in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however, familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. Only what we have touched and worn is trivial, our scurf, repetition, tradition, conformity.

To percieve freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired….The age of miracles is each moment returned; now it is wild apples, now river reflections…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is remarkable how suggestive the slightest drawing is as memento of things seen. For a few years past I have been accustomed to make a rude sketch in my journal, of plants, ice, and various natural phenomena, and though the fullest accompanying description may fail to recall my experience, these rude outline drawings do not fail to carry me back to that time and scene.

It is as if I saw the same things again, and I may again attempt to describe it in words if I choose.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland, and over all the snow-clad landscape.

Indeed, the winter day in the woods or fields has commonly the stillness of twilight. The pond is perfectly smooth and full of light.

 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!

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

It was summer, and now again it is winter.

Nature loves this rhyme so well that she never tires of repeating it.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

On all sides in swamps and about their edges, and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits. Our eyes go searching along the stem for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters.

For we are hunters pursuing the summer on snow-shoes and skates all winter long, and there is really but one season in our hearts.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river frozen over thinly in most places, and whitened with snow which was sprinkled on it this noon.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Methinks I have experienced a joy sometimes like that which yonder tree for so long has budded and blossomed—and reflected the green rays.

The opposite shore of the pond seen through the haze of a September afternoon, as it lies stretched out in grey content, answers to some streak in me.

December 3, 3016

I love to look aslant up the tree tops from some dell, and finally rest myself in the blueish mistiness of the white pines.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

But even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer —& a serene inner life—not destitute of warmth & melody—

Only the cold evergreens wear the aspect of summer now and shelter the winter birds.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Returning, the water is smoother and more beautiful than before. The ripples we make produce ribbed reflections or shadows….

all the water behind us, as we row, and even on the right and left at a distance, is perfectly unruffled…The reflections after sunset were distinct and glorious, the heaven into which we unceasingly rowed.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We may infer that every withered culm of grass or sedge—or weed that still stands in the fields—answers some purpose by standing—

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Where is my home?

It is indistinct as a old cellar hole now a faint indentation merely in a farmer’s field—which he has ploughed into & rounded off its edges—years ago and I sit by the old site on the stump of an oak which once grew there.

 Such is the nature where we have lived—

Thick birch groves stand here & there dark brown? now with white lines more or less distinct.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck, clear reddish-brown, sometimes paler or yellowish-brown, the whitish under the sides contrasting with the upper in a very cheerful manner, as if the tree or shrub rejoiced at the advent of winter.

It exhibits the fashionable colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It sets the fashions; colors good for bare ground or for snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. This is the extent of its gaudiness, red-brown and misty-white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. Then there is the rich dark brown of the black oak, large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its light, almost yellowish-brown underside. Then the salmonish hue of white-oak leaves, with under sides less distinctly lighter. Many, however, have faded already.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me. This is one peculiarity of winter walking. Anybody may follow my trail.

I walk along some swamp side all summer, and thought to myself, I am the only villager that ever comes here. But I go out shortly after the first snow has fallen, and lo, here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well. But my hour is not his, and I may never meet him.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now a man will eat his heart if ever—now while the earth is bare barren & cheerless—and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ices & snow —but me thinks the variety & compensation are in the stars now— How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! —The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk—but the 21st of next month the day will be shorter will by about 25 minutes.

In December there will be less light than in any month in the year.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

…..I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of a free shining green— Checquer berries and partridge berries are both numerous & obvious now—

 in Thoreau’s Journal: 

An inch of snow on the ground this morning—our first.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit…This afternoon, late and cold as it is, has been a sort of Indian summer Indeed, I think we have summer days from time to time the winter through, and that it is often the snow on the ground which makes the whole difference.

This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be cold, I thought there was a finer and purer warmth than in summer, a wholesome, intellectual warmth in which the body was warmed by the mind’s contentment, —the warmth hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence.

 in Thoreau’s Journal: 

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling.  The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks

(strange that there should be none on the pines close by), and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light.

in Thoreau’s Journal: 

Most of us are still related to our native fields as the navigator to undiscovered islands in the sea.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather.