Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/398

384 call them, of this rainbow-like dust stretching away from me and about half a dozen feet wide, the two arms including an angle of about 60°. When I look from the sun, I see merely dazzling white points. I can easily see some of these dazzling grains fifteen or twenty rods distant on any side, though the facet which reflects the light cannot be more than a tenth or twelfth of an inch at most. Yet I might easily, and commonly do, overlook all this.

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. Not till winter can we take possession of the whole of our territory. I have three great highways raying out from one centre which is near my door. I may walk down the main river, or up either of its two branches. Could any avenues be contrived more convenient? With the river I am not compelled to walk in the tracks of horses.

Never is there so much light in the air as in one of these bright winter afternoons when all the earth is covered with new-fallen snow, and there is not a cloud in the sky. The sky is much the darkest side, like the bluish lining of an egg-shell. With this white earth beneath, and that spotless, skimmed-milk sky above him, man is but a black speck inclosed in a white egg-shell.

Sometimes, in our prosaic moods, life appears