Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/340

326 Nutting's Pond in Billerica. There is good skating from the mouth to Saxonville, measureing in a straight line some twenty-two miles, by the river say thirty now. It is all the way of one character, a meadow river, or dead stream. Musketicook, the abode of muskrats, pickerel, etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, or thirty in all, by some twenty low wooden bridges, sublicii pontes, connected with the mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the long shallow lakes are divided into reaches. These long causeways all under water and ice now, only the bridges peeping out from time to time, like a dry eyelid. You must look close to find them in many cases, mere islands are they to the traveler in this waste of water and ice. Only two villages lying near the river, Concord and Wayland, and one at each end of this thirty miles. I used some bits of wood with a groove in them for crossing the causeways and gravelly places, that I might not scratch my skate irons.

Feb. 3, 1856.  Up North Branch. A strong N. W. wind (and thermometer 11°) driving the snow like steam. About five inches of soft snow now on ice. Returning, saw near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion, like a hawk, eight