in Thoreau’s Journal:

I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the stones which I threw down on it from the high bank on the east broke through— Yet the river was open. The landscape looked singularly clean & pure and dry—the air like a pure glass being laid over the picture—the trees so tidy stripped of their leaves the meadows & pastures clothed with clean dry grass looked as if they had been swept—ice on the water—& winter in the air—but yet not a particle of snow on the ground.

The woods divested in great part of their leaves are being ventilated. It is the season of perfect works—of hard tough-ripe twigs—not of tender buds & leaves— The leaves have made their wood—and a myriad new withes stand up all around pointing to the sky, able to survive the cold. It is only the perennial that you see—the iron age of the year.