Log Search Results

  It is good to break and smell the black birch twigs now. The lichens look rather bright to-day, near the town line, in Heywood’s wood by the pond . . .

  The woodpecker’s work in Emerson’s wood on the Cliff-top, the trees being partly killed by the top, and the grubs having hatched under the bark . . .

  About 2 o’clock, P. M. these days, after a fair forenoon, there is wont to blow up from the northwest a squally cloud, spanning the heavens, but before it reaches the southeast horizon it has lifted above the northwest, and so it leaves the sky clear there for sunset, while it has sunk low and dark in the southeast.

  The men on the freight-train, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often and I think they take me for an “employé;” and am I not?

  What a Proteus is our weather! Let me try to remember its freaks. We had remarkably steady sleighing, on a little snow some six inches deep, from the .5th of December all through the month . . .

  P. M.—To Walden. A thick, driving snow, something like, but less than, that of the 19th. There is a strong easterly wind and the snow is very damp. In the deepest hollows on the Brister Hill path it has already lodged handsomely . . .

  I fully intended to have gone to Boston yesterday; but not being very well, deferred it until to-day, and now we are visited by a severe snowstorm, so that I fear the railway track may be obstructed. I shall not, therefore, be able to reach Concord this time. My only fear is that you may have gone to Boston in expectation of meeting me there; but as I have not heard from you to this effect I have no very strong reason to think so, and hope you have not.

  I should like very much to see Concord and its environs with the Laird of Walden, and hope at no very distant time to do so, should it meet his pleasure. I hope also to see your lordship again here, and to visit with you some of our rural retreats.

  Yours,
  D. Ricketson

  P.M.—Walked down the river as far as the south bend behind Abner Buttrick’s . . .

Walked as far as Flint’s Bridge with Abel Hunt, where I took to the river . . .

Talking with Miss Mary Emerson this evening, she said, “It was not the fashion to be so original when I was young” . . .

  P.M.—To Clintonia Swamp down the brook . . . Melvin would have sworn he heard a bluebird the other day if it had n’t been January . . . (Journal, 10:259-262).

  These are remarkably warm and pleasant days. The water is going down, and the ice is rotting. I see some insects—those glow-worm-like ones—sunk half an inch or more into the ice by absorbed heat and yet quite alive in these little holes, in which they alternately freeze and thaw. At Willow Bay I see for many rods black soil a quarter of an inch deep, covering and concealing the ice (for several rods). This, I find, was blown some time ago from a plowed field twenty or more rods distant. This shows how much the sediment of the river may be increased by dust blown into it from the neighboring fields . . .