M. - To T. Wheeler wood-lot.

Snows very fast, large flakes, a very lodging snow, quite moist; turns to rain in afternoon. If we leave the sleigh for a moment, it whitens the seat, which must be turned over. We are soon thickly covered, and it lodges on the twigs of the trees and bushes, - there being but little wind, - giving them a very white and soft, spiritual look. Gives them a still, soft, and light look. When the flakes fall thus large and fast and are so moist and melting, we think it will not last long, and this turned to rain in a few hours, after three or four inches had fallen.

To omit the first mere whitening, -

There was the snow of the 4th December.

11th was a lodging snow, it being mild and still, like to-day (only it was not so moist). Was succeeded next day noon by a strong and cold northwest wind.

14th, a fine, dry, cold, driving and drifting storm.

20th (to-day’s), a very lodging, moist, and large-flaked snow, turning to rain. To be classed with the 11th in the main. This wets the woodchopper about as much as rain.