Clear and cool. A frost whitens the ground; yet a mist hangs over the village. There is a thin ice, reaching a foot from the water’s edge, which the earliest rays will melt. I scare up several snipes feeding on the meadow’s edge. It is remarkable how they conceal themselves when they alight on a bare spit of the meadow. I look with my glass to where one alighted four rods off . . .

  P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  When we reached Britton’s clearing on our return this afternoon, at sunset, the mountains, after this our warmest day as yet, had got a peculiar soft mantle of blue haze, pale blue as a blue heron, ushering in the long series of summer sunsets, and we were glad that we had stayed out so late and felt no need to go home now in a hurry.