To make myself the
thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts,
live what can be lived.
A pond in the woods
quite frozen over so that
I walk across it.
A shallow pond – I
lay down on the ice and look
through at the bottom.
This morning is white –
the beauty and purity
of new-fallen snow.
The new-fallen snow
seen lying just as it fell
on the twigs and leaves.
With the first snowfall
Nature seems to relent her
November harshness.
Weeds against the sky --
the reflection enchants us
as an echo does.
November 23, 2015
This morning the ground is white with snow, and it still snows. The beauty and purity of new-fallen snow, lying just as it fell, on the twigs and leaves all the country over. November 23, 1852
You must go forth early to see the snow on the twigs. Now, a few hours later, the twigs and leaves are all bare, and the snow half melted on the ground. Sportsmen have already been out with their dogs, improving this first snow to track their game. November 23, 1852
Having descended the Cliff, I go along to the Andromeda Ponds. November 23, 1852
The air is full of low, heavy mist, almost rain. The pines, in this atmosphere and contrasted with the snow, are suddenly many degrees darker, and the oaks redder. November 23, 1852
The andromeda a warm reddish brown. November 23, 1852
The mist so low is clouds close to the ground, and the steam of the engine hugs the earth in the Cut, concealing all objects for a great distance. November 23, 1852
Unexpectedly I find ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick. November 23, 1850
I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over. November 23, 1852
If I am surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I am much more surprised to find a pond in the woods, containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that I walk across it. November 23, 1850
I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom. November 23, 1850
We find Heywood's Pond frozen five inches thick. This pond is bordered on the northeast with much russet sedge grass beneath the bushes, and the sun, now falling on the ice, seems to slide or glance off into this grass and light it up wonderfully, filling it with yellowish light. This ice being whitened and made partially opaque by heat, while the surface is quite smooth, perhaps from new freezings, reflects the surrounding trees, their forms and colors, distinctly like water. The white air-bubbles are the quicksilver on the back of the mirror. November 23, 1850
The beauty and purity of new-fallen snow, lying just as it fell, on the twigs and leaves all the country over. November 23, 1852
The Indian summer itself, said to be more remarkable in this country than elsewhere, no less than the reblossoming of certain flowers, the peep of the hylodes, and sometimes the faint warble of some birds, is the reminiscence, or rather the return, of spring, the year renewing its youth.November 23, 1853
Famous fruits imported from the tropics and sold in our markets — as oranges, lemons, pineapples, and bananas do not concern me so much as many an unnoticed wild berry whose beauty annually lends a new charm to some wild walk, or which I have found to be palatable to an outdoor taste. November 23, 1860
Walked through Gowing's Swamp from west to east. . . . The trees are larch, white birch, red maple, spruce, white pine, etc. Journal, November 23, 1857
Walked through Gowing's Swamp from west to east. You may say it is divided into three parts, –
first, the thin woody;
second, the coarse bushy or gray; and
third, the fine bushy or brown . . . November 23, 1857
Third: There are the smooth brown and wetter spaces where the water andromeda chiefly prevails, together with purplish lamb-kill about the sides of them, and hairy huckleberry . . . November 23, 1857
but in the midst and wettest part the narrow revolute and glaucous (beneath) leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaare seen, and in the sphagnum the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. In one of the latter portions occurs that open pool. November 23, 1857
This [Gowing's] swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia. November 23, 1857
This morning the ground is white with snow, and it still snows. This is the first time it has been fairly white this season, though once before, many weeks ago, it was slightly whitened for ten or fifteen minutes. It was so warm and still last night at sundown that I remarked to a neighbor that it was moderating to snow. It is, in some degree, also, warmer after the first snow has come and banked up the houses and filled the crevices in the roof. Already the landscape impresses me with a greater sense of fertility. November 23, 1852
At the back of Gowing's hillside, just west of his swamp, in the midst of shrub oaks and other dry up land trees, the ground slopes regularly on all sides to a deep round hollow, perhaps fifteen feet lower than the lowest side and thirty feet in diameter at the bottom. The bottom is rather wet and covered with sphagnum, and many stiff and dead-looking button-bushes stand in it, while all around a dense high hedge of high blueberry curves over it. So sudden a change there will be in the vegetation with a change of soil. Many such a dimple with its peculiar vegetations have I seen in a dry wood-lot. The Vaccinium corymbosum and panicled andromeda in a dense hedge, in a circular or oval or other curved form, surrounding and slanting over it so as almost to conceal it; and in the same manner the blueberry, etc., will grow around and overhang the largest ponds . . . The coarse bushy part, or blueberry thicket, consists of high blueberry, panicled andromeda, Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia, swamp-pink, choke-berry, Viburnum nudum, rhodora, (and probably prinos, holly, etc., etc., not distinguishable easily now), but chiefly the first two. Much of the blueberry being dead gives it a very gray as well as scraggy as pect. It is a very bad thicket to break through, yet there are commonly thinner places, or often opens, by which you may wind your way about the denser clumps . . . The high blueberry delights singularly in these localities. You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds. Think of its wreaths and canopies of cool blue fruit in August, thick as the stars in the Milky Way! . . . The blueberry is particularly hard to break through, it is so spreading and scraggy, but a hare can double swiftly enough beneath it. The ground of sphagnum is now thickly strewn with the leaves of these shrubs. November 23, 1857
The water, going down, but still spread far over the meadows, is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections. What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. . . .Every peculiar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular. November 23, 1853
I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird. November 23, 1853
At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, twelve in the shorter line and twenty four in the longer, the latter abutting on the former at the fourth bird from the front. I judged hastily that the interval between the geese was about double their alar extent, and, as the last is, according to Wilson, five feet and two inches, the former may safely be called eight feet. . . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i . e . within a week . November 23, 1853
It is, in some degree, warmer after the first snow has come and banked up the houses and filled the crevices in the roof. There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness. Men, too, are disposed to give thanks for the bounties of the year all over the land. November 23, 1852
This, then, may be considered the end of the flower season for this year, though this snow will probably soon melt again. Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc., etc. November 23, 1852
. . .see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. November 23, 1850
November 23, 2018
November 23, 2018
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November days
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blueberries
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Ledum Swamp
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections
November 23, 2022
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
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