Visions Illuminations Inspirations ecstasies

November 21

November 21, 2016

For a month past the grass under the pines has been covered with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. 

Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes I have seen, as well on account of the closeness of their branches as of their thorns, have been wild apples. Its branches as stiff as those of the black spruce on the tops of mountains.

I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport like huge rats. Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. They even played like kittens, in their way; shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill.

Seeing the sun falling on a distant white pinewood with mingled gray and green, in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. 

It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. 

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. 

I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. 

How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! What are these things? Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.

As I looked on the Walden woods eastward across the pond, I saw suddenly a white cloud rising above their tops, now here, now there, marking the progress of the cars which were rolling toward Boston far below, behind many hills and woods.

October must be the month of ripe and tinted leaves.

Throughout November they are almost entirely withered and sombre, the few that remain. In this month the sun is valued. When it shines warmer or brighter we are sure to observe it. There are not so many colors to attract the eye. We begin to remember the summer.

We walk fast to keep warm. For a month past I have sat by a fire.

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.

I get nothing to eat in my walks now but wild apples, sometimes some cranberries, and some walnuts. The squirrels have got the hazelnuts and chestnuts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1850

A new carpet of pine leaves . . . the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. See November 9, 1850 ("Just a month ago, I observed that the white pines were parti-colored, green and yellow . . .There is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. See January, 1851("It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by a common traveller."); July 7, 1851 ("Knowledge does not come to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods."); July 16, 1851(" To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes!  . . . There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”); August 3, 1852 (" By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree."); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance . . . The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")

Fair Haven Pond . . . What are these things?  See September 7, 1851 ("We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery.");; April 8, 1852 ( ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? . . . I would fain explore the mysterious relation between myself and these things."); August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics which my eyes behold?"); March 29, 1853 ("Not till we are completely lost or turned round . . . .do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature . . . begin to realize where we are, and the infinite extent of our relations.") See also February 14, 1851 ("What are these things?") ("") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it. See February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see.")

Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks. See April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all."); May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world,- Kosmos, or beauty. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? ");June 25, 1852 ("What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other.");  August 3, 1852 (" I hear the sound of a distant piano. . . . By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe."); June 5, 1853("The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla. ");February 19, 1854("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”); Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?"); September 4, 1854("Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her."); September 9, 1854 (" Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures."); January 12, 1855 (" It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. Here is no imperfection. The winter, with its snow and ice, is as it was designed and made to be.");December 5, 1856 ('I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.") February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other."); November 22, 1860 ( I rejoice in the bare, bleak, hard, and barren-looking surface of the tawny pastures, the firm outline of the hills, and the air so bracing and wholesome. Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.").

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. See Walking (1861) ("Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down .He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him . . . The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild and what I have been preparing to say is that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.") See also note to December 18, 1856 HD'Ts paper “Walking or the Wild,” was first been delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. The lecture began with a reference to a Wordsworth poem :

"stepping westward seems to be

a kind of heavenly destiny.”

November 21. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 21

I see Fair Haven Pond

with its island and meadow

between the island

I see my future –

the world suddenly flooded

with a serene light

these forms and colors

so adapted to my eye

we are made to love

pond and meadow as the wind

to ripple water.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Visions Illuminations Inspirations

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

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