in Thoreau’s Journal:

Pm Skating to Fair Haven Pond

Made a fire on the south side of the pond. Using—canoe birch bark & oak leaves for kindlings…

We skated home in the dark—with an odor of smoke in our clothes. It was pleasant to dash over the ice—feeling the inequalities which we could not see—now rising over considerable hillocks for it had settled on the meadows—now descending into corresponding hollows.

We have had but one & no more this winter (and that I think was the first) of those gentle moist snows which lodge perfectly on the trees—and make perhaps the most beautiful sight of any.