Log Search Results

  P.M.—Across the river and over Hill . . .

  Looking up over the top of the hill now, southwest, at 3.30 P. M., I see a few mother-o’-pearl tints . . .

  Recrossing the river behind Dodd’s, now at 4 P.M., the sun quite low, the open reach just below is quite green . . .

  Parker, the Shaker that was, my assistant, says that the first year he came to live with W—, he worked on the farm, and that when he was digging potatoes on at jog (of about an acre) next to the site of the old Lee house, he found snakes’ eggs in many hills . . .

  P.M.—Going by Dodd’s, I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree before his house, standing square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time . . .

  I spoke to the barber to-day about that whirl of hair on the occiput of most (if not all) men’s heads. He said it was called the crown, and was of a spiral form, a beginning spiral, when cut short; that some had two, one on the right, the other on the left, close together. I said that they were in a sense double-headed. He said that it was an old saying that such were bred under two crowns . . .

  I saw a team come out of the path in the woods, as though it had never gone in, but belonged there, and only came out like Elisha’s bears. It was wholly of the village, and not at all of the wood . . .

  I tread in the tracks of the fox which has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tiptoe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in these woods, and expected soon to catch it in its lair . . . Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching [a] quarter of a mile across the pond . . .

  Fair Haven Pond is scored with the trails of foxes, and you may see where they have gambolled and gone through a hundred evolutions, which testify to a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.

  Suddenly, looking down the river, I saw a fox some sixty rods off, making across to the hills on my left. As the snow lay five inches deep, he made but slow progress, but it was no impediment to me. So, yielding to the instinct of the chase, i tossed my head aloft and bounded away, snuffing the air like a fox-hound, and spurning the world and the Humane Society at each bound. it seemed the woods rang the the hunter’s horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined in the chase and cheered me on. Olympian and Elean youths were waving palms on the hills. In the meanwhile I gained rapidly on the fox; but he showed a remarkable presence of mind, for, instead of keeping up the face of the hill, which was steep and unwooded in that part, he kept along the slope in the direction of the forest, though he lost ground by it. Notwithstanding his fright, he took no step which was not beautiful. The course on his part was a series of most graceful curves. It was a sort of leopard canter, I should say, as if her were nowise impeded by the snow, but were husbanding his strength all the while. When he doubled I wheeled and cut him off, bounding with fresh vigor, and Antæuslike, recovering my strength each time I touched the snow. having got near enough for a fair view, just as he was slipping into the wood, I gracefully yielded him the palm. He ran as though there were not a bone in his back, occasionally dropping his muzzle to the snow for a rod or two, and then tossing his head aloft when satisfied of his course. When he came to a declivity he put his fore feet together and slid down it like a cat. He trod so softly that you could not have heard it from any nearness, and yet with such expression that it would not have been quite inaudible at any distance. So, hoping this experience would prove a useful lesson to him, I returned to the village by the highway of the river.

  P.M.—Up river on ice and snow to Fair Haven Pond . . . Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett’s Pond slips from the ice-man’s sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers . . .