in Thoreau’s Journal:

It snowed in the night of the 6th, and the ground is now covered; our first snow, two inches deep…The remote pastures and hills beyond the woods are now closed to cows and cowherds, aye, and to cowards.

I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness which these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible, carpeting the earth with snow, furnishing more than woolen feet to all walkers!