_March 8_.--I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot,
seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing
here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with
a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'd
everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everything solitary,
ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon--(how
made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor
cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the
pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the
_stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads
and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my
joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to
appear.
_Next day, 9th_.--A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the
day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid
the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the
pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd,
now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately
gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens,
holly-trees, laurels, &c., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled,
bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tall straight
columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinous odor
blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything,
even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any
two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from
midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.)