The leafless November twilight awaiting the onset of the wind.

 November 14

There is a clear air and a strong northwest wind drying up the washed earth after the heavy rain of yesterday. The road looks smooth and white as if washed and swept.

I climb Annursnack. Under this strong wind more dry oak leaves are rattling down. 

All winter is their fall. A distinction is to be made between those trees whose leaves fall as soon as the bright autumnal tints are gone and they are withered and those whose leaves are rustling and falling all winter even into spring.

October is the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world. 

November 14, 2020

This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and what ever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.

In October the man is ripe even to his stalk and leaves; he is pervaded by his genius, when all the forest is a universal harvest, whether he possesses the enduring color of the pines, which it takes two years to ripen and wither, or the brilliant color of the deciduous trees, which fade the first fall.

From this hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had been combed by the flowing water. Not merely the sandy roads, but the fields are swept. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.

October answers to that period in the life of man when he is no longer dependent on his transient moods, when all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit.

Now for the bare branches of the oak woods, where hawks have nested and owls perched, the sinews of the trees, and the brattling of the wind in their midst. For, now their leaves are off, they've bared their arms, thrown off their coats, and, in the attitude of fencers, await the onset of the wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1853

I climb Annursnack. See May 8, 1853 ("They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects"); September 13, 1858 ("Looking from the top of Annursnack, the aspect of the earth generally is still a fresh green, especially the woods, but many dry fields,. . . are a very pale tawny or lighter still."); October 12, 1857 ("Looking from the Hill . . . I am not sure but the yellow now prevails over the red in the landscape, and even over the green. The general color of the landscape from this hill is now russet, i.e. red, yellow, etc., mingled . . .I can see very plainly the colors of the sproutland, chiefly oak, on Fair Haven Hill, about four miles distant, and also yellows on Mt. Misery, five miles off, also on Pine Hill, and even on Mt. Tabor, indistinctly. November 28, 1860 ("To Annursnack. Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there was more oak woodland than pine to be seen.")

October is the month of painted leaves . . . the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky . . . This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November.  See October 24, 1858 ("Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight.")

What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit. See August 18, 1853   ("Now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent?")

November 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 14

October light fades

into the clear white leafless

November twilight.

Now the bare branches

of the oak woods await the

onset of the wind. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The leafless November twilight 

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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