JANUARY 



27 



The sky was a cold grayish white ; the pines and 

 cedars looked almost black. Against the sky the 

 ice-covered, leafless trees were a darker gray than 

 the clouds, but against the evergreens or in masses 

 by themselves they were ashes-of-roses color and 

 wonderfully soft in tone. Looking across a sloping 

 pasture at a swamp filled with elms and willows, 

 they seemed to be a mass of dark stems with their 

 tops shrouded in pale smoke through which the 

 faintest possible fire-glow permeated. I suppose 

 the color came from the reddish bark of the twigs. 

 BOLLES: Land of the Lingering Snow. 



28 



As I flounder along the Corner road against 

 the root fence, a very large flock of snow buntings 

 alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds ris- 

 ing above the snow ... a hundred or two of them. 

 They run restlessly amid the weeds, so that I can 

 hardly get sight of them through my glass. Then 

 suddenly all arise and fly only two or three rods, 

 alighting within three rods of me. They keep up 

 a constant twittering. It is as if they were ready 

 any instant for a longer flight, but their leader had 

 not so ordered it. Suddenly away they sweep 

 again, and I see them alight in a distant field 

 where the weeds rise above the snow, but in a few 

 minutes they have left that also, and gone farther 



north. 



THOREAC: Winter. 



