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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



being so capricious. Sleet, slush, snow, 

 hail, rain, freezing, thawing, blizzards, 

 and sunshine make up a program which 

 certainly does not lack in point of variety. 

 Yet to this very fact is due much of the 

 beauty of the New England winter. 

 Were the cold uniform, did the snow 

 which falls in December remain until. 

 April — conditions which obtain in certain 

 other parts of the continent — the winter 

 would lose a good part of its charm. 



The winters in Concord today are just 

 as changeful as in Thoreau's time, and 

 one finds the same succession of varied 

 phenomena which compelled his wonder 

 and admiration. 



WONDER IN THE WEAVING OE THE SNOW 

 BLANKET 



First of all, of course, there is the snow 

 "blanket" enwrapping the earth, which to 

 Thoreau was so suggestive both of utility 

 and beauty — "a mire garment, as of white 

 watered satin, over all the fields." There 

 is wonderful fascination in the weaving 

 of this blanket. The falling snow — what 

 an incredible spectacle to' one who has 

 never seen it ! And how the mystery and 

 witchery of it persist even after one has 

 seen it a thousand times ! 



To go abroad in Concord fields and 

 woods during a snow storm is a memora- 

 ble experience, especially if the snow is 

 a little damp and clings to the trees and 

 bushes in masses. Thoreau devotes many 

 pages of enthusiastic description to a 

 "lodging snow" : 



"The woods were incredibly fair, white 

 as alabaster. Indeed, the young pines 

 reminded you of the purest statuary, and 

 the full-grown ones towering around af- 

 fected you as if you stood in a titanic 

 sculptor's studio, so purely and delicately 

 white, transmitting the light. . . . 



"Imagine the innumerable twigs and 

 boughs of the forest crossing each other 

 at every conceivable angle on every side, 

 from the ground to thirty feet in height, 

 with each its zigzag wall of snow four or 

 five inches high, so innumerable at differ- 

 ent distances one behind another that 

 they completely close up the view, like a 

 loose-woven downy screen." 



And then, after the snow has fallen and 

 the sun shines once more, the wind takes 



up the snow and whirls it into drifts, 

 burying the fences and choking the high- 

 ways. In the lee of open stone walls 

 these drifts become curiously fantastic, 

 the snow being carved by the wind, which 

 whistles through the chinks in the wall 

 into many novel and picturesque forms. 

 "It builds up a fantastic wall behind the 

 first — a snowy sierra. Astonishingly 

 sharp and thin overhanging eaves it 

 builds, even this dry snow, where it has 

 the least suggestion from a wall or 

 bank — less than a mason ever springs his 

 brick from. This is the architecture of 

 the snow." 



With the coming of the sun. too, there 

 appear those exquisite blue shadows on 

 the snow. Given the right conditions of 

 atmosphere and temperature, these shad- 

 ows are captivating to every one who 

 possesses the least sense of color values. 

 What makes them so blue — -"celestial 

 blue"? "I think I never saw," says 

 Thoreau, "a more Elysian blue than my 

 shadow. I am turned into a tall blue 

 Persian from my cap to my boots, such 

 as no mortal can produce, with an ame- 

 thystine hatchet in my hand. I am in 

 raptures at my own shadow. What if 

 the substance were of as ethereal a na- 

 ture ?" 



READING THE SECRETS OE THE WILD 



In his tramps afield after every fresh 

 snowfall Thoreau took keen delight in 

 reading the story of the wild life of the 

 woods found in the tracks of fox and 

 otter, squirrel and rabbit, crow and par- 

 tridge, mouse and mink. The snow, he 

 declared, is the great revealer, and he 

 learned many secrets of the wild in these 

 footprint studies. 



Of all the denizens of the woods, how- 

 ever, Reynard held for him the greatest 

 interest, and more than once he would 

 spend a large portion of the day follow- 

 ing the tracks of a fox and unraveling 

 the record of its wanderings. Concord 

 is so far from being wholly urbanized in 

 these days that the wood- folk still linger 

 within its precincts, and judging from 

 the snowy tale of their gambols and jour- 

 neyings they are scarcely less numerous 

 than in Thoreau's time. 



But Thoreau held that we may find in 



