. Through the year with Thoreau . f jewelsas you walk! The most careless walker, who neverdeigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannothelp observing them now. The drooping birchesalong the edges of woods are the most feathery,fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the colorof their trunks increases the delusion. The weightof the ice gives to the pines the forms which northerntrees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending andtwisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes ofthe pines, being frozen, remain as the wind heldthem, and new portions of the trunk are exposed. ^ An ice-sto
. Through the year with Thoreau . f jewelsas you walk! The most careless walker, who neverdeigned to look at these humble weeds before, cannothelp observing them now. The drooping birchesalong the edges of woods are the most feathery,fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the colorof their trunks increases the delusion. The weightof the ice gives to the pines the forms which northerntrees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending andtwisting the branches; for the twigs and plumes ofthe pines, being frozen, remain as the wind heldthem, and new portions of the trunk are exposed. ^ An ice-storm such as Thoreau describes so intimately is by no meansan annual occurrence in Concord. Indeed, in his entire journal Thoreaumentions only one other similar phenomenon. It required some years ofwatchful waiting before the opportunity arrived to secure photo-graphs illustrating Thoreaus description. The single view herewith re-produced gives only a bare suggestion of the beauty of the outdoor worldunder such conditions. H. W. C 121 ] Seen from the north, there is no greenness in thepines, and the character of the tree is changed. Thewillows along the edge of the river look like sedgein meadows. The sky is overcast, and a fine snowyhail and rain is falling, and these ghost-like treesmake a scenery which reminds you of see now the beauty of the causeway, by the bridgealders below swelling into the road, overtopped bywillows and maples. The fine grasses and shrubs inthe meadow rise to meet and mingle with the droop-ing willows, and the whole make an indistinct impres-sion like a mist, and between this the road runstoward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees inthe distance, — toward spirit-land. Journal, iv, 436-38. 122 HEAVY SNOW ON PITCH PINES January 7, 1852. This afternoon, in dells of thewood and on the lee side of the woods, where thewind has not disturbed it, the snow still lies on thetrees as richly as I ever saw it. It was just moistenough to st
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookp, booksubjectnaturalhistory
