October 30
Sunday.
A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day.
This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still.
P. M. – To Hubbard's Meadow Wood.
I see tree sparrows in loose flocks, chasing one an other, on the alders and willows by the brook-side. They keep up a general low and incessant twittering warble, as if suppressed, very sweet at this season, but not heard far. It is, as Wilson says, like a chip-bird, but this has a spot commonly on breast and a bright chestnut crown. It is quite striped (bay and brown with dark) above and has a forked tail.
I am not quite sure that I have seen them before. They are a chubby little bird, and have not the stripes on the breasts which the song sparrow has. The last, moreover, has not that striped bay and blackish and ash above.
By the bathing-place, I see a song sparrow with his full striped breast. He drops stealthily behind the wall and skulks amid the bushes ; now sits behind a post, and peeps round at me, ever restless and quirking his tail, and now and then uttering a faint chip. It is not so light beneath as the last.
The muskrat-houses are mostly covered with water now.
Saw a Solidago nemoralis in full flower yesterday.
Here is the autumnal dandelion and fragrant ever lasting to-day.
What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended.
Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry.
I am surprised at the change since last Sunday. Looking at the distant woods, I perceive that there is no yellow nor scarlet there now.
They are (except the evergreens) a mere dull, dry red. The autumnal tints are gone.
What life remains is merely at the foot of the leaf-stalk.
The woods have for the most part acquired their winter aspect, and coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.
The muskrat-houses are mostly covered with water now.
Saw a Solidago nemoralis in full flower yesterday.
Here is the autumnal dandelion and fragrant ever lasting to-day.
What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended.
Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry.
I am surprised at the change since last Sunday. Looking at the distant woods, I perceive that there is no yellow nor scarlet there now.
They are (except the evergreens) a mere dull, dry red. The autumnal tints are gone.
What life remains is merely at the foot of the leaf-stalk.
The woods have for the most part acquired their winter aspect, and coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.
This is November. The landscape prepared for winter, without snow.
When the forest and fields put on their sober winter hue, we begin to look more to the sunset for color and variety.
Now, now is the time to look at the buds of the swamp-pink,— some yellowish, some, mixed with their oblong seed-vessels, red, etc.
The larger red maple buds have now two sets of scales, three in each.
The water andromeda is still green.
Along the Depot Brook, the great heads of Aster puniceus stand dry and fuzzy and singularly white, — like the goldenrods and other asters, — but some quite low are still green and in flower.
The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass, of the fuzzy gray goldenrods, harmonizing with the cold sunlight, and that of the leaves which still hang on deciduous trees.
The dead-looking fruit of the alders is now conspicuous.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1853
I see tree sparrows in loose flocks, chasing one an other, on the alders and willows by the brook-side.
See October 13, 1857 ("See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. "); November 3, 1853 ("There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hop ping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow. "); November 4, 1860 ("White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow
The water andromeda is still green.
Along the Depot Brook, the great heads of Aster puniceus stand dry and fuzzy and singularly white, — like the goldenrods and other asters, — but some quite low are still green and in flower.
The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass, of the fuzzy gray goldenrods, harmonizing with the cold sunlight, and that of the leaves which still hang on deciduous trees.
The dead-looking fruit of the alders is now conspicuous.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1853
What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended . . . The autumnal tints are gone. See October 30, 1858 ("Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy"); See also November 11, 1851 ("The fall of the year is over, and now let us see if we shall have any Indian summer.)
See October 13, 1857 ("See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. "); November 3, 1853 ("There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hop ping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow. "); November 4, 1860 ("White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow
See a song sparrow with his full striped breast . . . ever restless and quirking his tail, and now and then uttering a faint chip. It is not so light beneath as the last. See October 27, 1853 ("Song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast"); November 23, 1853 ("I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
The muskrat-houses are mostly covered with water now. See October 29, 1857 ("The river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash."); November 2, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses are mostly covered by the rise of the river! — not a very unexpected one either. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
This is November. The landscape prepared for winter, without snow. See October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs"); October 31, 1853 ("Is not this already November , when the yellow and scarlet tints are gone from the forest?"); November 27, 1853 ("The earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow; "); .See also November 29, 1858 ("The snow has taken all the November out of the sky")
Now, now is the time to look at the buds of the swamp-pink. See October 12, 1851 ("The swamp-pink buds begin to show."):November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show. "); November 8, 1857 ("The swamp-pink's large yellowish buds, too, are conspicuous now.") See also October 26, 1853 ("Now leaves are off, or chiefly off, I begin to notice the buds of various form and color and more or less conspicuous, prepared for another season."); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring."); January 25, 1858 ('What a rich book might be made about buds.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink
The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass. See October 27, 1858 (“Countless sedges and grasses ...become pale-brown and bleached after the frost has killed them, and give that peculiar light, almost silvery, sheen to the fields in November.”); November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 25, 1857 ("This is November of the hardest kind, — bare frozen ground covered with pale-brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting northwest wind which makes me seek to cover my ears, a perfectly clear and cloudless sky") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Days II
October 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 30
The fall has ended,
landscape prepared for winter.
This is November.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The landscape prepared for winter
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 © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531030
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