Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/387

Rh more beautiful, to follow the sinuosities of the meadow.

Feb. 12, 1854.  Skate to Pantry Brook. One accustomed to glide over a boundless and variegated ice floor like this cannot be much attracted by tessellated floors and mosaic work. I skate over a thin ice all tessellated, so to speak, or on which you see the forms of the crystals as they shoot. To make a perfect winter day like this, you must have a clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, sufficient cold, no wind, and the warmth must come directly from the sun. It must not be a thawing warmth. The tension of nature must not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant, if bare. You hear the lisping music of chickadees from time to time, and the unrelenting steel-cold scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming cold, hard, tense, frozen music like the winter sky itself. There is no hint of incubation in the jay's scream. There is no cushion for sound now. It tears our ears.

I frequently see three or four old white birches standing together on the edge of a pond or meadow, and am struck by the pleasing manner in which they will commonly be grouped, how they spread so as to make room for each other, and make an agreeable impression upon