in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the cold, clear, rough air from the northwest we walk amid what simple surroundings! Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million even sees the objects which are actually around him.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is easier to get about the country than at any other season— Easier than in summer because the rivers & meadows are frozen—& there is no high grass or other crops to be avoided—easier than in Dec. before the crust was frozen.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

 9 a. m. —To Fair Haven Pond.

A clear and a pleasanter and warmer day than we have had for a long time. The snow begins (at noon) to soften somewhat in the road.

For two or three weeks, successive light and dry snows have fallen on the old crust and been drifting about on it, leaving it at last three quarters bare and forming drifts against the fences, etc., or here and there low, slaty, fractured ones in mid-field, or pure white hard-packed ones. These drifts on the crust are commonly quite low and flat. But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow.

At this hour the crust sparkles with a myriad brilliant points or mirrors, one to every six inches, at least. This crust is cracked like ice into irregular figures a foot or two square. Perhaps the snow has settled considerably, for the track in the roads is the highest part. Some heard a loud cracking in the ground or ice last night.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Under the waves of the snowy ocean yesterday, roads and rivers, pastures and cultivated fields, all traces of man’s occupancy of the globe were for the most part concealed. Water and sand also assume this same form under the influence of wind. And I have seen, on the surface of the Walden ice, great sweeping, waving lines, somewhat like these. It is the track of the wind, the impress which it makes on flowing materials.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

9 a. m. —Down railroad to see the glaze, the first we have had this year, but not a very good one.

It is about a fifth or a sixth of an inch thick on the northeast sides of twigs, etc., not transparent, but of an opaque white, granular character. The woods, especially wooded hillsides half a mile or more distant, have a rich, hoary, frosted look, still and stiff, yet it is not so thick but that the green of the pines and the yellow of the willow bark and the leather color of oak leaves show through it. These colors are pleasantly toned down. The pines transmit a subdued green, —some pitch pines a livelier grass green, —deepest in the recesses, and a delicate buff (?) tinge is seen through the frosty veil of the willow. The birches, owing to the color of their trunks, are the most completely hoary. The elms, perhaps, are the most distinctly frosted, revealing their whole outlines like ghosts of trees, even a mile off, when seen against a dark hillside. The ground is encased in a thin black glaze (where it chances to be bare) and the iron rails and the telegraph wire. Insignificant weeds and stubble along the railroad causeway and elsewhere are now made very conspicuous, both by their increased size and bristling stiffness and their whiteness. Each wiry grass stem is become a stiff wand. The wind that begins to rise does not stir them; you only hear a fine crackling sound when it blows hardest. Behind each withered vegetable plant stands a stout ice plant, overlapping and concealing it. Stem answers to stem, and fruit to fruit. The heads of tansy are converted into confectionery somewhat like sugared almonds and regularly roughened (like orange-peel), and those of evening-primrose, and mullein, and hardhack, and lespedeza bear a still coarser kind. The wild carrot’s bird’s-nest umbel, now contracted above, is converted into almost a perfect hollow sphere, composed of contiguous thickened meridional ribs, which remind me of the fingers of a starfish (or five-finger). Each plant preserves its character, though exaggerated. Pigweed and Roman wormwood are ragged as ever on a larger scale, and the butterweed as stiffly upright. Tall goldenrod still more recurved. You naturally avoid running against the plant which you did not notice before. Standing on the southeast side, I see the fine dark cores which the stems make. On the opposite side, only the pure white ice plant is seen.

When I reach the woods I am surprised to find that the twigs, etc., are bristling with fine spiculse, which stand on a thin glaze. I do not remember to have seen them previous winters. They are from one quarter to five eighths of an inch long by one twenty-fifth to one fiftieth of an inch wide at base and quite sharp, commonly on the storm side of the twig only and pointing in all directions horizontally and even vertically within an arc of 90°, but sometimes on opposite sides of the twig. They answer exactly to prickles or spines, especially to those of the locust. I observe them on the locust itself by chance, an icy spine at right angles on a vegetable one, making such a branch as is seen on some speci and weeds and leaves, even the pine-needles, are armed with them. The pine-needles especially, beside their hoary glaze, are bristling with countless fine spiculse, which appear to point in almost all directions. It is also interesting to meet with them by accident on the edges of oak leaves, answering exactly to the vegetable spines there (though they are commonly at right angles with the plane of the leaf and often almost as thick as a comb), and on pine cones, suggesting that there should be something in that soil especially favorable to promote the growth of spines. As far as I observed, theses pines were chiefly confined to the woods, —at least I had not noticed them on the causeway, —as if a fog might have collected in the former place but not in the last. They were, then, built in the mist, by a more delicate accretion. Thus it seems that not leaves only but other forms of vegetation are imitated by frost.

Already the white pine plumes were drooping, but the pitch pines stood stiffly erect. I was again struck by the deep open cup at the extremity of the latter, formed by the needles standing out very regularly around the red-brown buds at the bottom. It is very warm, and by ten o’clock this ice is rapidly falling from the trees and covering the ground like hail; and before noon all that jewelry was dissolved.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

—ToWalden

I go to walk at 3 p.m., thermometer 18°. It has been about this (and 22°) at this hour for a week or two. All the light snow, some five inches above the crust, is adrift these days and driving over the fields like steam, or like the foam-streaks on a flooded meadow, from northwest to southeast. The surface of the fields is rough, like a lake agitated by the wind.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few moods; nor is the evening less serene for them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Already we begin to anticipate spring, to say that the day is spring-like. This is an important difference between this time and a month ago. Is not January the hardest month to get through?

When you have weathered that, you get into the gulf stream of winter, nearer the shores of spring.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the winter the botanist can study lichens.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A clear, cold, beautiful day. Fine skating. An unprecedented expanse of ice.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

What a difference between life in the city and in the country at present, between walking in Washington St., threading your way between countless sledges and travellers, over the discolored snow, and crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue shadows, and your own, are the only objects. 

What a solemn silence reigns here!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is interesting to see near the sources even of  small streams or brooks which now flow through an open country–perhaps shrunken in their volume–the traces of ancient mills–which have devoured the primitive forest–the earthen dams & old sluice ways–& ditches and banks for obtaining a supply of water–

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Perhaps I can never find so good a setting for my thoughts as I shall thus have taken them out of.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To Hill and beyond. It is so mild & moist as I saunter along by the wall and E of the hill.  That I remember or anticipate one of those warm rain storms in the spring, when the earth is just laid bare—the wind is South—& the Kladonia lichens are swollen and lusty with moisture—your foot sinking into them & pressing the water out as from a sponge—& the sandy places also are drinking it in. You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat—wet to the skin of your legs—sit on moss-clad rocks & stumps & hear the lisping of migrating sparrows—flitting amid the shrub oaks—sit hours at a time still & hone your thoughts. A rain which is as serene as fair weather—suggesting fairer weather than was ever seen— You could hug the clods that defile you. You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind. The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens.

You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die—You detect some buds and sprouts of life—every step in the old rye field is on virgin soil.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is surprising how much room there is in nature if a man will follow his proper path. In these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on this stretching river, I never meet a walker.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The snow has been for some time more than a foot deep on a level, and some roads drifted quite full; and the cold for some weeks has been intense, as low as twenty and twenty-one degrees in the early morning.

A Canadian winter. Some say that we have not had so long a spell of cold weather since ’31, when they say it was not seen to thaw for six weeks. But last night and to-day the weather has moderated. It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon. The snow melts on the surface. The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer. The dog runs before us on the railroad causeway and appears to enjoy it as much as ourselves.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter. What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation ! So we soar.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated—of the inexpressible privacy of a life.  How silent and unambitious it is! The beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from the holist, quietest nook.  —The gods delight in stillness…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire me.— and at last I may make wholes of parts.   Certainly it is a distinct profession to rescue from oblivion & to fix the sentiments & thoughts which visit all men more or less generally. That the contemplation of the unfinished picture may suggest its harmonious completion. Associate reverently, and as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg—by the side of which more will be laid. Thoughts accidentally thrown together become a frame—in which more may be developed—& exhibited. Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing—of keeping a journal. That so we remember our best hours—& stimulate ourselves. My thoughts are my company  —  They have a certain individuality & separate existence—aye personality. Having by chance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and then brought them into juxtaposition—they suggest a whole new field in which it was possible to labor & to think. Thought begat thought….

It is a sharp cutting cold day stiffening the face. Thermometers have lately sunk to 20º.