in Thoreau’s Journal:

As for the weather, all seasons are pretty much alike to one who is actively at work in the woods. I should say that there were two or three remarkably warm days, and as many cold ones in the course of the year, but the rest are all alike in respect to temperature. This is my answer to my acquaintances, who ask if I have not found it very cold being out all day….

There are certain places where the ice will always be open, where, perchance, warmer springs come in. There are such places in every character, genial and open in the coldest seasons.

1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walk early through the woods to Lincoln to survey. Winter weather may be said to have begun yesterday. Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk?

1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:

While surveying today saw much Mt Laurel for this neighborhood in Mason’s pasture—just over the line in Carlisle.  Its bright yellowish green shoots are agreeable to my eye. We had one hour of almost Indian summer weather in the middle of the day. I felt the influence of the sun— It melted my stoniness a little. The pines looked like old friends again. Cutting a path through a swamp where was much brittle dogwood &c &c I wanted to know the name of every shrub. This varied employment to which my necessities compel me serves instead of foreign travel & the lapse of time— If it makes me forget somethings which I ought to remember, it no doubt enables me to forget many things which it is well to forget. By stepping aside from my chosen path so often I see myself better and am enabled to criticize myself. Of this nature is the only true lapse of time. It seems an age since I took walks & wrote in my journal— And when shall I revisit the glimpses of the moon? To be able to see ourselves—not merely as others see us—but as we are—that service a variety of absorbing employments does us.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

There are times when thought elbows her way through the underwood of words to the clear blue beyond….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The winter with its snow and ice is not an evil to be corrected…..To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.  Great winter itself looked like a precious gem reflecting rainbow colors from one angle. My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come into contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. I can generally recall, have fresh in my mind, several scratches last received. These I continually recall to mind, reimpress and harp upon.

The age of miracles is each moment thus returned; now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser red-polls. In winter, too, resides immortal youth and perennial summer….What if we could daguerreotype our thoughts and feelings ! 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I discover a strange track in the snow, and learn that some migrating otter has made across from the river to the wood, by my yard and the smith’s shop, in the silence of the night. I cannot but smile at my own wealth when I am thus reminded that every chink and cranny of nature is full to overflowing. Such an incident as this startles me with the assurance that the primeval nature is still working, and makes tracks in the snow. It is my own fault that he must thus skulk across my premises by night. Now I yearn toward him, and heaven to me consists in a complete communion with the otter nature. He travels a more wooded path by watercourses and hedgerows, I by the highways, but though his tracks are now crosswise to mine, our courses are not divergent, but we shall meet at last.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How prominent the late or fall flowers are, now withered above the snow, —the goldenrods and asters, Roman wormwood, etc., etc.! These late ones have a sort of life extended into winter, hung with icy jewelry.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It snowed in the night of the 6th and the ground is now covered.  our first snow 2 inches deep  A week ago I saw cows being driven home from pasture—  Now they are kept at home. Here’s an end to their grazing. The farmer improves this first light snow to accomplish some pressing jobs—to move some particular rocks on a drag, or the like—  I perceive how quickly he has seized the opportunity.  I see no tracks now of cows or men or boys beyond the edge of the wood—suddenly they are shut up—the remote pastures & hills beyond the woods are now closed to cows & cowherds aye & to cowards  I am struck by this sudden solitude & remoteness which these places have acquired. 

The dear privacy & retirement & solitude which winter makes possible—carpeting the earth with snow, furnishing more than woolen feet to all walkers, crounching the snow only.  From Fair Haven I see the hills & fields aye & the icy woods in the Corner shine gleam with the dear old wintery sheen.  

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In November & now before the snow I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor—now most conspicuous.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Go out at 9 AM to see the glaze. It is already half fallen, melting off. The dripping trees and wet falling ice will wet you through like rain in the woods. It is a lively sound, a busy tinkling, the incessant brattling and from time to time rushing, crashing sound of this falling ice, and trees suddenly erecting themselves when relieved of their loads. It is now perfect only on the north sides of woods which the sun has not touched or affected. Looking at a dripping tree between you and the sun, you may see here or there one or another rainbow color, a small brilliant point of light.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Rather hard walking in the snow— There is a slight mist in the air—& accordingly some glaze on the twigs & leaves—& thus suddenly we have passed from Ind. summer to winter.  The perfect silence, as if the whispering & creaking earth were muffled–– the stillness of the twigs & of the very weeds & withered grasses as if they were sculpted out of marble—are striking. It is as if you had stept from the withered garden into the yard of a sculptor or worker in marble crowded with delicate works—rich & rare. I remark, half a mile off, a tall & slender pitch pine against the dull grey mist—peculiarly monumental. I noticed also several small white oak trees full of leaves by the road—strangely interesting & beautiful. Their stiffened leaves were very long and deeply cut, & the lighter & glazed underside being almost uniformly turned vertically toward the N.W. as a traveller turns his back to the storm—though enough of the redder & warmer sides were seen to contrast with them—it looked like an artificial tree hung with many-fingered gauntlets. — — — — Such was the disposition of the leaves often in the same plane, that it looked like a brown arbor vitae.

See 4 quails running across the turnpike. How they must be affected by this change from warm weather & bare ground to cold & universal snow!

Returning from the P.O. at early candle light, I noticed for the first time this season the peculiar effect of lights in offices & shops seen over the snowy street—suggesting how withdrawn & inward the life in the former—how exposed & outward in the latter.

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. 

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

Many’s the pine I know—that’s a greybeard and wears a cocked hat.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Look at the trees bare or rustling with sere brown leaves—except the evergreens—their buds dormant at the foot of the leaf-stalks. Look at the fields russet & withered—& the various sedges & weeds with dry bleached culms— Such is our relation to nature at the present, —such plants are we. We have no more sap—nor verdure—nor color now—

….but even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer—& a serene inward life—not destitute of warmth & melody—  Only the cold evergreens wear the aspect of summer now and shelter the winter birds.

1854 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.

1856 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Pm Got in my boat, which before I had got out & turned up on the bank. It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow, I am so unused to the work of late.

1858 in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I first saw that snow-cloud—it stretched low along the N.W. horizon—perhaps 4/4 round—& half a dozen times as high as the mts—& was remarkably horizontal on its upper edge—but that edge was obviously for a part of the way very thick—composed of dusky mist which first suggested snow— When soon after it had risen & advanced & was plainly snowing— It was as if some great dark machine was sifting the snow upon the mountains. There was at the same time the most brilliant of sun-sets—the clearest & crispiest of winter skies.— We have had every day since similar slight flurries of snow— we being in their midst.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We are wont to foolishly to think that the creed a man professes is more significant than the fact he is….

The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves—so clean & firm not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality—not wrinkled & thin like the white oak leaves—but full veined & plump as nearer earth—Well tanned leather on the one side–sun-tanned—color of colors—color of the cow and the deer—silver downy beneath turned toward the late bleached & russet fields—What are acanthus leaves & the rest to this?  Emblem of my winter condition. I love & could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow—lowly whispering to me–akin to winter thoughts & sunsets & to all virtue. Covert which the hare & partridge and I  seek. What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? How can any man suffer long?  For a sense of want is a prayer & all prayers are answered.— Rigid as iron–clean as the atmosphere—hardy as virtue—innocent & sweet as a maiden—is the shrub-oak. In proportion as I know & love it—I am natural & sound as a partridge. I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last— I fell in love with a shrub-oak. Tenacious of its leaves—which shrivel not but retain a certain wintry life in them—firm shields painted in fast colors—a rich brown– 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a pleasant day & the snow melting considerably….Though Walden is open— It is a perfect winter scene. This withdrawn but ample recess in the woods—with all that is necessary for a human residence—yet never referred to by the London Times & Galignani’s messenger—as some of those arctic bays are— some are hastening to Europe & some to the West Indies but here is a bay never steered for….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

About three inches of snow fell last night. How light and bright the day now; methinks it is was good as a half hour added to the day. White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape. The pine woods snowed up look more like the bare oak woods with their gray boughs. The river meadows show now far off a dull straw color or pale brown amid the general white, where the coarse sedge rises about the snow; and distant oak woods are now indistinctly reddish. It is a clear and pleasant winter day. The snow has taken all the November out of the sky. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A gray, overcast, still day, and more small birds, tree sparrows and chickadees, than usual about the house. There have been a very few fine snowflakes falling for many hours, and now, by 2 P.M., a regular snowstorm has commenced, fine flakes falling steadily, and rapidly whitening all the landscape. In half an hour the russet landscape is painted white, even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?

I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me. That is one peculiarity of winter walking. Anybody may follow my trail. I have walked, perhaps, a particular wild path 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 barreen & cheerless—and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ices & snow —but methinks 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 by about 25 minutes.

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

It is too cold today to use a paddle   the water freezes on the handle & numbs my fingers— I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of a free shining green—

Checquer berries & 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:

1850

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.

1860

I remember perhaps that 15 years ago there was not a single tree in this pasture– not a germinating seed—of one—& now it is a pretty dense forest 10 feet high— I confess that I love to be convinced of this inextinguishable vitality in Nature. I would rather that my body should be buried in a soil thus wide-awake—than in a mere inert & dead earth.