A Book of the Seasons: November 20.

November 20.

Hardest to transplant,

the poet best makes his roots

in his native soil.

November 20, 1857

I see a partridge 

on the ground under an oak, 

looking like a snag. 

November 20, 1857

The faint lisping chip
of the tree sparrow will keep
spirits up till spring.
November 20, 1857

November glory.

Sparkling white light reflected 

from all surfaces.
November 20, 1858

November 20, 2017

7 A. M., to Boston; 9 A. M., Boston to New York, by express train, land route. Reached Canal Street at 5 P. M., or candle-light. Started for Philadelphia from foot of Liberty Street at 6 P. M., via Newark, etc., etc., Bordentown, etc., etc., Camden Ferry, to Philadelphia, all in the dark.  Arrive at 10 P.M.; time, four hours from New York, thirteen from Boston, fifteen from Concord. November 20, 1854

Decidedly finger cold tonight.  November 20, 1860

A cold day. The snow that fell November 17th in the evening is still seen on the ground.November 20, 1855

High wind in the night, shaking the house, apparently from the northwest. November 20, 1857

It is a cool but pleasant November afternoon. November 20, 1858

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights.   November 20, 1858

I think it is peculiar among the months for the amount [of] sparkling white light reflected from a myriad of surfaces. November 20, 1858

Few things are more exhilarating, if it is only moderately cold, than to walk over bare pastures and see the abundant sheeny light like a universal halo, reflected from the russet and bleached earth. November 20, 1858

As I returned over Conantum summit yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, which seemed to me more wholesome and remarkable, as more permanent, than their late brilliant colors, I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. November 20, 1858

The earth shines perhaps more than in spring, for the reflecting surfaces are less dimmed now. It is not a red but a white light. November 20, 1858

As I was riding to the Ministerial Lot this morning, about 8.30 a. m., I observed that the white clouds were disposed raywise in the west and also in the east, — as if the sun's rays had split and so arranged them? A striking symmetry in the heavens. What its law? November 20, 1851

The air is so clear, and there are so many bare, polished, bleached or hoary surfaces to reflect the light. November 20, 1858

About 9.30 A. M., though there is very little cloud, I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air. November 20, 1857

At ten there is a little more. The children in the next yard have seen it and are excited. They are searching to see if any rests on the ground. November 20, 1857

Again I hear that sharp, crackling, snapping sound and, hastening to the window, find that another of the pitch pine cones gathered November 7th, lying in the sun, or which the sun has reached, has separated its scales very slightly at the apex. November 20, 1855

It is only discoverable on a close inspection, but while I look the whole cone opens its scales with a smart crackling and rocks and seems to bristle up, scattering the dry pitch on the surface. November 20, 1855

They all thus fairly loosen and open, though they do not at once spread wide open. November 20, 1855

It is almost like the disintegration of glass. As soon as the tension is relaxed in one part, it is relaxed in every part.  November 20, 1855

 To Ministerial Swamp . . . I see where squirrels (apparently) have eaten and stripped the spruce cones. November 20, 1857 

 To Ministerial Swamp . . . I have seen more gray squirrels of late (as well as musquash); I think not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc. November 20, 1858

Mr. J. Hosmer tells me that one spring he saw a red squirrel gnaw the bark of a maple and then suck the juice, and this he repeated many times. November 20, 1851

Some bank swallows’ nests are exposed by the caving of the bank at Clamshell. The very smallest hole is about two and a half inches wide horizontally, by barely one high. All are much wider than high (vertically). One nest, with an egg in it still, is completely exposed. The cavity at the end is shaped like a thick hoe-cake or lens, about six inches wide and two plus thick, vertically. The nest is a regular but shallow one made simply of stubble, about five inches in diameter, and three quarters of an inch deep. November 20, 1857

I enter the Ministerial Swamp at the road below Tarbell’s. The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees.  November 20, 1857

 In some places where many of the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry are seen together, they have a very pretty effect, a crimson vigor to stand above the snow. November 20, 1857

Where the larches stand thick with their dark boles and stems, the ground is thickly strewn with their fine and peculiarly dark brown leaves, chaff-like, i. e. darker than those of other pines, perhaps like black walnut or cherry shavings. As where other evergreens stand thick, little or nothing grows beneath. November 20, 1857

I distinguished where the earth was cast out in cutting ditches through this swamp long ago, and this earth is covered and concealed with a thick growth of cup and cockscomb lichens. November 20, 1857

In this light-lying earth, in one place, I see where some creature some time ago has pawed out much comb of some kind of bee (probably for the honey?), making a hole as big as my head, and this torn comb lies about. November 20, 1857

I see many pollywogs in cold pools now. November 20, 1857

The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring. November 20, 1857

I see a partridge on the ground under a white oak by Tarbell's black birches, looking just like a snag.This is the second time I have seen them in such a place. Are they not after acorns? November 20, 1857

In the large Tommy Wheeler field, Ranunculus bulbosus in full bloom! November 20, 1857

Martial Miles tells me of a snapping turtle caught in the river at Waltham, about October 1st, he thinks, which weighed fifty-five pounds (?). He saw it. There were two fighting. November 20, 1858

He says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate. He often watched these birds, and saw that the female could tell when the male was coming a long way off. He thought that he fed her and the young all together (?). She would utter a scream when she perceived him, and, rising into the_air (before or after the scream ?), she turned over with her talons uppermost, while he passed some three rods above, and caught without fail the prey which he let drop, and then carried it to her young. He had seen her do this many times, and always without failing. November 20, 1858

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. November 20, 1858

In the woods and about swamps, as Ministerial, also, there are several kinds of twigs, this year’s shoots of shrubs, which have a slight down or hairiness, hardly perceptible in ordinary lights though held in the hand, but which, seen toward the sun, reflect a cheering silvery light. Such are not only the sweet-fern, but the hazel in a less degree, alder twigs, and even the short huckleberry twigs, also lespedeza stems. It is as if they were covered with a myriad fine spiculae which reflect a dazzling white light, exceedingly warming to the spirits and imagination. This gives a character of snug warmth and cheerfulness to the swamp, as if it were a place where the sun consorted with rabbits and partridges. Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. November 20, 1858

The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields. It may be put with the now paler brown'of hardhack heads and the now darker brown of the dicksonia fern by walls.  November 20, 1858

I notice this afternoon that the pasture white oaks have commonly a few leaves left on the lower limbs and also next the trunk. November 20, 1858

Winter rye is another conspicuous green amid the withered grass fields. November 20, 1858

The rubuses are particularly hardy to retain their leaves. Not only low blackberry and high blackberry leaves linger still fresh, but the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen. November 20, 1858

 The great round-leaved pyrola, dwarf cornel, checkerberry, and lambkill have a lake or purplish tinge on the under side at present, and these last two are red or purplish above. November 20, 1858

It is singular that a blush should suffuse the under side of the thick leaved pyrola while it is still quite green above. November 20, 1858

I observed this afternoon how some bullocks had a little sportiveness forced upon them. They were running down a steep declivity to water, when, feeling themselves unusually impelled by gravity downward, they took the hint even as boys do, flourished round gratuitously, tossing their hind quarters into the air and shaking their heads at each other, but what increases the ludicrousness of it to me is the fact that such capers are never accompanied by a smile. Who does not believe that their step is less elastic, their movement more awkward, for their long domesticity?  November 20, 1857

I once came near speculating in cranberries November 20, 1853.

 Being put to it to raise the wind to pay for "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," . . .I was obliged to manufacture a thousand dollars' worth of pencils and slowly dispose of and finally sacrifice them, in order to pay an assumed debt of a hundred dollars. November 20, 1853

In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. If an equal emotion is excited by a familiar homely phenomenon as by the Pyramids, there is no advantage in seeing the Pyramids. It is on the whole better, as it is simpler, to use the common language. We require that the reporter be very permanently planted before the facts which he observes, not a mere passer-by; hence the facts cannot be too homely. November 20, 1857

A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home.November 20, 1857

There his life is the most intense and he loses the fewest moments. Familiar and surrounding objects are the best symbols and illustrations of his life. If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor to describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language. November 20, 1857

The poet has made the best roots in his native soil of any man, and is the hardest to transplant. November 20, 1857

The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing. November 20, 1857

In spite of Malthus and the rest, there will be plenty of room in this world, if every man will mind his own business. I have not heard of any planet running against another yet. November 20, 1857

When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up. November 20, 1858

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye. The richness and variety are the same as before, the colors different, more incorruptible and lasting. November 20, 1858

Sprague Of Cohasset states to the Natural History Society, September 1st, ’58, that the light under the tail of the common glow-worm “remained for 15 minutes after death.”  November 20, 1858

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large because they don’t want their ill will, -- are afraid to anger them. They are abettors of the ill-doers. November 20, 1858

Who are the religious? They who do not differ much from mankind generally, except that they are more conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conversation and correspondence talk about kindness of Heavenly Father. Instead of going bravely about their business, trusting God ever, they do like him who says “Good sir” to the one he fears, or whistles to the dog that is rushing at him. And because they take His name in vain so often they presume that they are better than you. Oh, their religion is a rotten squash.  November 20, 1858

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly. November 20, 1851

 Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening, somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry.  November 20, 1851

The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast. November 20, 1851

I hear again the soft rippling of the Assabet under those black birches, which Tappan once remarked on. It is not so steep a fall as to be hoarse. November 20, 1857

It is often said that melody can be heard farther than noise, and the finest melody farther than the coarsest. November 20, 1851

I think there is truth in this, and that accordingly those strains of the piano which reach me here in my attic stir me so much more than the sounds which I should hear if I were below in the parlor, because they are so much purer and diviner melody. November 20, 1851

They who sit farthest off from the noisy and bustling world are not at pains to distinguish what is sweet and musical, for that alone can reach them; that chiefly comes down to posterity. November 20, 1851

It is a common saying among country people that if you eat much fried hasty pudding it will make your hair curl. My experience, which was considerable, did not confirm this assertion. November 20, 1850

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel or more of a different and better kind of cranberry, as he thought, separating them from the rest. They are very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and more oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a Canada red plum, though I have no common cranberry to compare with them. He says that they grow apart from the others. I must see him about it. November 20, 1850

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species. It would be strange if it were not so. But we are accustomed properly to call that only a scientific discovery which knows the relative value of the thing discovered, uncovers a fact to mankind.   November 20, 1850

Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake Superior this summer, told me the other day that they had a particular name for each species of tree, as of the maple, but they had but one word for flowers; they did not distinguish the species of the last.  November 20, 1850

The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cranberries year after year, finds at length, or has forced upon his observation, a new species of that berry, and avails himself thereafter of his discovery for many years before the naturalist is aware of the fact.  November 20, 1850

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel or more of a different and better kind of cranberry, as he thought, separating them from the rest. They are very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and more oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a Canada red plum, though I have no common cranberry to compare with them. He says that they grow apart from the others. I must see him about it. November 20, 1850

*****

February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house,. . . — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney")

February 27, 1853 ("That hard closed cone, which defied all violent attempts to open it has thus yielded to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is a season.”)

February 29, 1852 (“High winds last night and this morning. The house shakes, and the beds and tables rock.”)

March 11, 1856 ("Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better");September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

March 18, 1854 (“Never felt it shake the house so much.”)

April 11, 1856 ("The current of the Assabet is so much swifter, and its channel so much steeper than that of the main stream, that, while a stranger frequently cannot tell which way the latter flows by his eye, you can perceive the declination of the channel of the former within a very short distance, even between one side of a tree and another. You perceive the waters heaped on the upper side of rocks and trees, and even twigs that trail in the stream.")

April 12, 1854 ("I observe that it is when I have been intently, and it may be laboriously, at work, and am somewhat listless or abandoned after it, reposing, that the muse visits me, and I see or hear beauty. It is from out the shadow of my toil that I look into the light.")

April 30, 1856 (" You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work.”)

May 6, 1854 ("It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are.");  

May 31, 1853 ("When I thought I knew the flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea should be shown me by the hunter who found it. ")

May 31, 1853 ("I went on to Melvin's house . . . I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know.") 

June 2, 1855 (“The wind shakes the house night and day.”)

 August 3, 1852 (" At the east window. — A temperate noon. I hear a cricket creak in the shade; also the sound of a distant piano. . . . At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. 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.”)

August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus")

August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella .”)

September 7, 1851 ("The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.")

September 14, 1855 ("It costs so much to publish, would it not be better for the author to put his manuscripts in a safe?”)

September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting.")

October 12, 1858 ("This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles. He never knew the complainant to get his case if the defendant were a-mind to contend. However, the cattle were kept out several days, till a Sunday came, and then they were all in my grounds again, as I heard, but all my neighbors tell me that I cannot have them impounded on that day. Indeed, I observe that very many of my neighbors do for this reason regularly turn their cattle loose on Sundays.")

October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”)

October 17, 1857 ("Very high wind in the night, shaking the house. I feel it taking hold under the eaves, which project at the end of the house, each time with a jerk.")

October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting.")

October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”)

October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free")

October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise. . . blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house.")

 October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting.")

October 25, 1858 ("Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.")

November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.”) 

November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”)

November 14, 1855 (“ . . . It is a general and sudden bursting or expanding of all the scales with a sharp crackling sound and motion of the whole cone, as by a force pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the whole to go off. “)November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")

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 21, 1850 ("I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport . . . shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill."
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 25, 1860 (“The house was shaken by wind last night, and there was a general deficiency of bedclothes.”)

November 26, 1858 (" A new species")

November 28, 1856 ("3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . .It is a true November phenomenon.")

November 28, 1858 ("And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!"); 

November 30, 1858 ("When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it.. . ."How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!")

December 7 , 1853 ("I sent two and a half bushels of my cranberries to Boston and got four dollars for them.")

January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”)

January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?")

January 27, 1857 ("Hear music below. It washes the dust off my life and everything I look at.") 

January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.")

January 31, 1855 ("As I skate near the shore under Lee’s Cliff, I see what I take to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a dead limb lying on the bank beneath a white oak, close by me. Yet while I look directly at them I can not but admire their close resemblance to partridges.")

November 20, 2014

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 © 2009-2020