Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/100

86 the north side the redness of the berries came softened through, and tingeing the allied snow-white bush, like an evening sky beyond. These adjoined snow or ice berries, being beset within the limits of 90° on the N. with those icy particles or spicula, between which the red glow, and sometimes the clear red itself, was sometimes visible, produced the appearance of a raspberry bush full of over-ripe fruit.

Standing on the north side of a bush or tree, looking against the sky, you see only the white ghost of a tree, without a mote of earthiness; but as you go round it, the dark core comes into view. It makes all the odds imaginable whether you are traveling N. or S. The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the most feathery, fairy-like ostrich plumes, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. The weight of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending and twisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes of the pines, being frozen, remain as the wind held them, and new portions of the trunk are exposed. Seen from the N. there is no greenness in the pines, and the character of the tree is changed. The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in the meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like trees make a