Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/53

Rh The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the world.

There is no winter necessarily in the sky, though snow covers the earth. The sky is always ready to answer our moods. We can see summer there or winter.

Dec. 27, 1852. Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it, and took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it. Flint's and Fair Haven frozen up. Ground bare. River open.

Dec. 27, 1853. High wind with more snow in the night. Snowy ridges cross the village street, and make it look as wild and bleak as a pass of the Rocky Mountains, or the Sierra Nevada.

To Fair Haven Pond, up meadows and river. The snow blows like spray fifteen feet high across the fields, while the wind roars in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is altogether like the ocean in a storm.

It is surprising what things the snow betrays. I had not seen a meadow-mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals. I see where the mouse has dived into a little