in Thoreau’s Journal:

I did not mention the drifts yesterday. Most of the snow left on bare, dry level ground consists of the remains of drifts, particularly along fences,— most on the south side. Also much that looks like snow is softened ice in the lower parts of fields.

Looking from Annursnack, there is no perceptible difference as to snow between the north and south prospects, though the north one is not extensive; but the snowiest view is westward. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river is frozen more solidly than during the past winter, and for the first time for a year I could cross it in most places. 

I did not once cross it the past winter, though by choosing a safe place I might have done so without doubt once or twice. But I have had no river walks before.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Science requests me, as he probably has thousands of others, by a printed circular letter from  Washington the other day, to fill the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science I was specially interested in, using the term science in the most comprehensive sense possible. Now, though I could state to a select few that department of human inquiry which engages me, and should be rejoiced at an opportunity to do so, I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe or attempt to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand.

The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not  understand my explanations.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Man is not the final judge of the humblest work—though it be piling wood.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The slight robin snow of yesterday is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny, trickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks…You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive green of the lichens alone. Here and there the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crown of some little cockscomb lichen,

and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ pipes, of a ringed structure, which run together buttressing the rock. Skating yesterday and to-day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down.

The most valuable thoughts which I entertain are anything but what I thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To-day it snows again, covering the ground.

To get the value of the storm, we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be, as it were, turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather-beaten, so that we become storm men instead of fair-weather men.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The abundance of light, as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc., is more springlike than anything else of late.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In composition I miss the hue of the mind.

As if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning and evening—without their colors—or the heavens without their azure.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the morning and spring of your life are past. 

Thus you may feel your pulse.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As we grow older, is it not ominous that we have more to write about evening, less about morning?

We must associate more with the early hours.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I sit by a maple on a maple— It wears a shaggy coat of lichens summer & winter.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The whole of the day should not be daytime, nor of the night night-time, but some portion be rescued from time to oversee time in. All our hours must not be current; all our time must not lapse. There must be one hour at least which the day did not bring forth, — of ancient parentage and long-established nobility, ––which will be a serene and lofty platform overlooking the rest.

We should make our notch every day on our characters, as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at least once a day; we must feel the tiller-rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We now notice the snow on the mountains….

I think there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains, on the edge of the horizon, completely crusted over with snow, the sun shining on them….the snow has a singular smooth and crusty appearance, and by contrast you see even single evergreens rising here and there above it….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I frequently detect the track of a foreigner by the print of the nails in his shoes, both in snow and earth; of an india-rubber, by its being less sharply edged, and, most surely, often, by the fine diamond roughening of the sole. How much we infer from the dandy’snarrow heel-tap, while we pity his unsteady tread, and from the lady’s narrow slipper, suggesting corns, not to say consumption. The track of the farmer’s cowhides, whose carpet-tearing tacks in the heel frequently rake the ground several inches before his foot finds a resting place, suggests weight and impetus.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Everywhere snow—gathered into sloping drifts about the walls & fences—& beneath the snow the frozen ground—and men are compelled to deposit the summer’s provision in burrows in the earth like the ground-squirrel. Many creatures daunted by the prospect migrated in the fall, but man remains and walks over the frozen snow crust—and over the stiffened rivers & ponds.  & draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. There is no home for you now—in this freezing wind but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer— You steer straight across the fields to that in season. 

I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer—& gathered flowers and rested on the grass by the brookside in the shade—now no grass nor flowers—nor brook nor shade—but cold unvaried snow stretching mile after mile and no place to sit.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A snow-storm, falling all day; wind northeast.

The snow is fine and drives low; is composed of granulated masses one sixteenth to one twentieth of an inch in diameter. Not in flakes at all. I think it is not those large-flaked snow-storms that are the worst for the traveller, or the deepest.

in Thoreau’s Journal

Our work should be fitted to and lead on the time, as bud flower and fruit lead the circle of the seasons—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a moist & starry snow–lodging on trees–leaf bough & trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry the side of a high pine wood–well greyed with the snow that has lodged on it– & the smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster–with their lowered plumes–like rams-heads’ drawings.

The character of the wood paths is wholly changed by the new fallen snow–- not only all tracks are concealed–but the pines drooping over it–& half concealing or filling it, it is merely a long chink or winding open space between the trees–