Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/224

210 valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter. But what a different aspect has the river's brim from what it wears in summer! I do not at this moment hear an insect's hum, nor see a bird or a flower. That museum of animal and vegetable life, a meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it.

Jan. 20, 1857. I hear that Boston harbor froze over on the 18th down to Fort Independence.

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st.

At R. W. E.'s this evening at about 6, I was called out to see E.'s cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that its mouth was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of this lamp was remarkably reflected and distributed. The snowy walls were one universal reflector with countless facets. I think that one