in Thoreau’s Journal: 

I don’t want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it.

It is time now that I begin to live.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I want to go soon and live away by the pond where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds – It will be success if I shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what I will do when I get there? Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?

I discovered this little hut off trail and deep in the woods near a shore of Barville Pond, Sandwich, NH on a recent snowy day. Made me think of it as a base “to watch the progress of the seasons.”

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A slight whitening of snow last evening….just enough to spoil the skating now 10 days old on the ponds—

Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open—will prob. freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Sunlight on pine needles is an event of a winter day.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

1840: My home is as much of nature as my heart embraces.

1851: Go out before sunrise, or stay out till sunset.

1854: It has been a glorious winter day; its elements so simple, the sharp, clear air the white snow everywhere covering the earth, and the polished ice.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Nature and human life are as various to our several experiences as our constitutions are various— Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look through each other’s eyes for an instant….

From the hearth to the field is a great distance….

This country is not settled nor discovered yet.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Rain. It rains but little this afternoon, though there is no sign of fair weather. It is a lichen day. The pitch pines are very inspiriting to behold. Their green is as much enlivened and freshened as that of the lichens. It suggests a sort of sunlight on them, though not even a patch of clear sky is to be seen to-day. As dry and olive or slate-colored lichens are of a fresh and living green, so the already green pine needles have acquired a far livelier tint, as if they enjoyed this moisture as much as the lichens do. They seem to be lit up more than when the sun falls on them. Their trunks and those of trees generally, not being wet, are very black and the bright lichens on them are so much more remarkable. Apples are thawed now, and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know.

They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider press. The oak woods a quarter of a mile off appear more uniformly red then ever. The withered leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color, and they are not only redder for being wet, but thorough the obscurity of the mist one leaf runs into another, and the whole mass makes an impression.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The winter morning is the time to see in perfection the woods and shrubs wearing their snowy and frosty dress. Even he who visits them half and hour after sunrise will [find they] have lost some of their most delicate and fleeting beauties. The trees wear their morning burden but coarsely after midday, and it no longer expresses the character of the tree.

December 16, 1840 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Speech is fractional, silence is integral.

December 16. 1853 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would you be well, see that you are attuned to each mood of nature.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Jack Frost…I observe that upon the edge of the melting frost on the windows, Jack is playing singular freaks, now bundling together his needle-shaped leaves so as to resemble fields waving with grain, or shocks of wheat rising here and there from the stubble. One one side, the vegetation of the torrid zone is presented, high-towering palms, and wide-spread banyans such as we see in the pictures of oriental scenery.

On the other, are arctic pines, stiff-frozen with branches downcast, like the arms of tender men in frosty weather. In some instances the panes are covered with little feathery flocks where number of radii varying from three to seven or eight. The crystalline particles are partial to the creases and faults in the glass and when these extend from sash to sash, form complete hedgerows, or miniature watercourses, where dense masses of crystal foliage “high overarched embower.”

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep…Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came. Ah, what isles those western clouds! in what a sea! Just after sunset there is a broad pillar of light for many minutes in the west.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Winter weather may said to have begun yesterday.

Why have I ever omitted early rising and a morning walk?

December 12, 1840 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The young pines springing up in the cornfields from year to year are to me a much more refreshing fact than the most abundant harvests. My last stronghold is the forest.

December 12, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Ah, dear nature, the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.

December 12, 1859 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the…cold western sky.

 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.