In shaded places of the valley you
may walk through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms,
all silvered over with hoar spangles--fairy forests, where the flowers
and foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks
sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl
of water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it
eddying beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted
snow. All is so silent, still, and weird in this white world, that one
marvels when the spirit of winter will appear, or what shrill voices
in the air will make his unimaginable magic audible. Nothing happens,
however, to disturb the charm, save when a sunbeam cuts the chain of
diamonds on an alder bough, and down they drift in a thin cloud of
dust. It may be also that the air is full of floating crystals,
like tiniest most restless fire-flies rising and falling and passing
crosswise in the sun-illumined shade of tree or mountain-side.
It is not easy to describe these beauties of the winter-world; and yet
one word must be said about the sunsets. Let us walk out, therefore,
towards the lake at four o'clock in mid-December. The thermometer is
standing at 3 deg., and there is neither breath of wind nor cloud. Venus
is just visible in rose and sapphire, and the thin young moon is
beside her. To east and south the snowy ranges burn with yellow fire,
deepening to orange and crimson hues, which die away and leave a
greenish pallor.
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