Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/93

Rh freedom of all bodies, of all nature. I leave my body in a trance, and accompany the zephyr and the fragrance.

Walden froze completely over last night. It is, however, all snow-ice, as it froze while it was snowing hard. It looks like frozen yeast some what. I waded about in the woods through the snow, which certainly averaged considerably more than two feet deep where I went. Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along. It was nearly as obvious as a man's track; made before last night's snow fell. The creature from time to time went beneath the snow for a few feet to the leaves. This animal I should probably never see the least trace of were it not for the snow, the great revealer.

I saw some squirrels' nests of oak leaves high in the trees, and directly after a gray squirrel tripping along the branches of an oak and shaking down the snow. He ran down the oak on the side opposite from me over the snow and up another tall and slender oak, also on the side opposite from me which was bare, and leaped down about four feet into a white pine, and then ran up still higher into its thick green top and clung behind the main stem, perfectly still. This he did to conceal himself, though obliged to come nearer to me to accomplish it.