Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/335

Rh the cars, as I stand over the Deep Cut, makes a large and dazzling light in this air, and now whizzes the boiling, sizzling kettle by me, in which the passengers make me think of potatoes which a fork would show to be done by this time. The steam is denser for the cold, and more white; like the purest downy clouds in the summer sky its volumes roll up between me and the moon, and far behind, when the cars are a mile off, it still goes shading the fields with its wreaths, the breath of the panting traveler. I now cross from the railroad to the road. This snow, the last of which fell day before yesterday, is two feet deep, pure and powdery. From a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is reflected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its surface. I hear a gentle rustling of the oak leaves as I go through the woods, but this snow has yet no troops of leaves on its surface The snow evidently by its smooth crust assists in the more equal dispersion and distribution of the leaves which course over it, blown by the wind. Perchance, for this reason, the oak leaves and some others hang on.

[On Fair Haven Hill.] Instead of the sound of his [the chopper's] axe, I hear the hooting of an owl, nocturnus ululatus, whose haunts he is laying waste. The ground is all pure white, powdery snow, which his sled, etc., has stirred