12.24.2013

complete to the last flake
...Thoreau's Journal: 24-Dec-1856

More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches.

P.M.—To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little.

Turned off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. It is very handsomer now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood; also on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, resting on them just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out above. We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests in the trees much. Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast. There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down, so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.

Returned across the pond and went across to Baker Farm.

3 comments:

greentangle said...

I've been enjoying my own snowy walks here, but there's nothing like going back to Concord for a walk with Henry.

michael jameson said...

i give to all my friends a chance to walk in the woods at christmas time to renew their spirit and compare it to their other gifts, may this new year be feed the soul more then any.

Quinton Blue said...

From an urban perspective, there is something akin. On a cold, snowy day, the snow shoveler can be alone in nature ... before the city has woken. No one has risen yet. No pedestrian has broken the snow. The sound of the shovel is startling. It's an odd kind of solitude in a normally busy environment. I miss that, now that I live in southern California.