ered by the great snow of 1717
when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole which the
chimney's breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family. But
no friendly Indian concerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the
master of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to
hear of! When the farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with
their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their
houses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps,
ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the next spring.

In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to
my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a
meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a week
of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same
length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision
of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks--to such routine the winter
reduces us--yet often they were filled with heaven's own blue. But no
weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to
keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old
acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs
to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir
trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the show was nearly
two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head
at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands
and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon
I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one
of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad
daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved
and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When
I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck
feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he
began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half
an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged
brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their
lids, by which he preserved a pennisular relation to me; thus, with
half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of d