Indian summer. Andromeda Pond

November 17.

Another Indian-summer day, as fair as any we've had. 

I go down the railroad to Andromeda Ponds this afternoon. 

Captain Hubbard is having his large wood — oak and white pine, on the west of the railroad this side the pond — cut. I see one white oak felled with one hundred and fifteen rings to it; another, a red, oak has about the same number. 

Thus disappear the haunts of the owls. The time may come when their aboriginal hoo-hoo-hoo will not be heard hereabouts. 

I have been so absorbed of late in Captain Brown's fate as to be surprised whenever I detected the old routine running still, — met persons going about their affairs indifferent. It appeared strange to me that the little dipper should be still diving in the river as of yore; and this suggested that this grebe might be diving here when Concord shall be no more. Any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. 

At the pond-side I see titmice alighting on the now hoary gray golden rod and hanging back downward from it, as if eating its seeds; or could they have been looking for insects? There were three or four about it.

I sit in the sun on the northeast side of the first Andromeda Pond, looking over it toward the sun. How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp - a glowing, warm brown red in the Indian-summer sun, like a bed of moss in a hollow in the woods, with gray high blueberry and straw-colored grasses interspersed.

And when, going round it, you look over it in the opposite direction, it presents a gray aspect.

The musquash are active, swimming about in the further pond to-day, — this Indian-summer day. Channing also sees them thus stirring in the river this afternoon. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1859

When you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp.  See The Andromeda Phenomenon and  January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10, 1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows..."); April 17, 1852 (Observed in the second of the chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden a large (for the pond) island patch of the dwarf andromeda, I sitting on the east bank; its fine brownish-red color very agreeable and memorable to behold. In the last long pond, looking at it from the south, I saw it filled with a slightly grayish shrub which I took for the sweet-gale, but when I had got round to the east side, chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda. The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color; but when I looked to the right or left, i. e. north or south, the more the swamp had the mottled light or grayish aspect where the light was reflected from the surfaces of the leaves. And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic.")