A Book of the Seasons: November 12 (coldest day yet, first snow, bare trees against the sky, signs of winter, moonlight, stars, clouds, frozen ground)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 12.

November 12, 2017

November 12.

A faint aurora –

the light of the rising moon

precedes the moonrise.

November 12, 1851

Trees stand bare against

the sky again – this the first

month in which they do.

 November 12, 1853

Now seen by moonlight

the open leafless woods bright

as the open field.

November 12, 1851

A narrow white cloud 

resting on every mountain

in the horizon.

November 12, 1852

Awake or dreaming

are we not always living

the life we imagine?

November 12, 1859

November 12, 2018

It is much the coldest day yet, and the ground is a little frozen and resounds under my tread. November 12, 1858

Trees stand bare against the sky again. This the first month in which they do. November 12, 1853

The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots. November 12, 1859

All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it. They love to say, “Cold day, sir.”  November 12, 1858

It clears up. A very bright rainbow. Three reds and greens, in the southeast, heightening the green of the pines. November 12, 1852

So far have we got toward winter:

• It is doubtful if they who have not pulled their turnips will have a chance to get them.
• It is not of much use to drive the cows to pasture.
• I can fancy that I hear the booming of ice in the ponds.
• I hear no sound of any bird now at night, but sometimes some creature stirring, a rabbit, or skunk, or fox, betrayed now by the dry leaves which lie so thick and light.

November 12, 1851 

The riverside is skimmed over and presents a wintry aspect, — those great plaits, or folds, as it were, where the crystals have shot, wool-grass frozen in, and the thin white ice where the water has gone down.  November 12, 1858

To-day I heard for the first time this season the crackling, vibrating sound which resounds from thin ice when a stone is cast upon it.  November 12, 1851

Now for a brisk and energetic walk, with a will and a purpose. Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter. Make haste into the outskirts, climb the ramparts of the town, be on the alert and let nothing escape your observation. The army is all van.  November 12, 1858

Examining closely the base of some frost-weed, I find in each case a little frost firmly attached to the naked woody stem just under the bark.  November 12, 1858

The cold alone has brought down a good part of the remaining leaves of abeles and white willows. November 12, 1858

I see the handsome leaves of the last thickly strewn over the ice and reminding of grain even, half upside down. Pitch pine leaves are about all fallen.  November 12, 1858

I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and more perfect and final maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits . . . The fall of the leaf is preceded by a ripe old age.  November 12, 1858

The very common redness of the recent shoots, as white maples, huckleberries, etc., now that the twigs are bare, and on many sides masses of them are run together in a maze, adds to the general russet of nature. November 12, 1858

The black willow shoots are a very pale brownish yellow.    November 12, 1858

Saw some very handsome canoe birches there [Ebby Hubbard's wood], the largest I know, a foot in diameter and forty or fifty feet high. The large ones have a reddish cast, perhaps from some small lichen. Their fringes and curls give them an agreeable appearance. November 12, 1851

Observed a peculiarity in some white oaks. Though they had a firm and close bark near the ground, the bark was very coarse and scaly, in loose flakes, above. Much coarser than the swamp white oak. November 12, 1851

Tansy is very fresh still in some places. November 12, 1853

Tasted to-day a black walnut, a spherical and corrugated nut with a large meat, but of a strong oily taste. November 12, 1853

We are now reduced to browsing on buds and twigs, and methinks, with this diet and this cold, we shall look to the stall-fed thinkers like those unkempt cattle in meadows now, grazing the withered grass. November 12, 1858
 

There is now and of late months no smell of muskrats, which is probably confined to the spring or rutting season. November 12, 1853

However, you shall find the muskrats lively enough now at night, though by day their cabins appear like deserted cabins.November 12, 1853

 When I paddle near one, I hear the sudden plunge of one of its inhabitants, and some times see two or three at once swimming about it. Now is their day. November 12, 1853

It is remarkable that these peculiarly aboriginal and wild animals, whose nests are perhaps the largest of any creatures hereabouts, should still so abound in the very midst of civilization and erect their large and conspicuous cabins at the foot of our gardens. November 12, 1853

However, I notice that unless there is a strip of meadow and water on the garden side they erect their houses on the wild side of the stream.  November 12, 1853

From Fair Haven Hill, I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline — as if the white frilled edge of the main cloud were turned up over them. November 12, 1852

 In fact, the massive dark-blue cloud beyond revealed these distinct white caps resting on the mountains this side, for twenty miles along the horizon. November 12, 1852

The sun having set, my long dark cloud has assumed the form of an alligator, and where the sun has just disappeared it is split into two tremendous jaws, between which glows the eternal city, its crenate lips all coppery golden, its serrate fiery teeth. Its body lies a slumbering mass along the horizon. November 12, 1852

A mild, almost summer evening after a very warm day, alternately clear and overcast. The meadows, with perhaps a little mist on them, look as if covered with frost in the moonlight. November 12, 1853

It is worth the while always to go to the waterside when there is but little light in the heavens and see the heavens and the stars reflected.  November 12, 1851

There is double the light that there is elsewhere, and the reflection has the force of a great silent companion. November 12, 1851

The light of the rising moon in the east. Moonrise is a faint sunrise. And what shall we name the faint aurora that precedes the moonrise?November 12, 1851

Moon nearly full. November 12, 1853

The openness of the leafless woods is particularly apparent now by moonlight; they are nearly as bright as the open field. November 12, 1851

I thought to-night that I saw glow-worms in the grass, on the side of the hill; was almost certain of it, and tried to lay my hand on them, but found it was the moonlight reflected from (apparently) the fine frost crystals on the withered grass, . . . It had precisely the effect of twinkling glow-worms. November 12, 1851

I come out now on the water to see our little river broad and stately as the Merrimack or still larger tides, for though the shore be but a rod off, the meeting of land and water being concealed, it is as good as if a quarter of a mile distant, and the near bank is like a distant hill. November 12, 1853

At first it is quite calm, and I see only where a slight wave or piece of wet driftwood along the shore reflects a flash of light, suggesting that we have come to a season of clearer air. This occasional slight sparkling on either hand along the water's edge attends me. November 12, 1853

While the sense of seeing is partly slumbering, that of hearing is more wide awake than by day, and, now that the wind is rising, I hear distinctly the chopping of every little wave under the bow of my boat. November 12, 1853

The moon is wading slowly through broad squadrons of clouds, with a small coppery halo, and now she comes forth triumphant and burnishes the water far and wide, and makes the reflections more distinct. November 12, 1853

Hear no bird, only the loud plunge of a muskrat from time to time. November 12, 1853

There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes. November 12, 1851

I do not remember any hum of insects for a long time, though I heard a cricket to-day. November 12, 1853

I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might. November 12, 1853

The hylodes, as it is the first frog heard in the spring, so it is the last in the autumn. I heard it last, me thinks, about a month ago. November 12, 1853

There is no sound of a frog from all these waters and meadows which a few months ago resounded so with them; not even a cricket or the sound of a mosquito. November 12, 1853

How short their year! How early they sleep! Nature is desert and iron-bound; she has shut her door. How different from the muggy nights of summer, teeming with life! That resounding life is now buried in the mud, returned into Nature's womb, and most of the birds have retreated to the warm belt of the earth. November 12, 1853

I can fancy that I hear the sound of peeping hylodes ringing in my ear, but it is all fancy. November 12, 1853

And still the heavens are unchanged; the same starry geometry looks down on their active and their torpid state. November 12, 1853

And the first frog that puts his eye forth from the mud next spring shall see the same everlasting starry eyes ready to play at bo-peep with him, for they do not go into the mud. November 12, 1853

The dark squadrons of hostile clouds have now swept over the face of the moon, and she appears unharmed and riding triumphant in her chariot. November 12, 1853

Suddenly they dwindle and melt away in her mild, and all-pervading light, dissipated like the mists of the morning. They pass away and are forgotten like bad dreams. November 12, 1853

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
November 12, 1859

A still, cold night. The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread.  November 12, 1851

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Seen from a Hillside

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Moods

*****

May 18, 1851 ("The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground. . . . I counted about fifty rings");

July 24, 1857 ("[On the shore of Moosehead Lake] I measured a canoe birch, five and a half feet in circumference at two and a half from the ground.")

August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.")
August 12, 1851 ("The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over. . . And when she has fought her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart.")

August 27, 1859 ("All our life, i.e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake.")

October 28, 1852 ("After whatever revolutions in my moods and experiences, when I come forth at evening, as if from years of confinement to the house, I see the few stars which make the constellation of the Lesser Bear in the same relative position, - the everlasting geometry of the stars.") 

October 29, 1857 ("Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind . . . we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. ")

November 2, 1851 ("Saw a canoe birch beyond Nawshawtuct, growing out of the middle of a white pine stump, which still showed the mark of the axe, sixteen inches in diameter at its bottom, or two feet from the ground, or where it had first taken root on the stump. ");

November 3, 1852 ("The landscape from Fair Haven Hill looks Novembery, bare gray limbs and twigs in the swamps . . . It is the month of withered oak leaves.")

November 7, 1851 ("At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off")

November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.");

November 8, 1853 ("Our first snow, the wind southerly, the air chilly and moist; a very fine snow, looking like a mist toward the woods or horizon, which at 2 o’clock has not whitened the ground. The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.")

November 9, 1851 ("I hear a cricket singing the requiem of the year . . . Soon all will be frozen up, and I shall hear no cricket chirp in the land.")

November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. ")

November 11, 1855 ("The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.")

November 11, 1858 ("Hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset.")

November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters.")

November 13, 1855 ("From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape . . . edged in the northwest by the blue mountain ridges")

November 13, 1858 ("[Snow] comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth. Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.")

November 16, 1852  ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. ")

November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.")

November 22, 1851 ("He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently. . . . That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately.")

November 22, 1860 ("Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out.")

November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”)

November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night."); December 8, 1850 ( . . ."the ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible! This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

November 12, 2021

 If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 11<<<<<<<<<  November 12.  >>>>>>>> November 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 12

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 © 2009-2022