in Thoreau’s Journal:  

What interesting contrasts our climate affords! In July you rush panting into [a] pond, to cool yourself in the tepid water, when the stones on the bank are so heated that you cannot hold one tightly in your hand, and horses are melting on the road.

Now you walk on the same pond frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and feet, and see the water-target bleached and stiff in the ice.

[water-target:   Aquatic plant with floating oval leaves and purple flowers; in lakes and slow-moving streams.]

in Thoreau’s Journal: 

I do not remember to have ever seen such a day as this in Concord.

There is no snow here (though there has been excellent sleighing at Concord since the 5th) but it is very muddy–the frost coming out of the ground as in spring with us. I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm & pleasant & the cockerels crowed  just as in a spring day at home–- I felt the winter breaking up in me & if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry.

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: 

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?

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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Three men are fishing on Flint’s Pond, where the ice is seven or eight inches thick.

The fisherman stands erect and still on the ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to say that he has had no luck. He has been here since early morning, and for some reason or other the fishes won’t bite. You won’t catch him here again in a hurry. They all tell the same story. The amount of it is he has had “fisherman’s luck,” and if you walk that way you may find him at his old post to-morrow. It is hard, to be sure, — four little fishes to be divided between three men, and two and a half miles to walk; and you have only got a more ravenous appetite for the supper which you have not earned. However, the pond floor is not a bad place to spend a winter day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine-tree.

Go out before sunrise, or stay out till sunset.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The witch hazel is covered with fruit, and droops over gracefully, like a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still remaining.

in Thoreau’s Journal

It rains but little this afternoon, though there is no sign of fair weather. Only the mist appears thinner here and there from time to time. It is a lichen day.

The pitch pines on the south of the road at the Colburn farm 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 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, being wet, are very black, and the bright lichens on them are so much the more remarkable.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A certain dim religious light comes through this roof of pine leaves and snow. It is a sombre twilight, yet in some places the sun streams in, producing the strongest contrasts of light and shade.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Philosophy is a Greek word by good rights, and it stands almost for a Greek thing. Yet some rumor of it has reached the commonest mind. M. Miles, who came to collect his wood-bill today, said, when I objected to the small size of his wood, that it was necessary to split wood fine in order to cure it well, that he had found that that was more than four inches in diameter would not dry, and moreover a good deal depended on the manner in which it was corded up in the woods. He piled his high and tightly. If this were not well done the stakes would spread and the wood lie loosely, and so the rain and snow find their way into it. And he added, “I have handled a good deal of wood, and I think that I understand the philosophy of it.”

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We have now the scenery of winter, though the snow is but an inch or two deep. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This morning it is snowing, and the ground is whitened. The countless flakes, seen against the dark evergreens like a web that is woven in the air, impart a cheerful and busy aspect to nature. It is like a grain that is sown, or like leaves that have come to clothe the bare trees. Now, by 9 o’clock, it comes down in larger flakes, and I apprehend that it will soon stop. It does.

How pleasant a sense of preparedness for the winter, —plenty of wood in the shed and potatoes and apples, etc., in the cellar, and the house banked up! Now it will be a cheerful sight to see the snows descend and hear the blast howl.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.

The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge, —his comings and goings from copse to copse, —and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. So, perchance, if a still finer substance should fall from heaven (iodine?), something delicate enough to receive the trace of their footsteps, we should see where unsuspected spirits and faery visitors had hourly crossed our steps, had held conventions and transacted their affairs in our midst. No doubt such subtle spirits transact their affairs in our midst, and we may perhaps invent some sufficiently delicate surface to catch the impression of them.

If in the winter there are fewer men in the fields and woods, —as in the country generally, —you see the tracks of those who had preceded you, and so are more reminded of them than in summer.

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.

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.

[Thoreau’s illustration is from his Journal, November 16, 1860]

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:

7 A. M. – How can we spare to be abroad in the morning red, to see the forms of the leafless eastern trees against the dun sky and hear the cocks crow, when a thin low mist hangs over the ice and frost in meadows?