Friday, November 4, 2011

It is truly a raw and gusty day

November 4

November 4, 2018

It is truly a raw and gusty day, and I hear a tree creak sharply like a bird, a phoebe. The jays with their scream are at home in the scenery.

I see why the checkerberry was so called, — Mitchella repens (we call it falsely partridge-berry), —for its leaves, variegated, checker the ground  now mingled with red berries and partially covered with the fallen leaves of the forest. 

Saw Mill Brook is peculiar among our brooks as a mountain brook For a short distance it reminds me of runs I have seen in New Hampshire. A brawling little stream tumbling through a rocky wood, ever down and down, as much obstructed by rocks – rocks out of all proportion to its tiny stream – as a brook can well be. And the rocks are bared throughout the wood on either side, as if a torrent had anciently swept through here; so unlike the after character of the stream. Who would have thought that, on tracing it up from where it empties into the larger Mill Brook in the open peat meadows, it would conduct him to such a headlong and impetuous youth. 

The slender chestnuts, maples, elms, and white ash trees, which last are uncommonly numerous here, are now all bare of leaves, and a few small hemlocks, with their now thin but unmixed and fresh green foliage, stand over and cheer the stream and remind me of winter, the snows which are to come and drape them and contrast with their green, and the chickadees that are to flit and lisp amid them.

These little cheerful hemlocks, – the lisp of chickadees seems to come from them now, – each standing with its foot on the very edge of the stream, reaching sometimes part way over its channel, and here and there one has lightly stepped across. These evergreens are plainly as much for shelter for the birds as for anything else.

The fallen leaves are so thick they almost fill the bed of the stream and choke it. I hear the runnel gurgling underground. 


There are a few bright-green ferns lying flat by the sides of the brook, but it is cold, cold, withering to all else. 

It was quite a discovery when I first came upon this brawling mountain stream in Concord woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1851

The jays with their scream are at home in the scenery.
See February 2, 1854 ("The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony with winter.") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A few small hemlocks. . . remind me of winter . . . and the chickadees that are to flit and lisp amid them. See November 4, 1855 ("The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter."); November 7, 1858 ("I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter. All that is evergreen in me revived at once.") See also A Book of the Seasonsby Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

There are a few bright-green ferns lying flat by the sides of the brook, See September 27, 1852 ("At Saw Mill Brook many finely cut and flat ferns are faded whitish and very handsome, as if pressed, — very delicate.")

This raw gusty day
the jays with their scream
at home in the scenery.


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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-511104

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