Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/24

10 Dec. 23, 1855. To Conantum End. A very bright and pleasant day with a remarkably soft wind from a little N. of W. The frost has come out so in the rain of yesterday, that I avoid the muddy plowed fields, and keep on the green ground which shines with moisture.

I admire those old root fences which have almost disappeared from tidy fields, white pine roots got out when the neighboring meadow was a swamp, the monuments of many a revolution. These roots have not penetrated into the ground, but spread over the surface, and having been cut off four or five feet from the stump were hauled off and set up on their edges for a fence. The roots were not merely interwoven, but grown together into solid frames, full of loop-holes like Gothic windows of various sizes and all shapes, triangular, and oval, and harp-like, and the slenderer parts are dry and resonant like harp strings. They are rough and unapproachable, with a hundred snags and horns, which bewilder and balk the calculation of the walker who would surmount them. The part of the trees above ground present no such fantastic forms. Here is one seven paces or more than a rod long, six feet high in the middle, and yet only one foot thick, and two men could turn it up. In this case the roots were six or nine inches thick at the extremities. The roots of pines in swamps