in Thoreau’s Journal:

The question is not where did the traveller go? what places did he see? — it would be difficult to choose between places — but who was the traveller? how did he travel? how genuine an experience did he get? For travelling is, in the main, like as if you stayed at home, and then the question is how do you live and conduct yourself at home? What I mean is that it might be hard to decide whether I would travel to Lake Superior, or Labrador, or Florida. Perhaps none would be worth the while, if I went by the usual mode.

But if I travel in a simple, primitive, original manner, standing in a truer relation to men and nature, travel away from the old and commonplace, get some honest experience of life, if only out of my feet and homesickness, then it becomes less important whither I go or how far. I so see the world from a new and more commanding point of view.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I would fain keep a journal which should contain those thoughts and impressions which I am most liable to forget that I have had;

which would have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Snows again….The snow is very moist, with large flakes. Looking toward Trillium wood, the nearer flakes appear to move quite swiftly, often making the impression of a continuous white line. They are also seen to move directly, and nearly horizontally. But the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the air, as if uncertain how they will approach the earth, or even to cross the course of the former, and are always seen as simple and distinct flakes.

I think that this difference is simply owing to the fact that the former pass quickly over the field of view, while the latter are much longer in it.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The moods of man should unfold and alternate as gradually and placidly as those of nature. The sun shines for aye!

The sudden revolutions of these times and this generation have acquired a very exaggerated importance. They do not interest me much, for they are not in harmony with the longer periods of nature.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

High wind and howling and driving snow- storm all night, now much drifted. There is a great drift in the front entry and at the crack of every door and on the window-sills. Great drifts on the south of walls….

Now, at 4.15, the blue shadows are very distinct on the snow-banks…

The exquisite purity of the snow & the gracefulness of its curves are remarkable… 

Around some houses there is not a single track– Neither man woman nor child–dog nor cat nor fowl has stirred out today.– There has been no meeting. Yet this afternoon since the storm it has not been very bad travelling.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

….I went through the swamp, and the yellow birches sent forth a yellow gleam which each time made my heart beat faster.

Occasionally you come to a dead and leaning white birch, beset with large fungi like ears or little shelves, with rounded edge above.  I walked with the yellow birch.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is now fairly winter.

We have passed the line, have put the autumn behind us, have forgotten what these withered herbs that rise above the snow here and there are, what flowers they ever bore.

in Thoreau’s Journal: 

In moments of quiet and leisure my thoughts are more apt to revert to some natural than any human relation.

in Thoreau’s Journal: 

The Spruce the Hemlock and the pine will not countenance despair—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

When the snow is falling thick and fast, the flakes nearest you seem to be driving straight to the ground, while the more distant seem to float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers, or like birds at play, and not as if sent on any errand.

So, at a little distance, all the works of nature proceed with sport and frolic. They are more in the eye, and less in the deed.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are now as completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees. Some withered deciduous ones are left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens.

Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

The snow hangs on the trees as the fruit of the season.  In those twigs which the wind has preserved naked, there is a warmer green for the contrast. The whole tree exhibits a kind of interior and household comfort—a sheltered and covert aspect— It has the snug inviting look of a cottage on the Moors, buried in snows.

How like your house are the woods, your voice rings hollowly through them as through a chamber— The twigs crackle under feet with private and household echoes. All sound in the woods in private and domestic still, though never so loud.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The snow blows like spray, fifteen feet high, across the fields, while the wind roars in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel.

It is altogether like the ocean in a storm.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

The pine woods seen from the hilltops now that the ground is covered with snow, are not green but a dark brown—greenish brown perhaps—  You see dark patches of wood. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

Take long walks in stormy weather, or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. 

Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Some three inches of snow fell last night & this morning concluding with a fine rain which produced a slight glaze—the first of the winter. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This morning, when I woke, I found it snowing, the snow fine and driving almost horizontally, as if it had set in for a long storm, but a little after noon it ceased snowing and began to clear up, and I set forth for a walk. The snow which we have had for the past week or 10 days has been remarkably light & dry. It is pleasant walking in the woods now when the sun is just coming out & shining on the woods freshly covered with snow—

At a distance the oak woods look very venerable—a fine hale wintry aspect things wear and the pines all snowed up even suggest comfort. Where boughs cross each other much snow is caught—which now in all woods is gradually coming down.