Glorious November
November
The month of withered leaves
and bare twigs and limbs.
November
The landscape without snow
prepared for winter.
November
The clear, white, leafless twilight,
the bright November stars.
November
Still we behold the inaccessible
beauty around us.
***
The rustling oak leaves
a ripple on the river
cool northerly wind
bare gray limbs and twigs –
the Novembery landscape
from Fair Haven Hill.
A remote landscape
seen between two near rocks – what
better picture-frame!
Many white pine cones
fallen and open with a
few seeds still in them.
All this is distinct
to an observant eye yet
unnoticed by most.
 |
| November 3, 2014 |
A violent easterly storm in the night clears up at noon. November 3, 1861
Colder weather, true November weather, comes again to-night, and I must rekindle my fire, which I had done without of late. I must walk briskly in order to keep warm in my thin coat. November 3, 1858
The landscape from Fair Haven Hill looks Novembery, bare gray limbs and twigs in the swamps; and where many young (or shrub) oaks have lost their leaves, you hear the rustling of oak and walnut leaves in the air. November 3, 1852
From this hilltop, looking down-stream over the Great Meadows away from the sun, the water is rather dark, it being windy, but about the shores of the grassy isles is a lighter-colored smooth space. November 3, 1857
There is a ripple on the river from the cool northerly wind. November 3, 1852
Just as the sun is rising, many undoubtedly of the same white-in-tail sparrows described four pages back are flying high over my head west and northwest, above the thin mist, perchance to where they see the sun on the wood-side; with that peculiar shelly note. 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 3, 1853
The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors. No doubt it delights in bright color, and so has begged for itself a brilliant coat. It is not gathering seeds from the sod, too busy to look around, while fleeing the country. It is wide awake to what is going on, on the qui vive. It flies to some bright tree and bruits its splendors abroad. November 3, 1858
I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month. November 3, 1857
I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. November 3, 1853
Heard a bluebird about a week ago.November 3, 1853
I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. November 3, 1858
Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. November 3, 1858
The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. November 3, 1858
By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves, though some mean by it the changing or the acquisition of a brighter color. This I call the autumnal tint, the ripening to the fall. November 3, 1858
Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. November 3, 1858
The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. November 3, 1858
By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves, though some mean by it the changing or the acquisition of a brighter color. This I call the autumnal tint, the ripening to the fall. November 3, 1858
The plants are sere. November 3, 1852
Some oak woods begin to look bare, and even smoky, after their fashion. November 3, 1858
I am inclined to think that pignuts fall earlier than mocker-nuts, i. e. the leaves, and that the first are now about fallen (?). Those on Nawshawtuct are bare, but I see a great many hickories of some kind not nearly bare. November 3, 1858
Monroe’s arbor-vitae hedge has fallen. Put it with the white pine. November 3, 1858
I am inclined to think that pignuts fall earlier than mocker-nuts, i. e. the leaves, and that the first are now about fallen (?). Those on Nawshawtuct are bare, but I see a great many hickories of some kind not nearly bare. November 3, 1858
Monroe’s arbor-vitae hedge has fallen. Put it with the white pine. November 3, 1858
Pitch pine needles are almost all fallen. November 3, 1857
The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown. November 3, 1858
The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown. November 3, 1858
I see many white pine cones fallen and open, with a few seeds still in them. November 3, 1853
The only white birch leaves now seen are those lingering green terminal leaves of the 23d, now at last turned yellow, for they are now burnt upward to the last spark and glimmering. November 3, 1858
Now is the time to observe the radical leaves of many plants, which put forth with springlike vigor and are so unlike the others with which we are familiar that it is sometimes difficult to identify them. November 3, 1853
Since the change and fall of the leaf a remarkable prominence is given to the evergreens; their limits are more distinctly defined as you look at distant woods, since the leaves of deciduous trees ceased to be green and fell. November 3, 1853
Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. . . . I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other. November 3, 1857
It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. November 3, 1857
Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine. As I return down the Boulder Field, I see the now winter-colored — i.e. reddish (of oak leaves) — horizon of hills, with its few white houses, four or five miles distant southward, between two of the boulders, which are a dozen rods from me, a dozen feet high, and nearly as much apart, — as a landscape between the frame of a picture. But what a picture frame! These two great slumbering masses of rock, reposing like a pair of mastodons on the surface of the pasture, completely shutting out a mile of the horizon on each side, while between their adjacent sides, which are nearly perpendicular, I see to the now purified, dry, reddish, leafy horizon, with a faint tinge of blue from the distance. November 3, 1857
To see a remote landscape between two near rocks! I want no other gilding to my picture-frame. November 3, 1857
It is singular that several of those rocks should be thus split into twins. Even very low ones, just appearing above the surface, are divided and parallel, having a path between them. November 3, 1857
I notice some old cow-droppings in a pasture, which are decidedly pink. Even these trivial objects awaken agreeable associations in my mind, connected not only with my own actual rambles but with what I have read of the prairies and pampas and Eastern land of grass, the great pastures of the world.
November 3, 1857
November 3, 1857
At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. November 3, 1858
Also Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom; yarrow, etc., etc. November 3, 1858
To-day I see yarrow, very bright; red clover; autumnal dandelion; the silvery potentilla, and one Canadensis and the Norvegica; and a dandelion; Veronica arvensis; and gnawel; one Aster lcevis (!) by the Hosmer Ditch; and, to my surprise, that solidago of September 11th, still showing some fresh yellow petals and a very fresh stem and leaves . . . Also S. nemoralis by roadside . . . It may outlast it, as the A. puniceus does the A. undulatus, though, by the way, I saw a very fresh A. undulatus this afternoon. November 3, 1853
The Aster puniceus by brook is still common, though the worse for the wear, — low and more recent ones, — so that this, though a week ago it was less prevalent, must be set down as later than the A. undulatus. It bears the frosts much better, though it has been ex posed to more severe ones from its position. And with this must be included that smooth and narrower- leaved kind, in other respects the same, one of which, at least, I think I have called A. longifolius. They seem to run into each other. I am inclined to think it a smoother A. longifolius. November 3, 1853
Only one or two butter-and-eggs left. November 3, 1852
Much Lycopodium complanatum not open yet. November 3, 1858
Shepherd's-purse abundant still in gardens. November 3, 1852
Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched. November 3, 1858
Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched. November 3, 1858
Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. It seems, then, that no wood is so dense but that the rays of the setting sun may penetrate twenty rods into it. November 3, 1857
The other day (November 1st), I stood on the sunny side of such a wood at the same season, or a little earlier. Then I saw the lit sides of the tree stems all aglow with their lichens, and observed their black shadows behind. November 3, 1857
The other day (November 1st), I stood on the sunny side of such a wood at the same season, or a little earlier. Then I saw the lit sides of the tree stems all aglow with their lichens, and observed their black shadows behind. November 3, 1857
Now I see chiefly the dark stems massed together, and it is the warm sunlight that is reduced to a pencil of light; i. e., then light was the rule and shadow the exception, now shadow the rule and light the exception. November 3, 1857
In the Heywood Brooks, many young pollywogs two inches long and more; also snails on the bottom. November 3, 1852
Very small pollywogs in pools, one and a half or two inches long. November 3, 1853
I find these water-bugs, large and small, not on the surface, but apparently sheltered amid the weeds, going into winter quarters. November 3, 1852
A small gyrinus in Nut Meadow Brook. November 3, 1853
At Andromeda Pond, started nine black ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me. November 3, 1852
The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm. November 3, 1852
The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm. November 3, 1852
There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference. November 3, 1853
I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth. November 3, 1853
All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most. November 3, 1861
November 3, 2017
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue JayA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The HickoryA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days
November 3, 2014
November 3, 2017
February 4, 1856. ("I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds.")
April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.")
April 29, 1852 ("Coming home over the Corner road, the sun, now getting low, is reflected very bright and silvery from the water on the meadows, seen through the pines of Hubbard's Grove.")
May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then.")
June 28, 1858 ("I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced")
October 18, 1857 ("I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries.")
October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them.")
October 24, 1853 ("Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves.")
October 24, 1858 ("Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least. ")
October 26, 1857 ("Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray.")
October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs.")
October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.")
October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive.")
November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs")
November 1, 1852 ("The birches have almost all lost their leaves.")
November 1, 1852 ("To see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare. I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. As I return, I notice crows")
November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.")
November 2, 1853 (" I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. ")
November 2, 1857 ("There are no fresh — or blue — fringed gentians by the swamp-side by Bateman’s now.")
November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs")
November 1, 1852 ("The birches have almost all lost their leaves.")
November 1, 1852 ("To see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare. I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. As I return, I notice crows")
November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.")
November 2, 1853 (" I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. ")
November 2, 1857 ("There are no fresh — or blue — fringed gentians by the swamp-side by Bateman’s now.")
November 2, 1857 ("The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums now have their day; now is the flower of their age, and their greenness is appreciated. They are much the clearest and most liquid green n the woods, more yellow and brown specked in the open places.")
November 2, 1858 ("In sprout-lands some young birches are still rather leafy and bright-colored.")
November 4, 1851 ("It is truly a raw and gusty day . . . The jays with their scream are at home in the scenery.")
November 4, 1853 ("To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. ")
November 4, 1855 ("I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September.")
November 4, 1860 ("To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago.")
November 5, 1853 (" I heard some pleasant notes from tree sparrows on the willows as I paddled by.")
November 5, 1855 (“I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers.")
November 5, 1855 ("The brightness of the foliage generally ceased pretty exactly with October. The still bright leaves which I see as I walk along the river edge of this swamp are birches, clear yellow at top; high blueberry, some very bright scarlet red still; some sallows; Viburnum nudum, fresh dark red; alder sprouts, large green leaves")
November 5, 1860 ("The only sounds I hear are the notes of the jays.")
November 7, 1855 ("The white birches lose their lower leaves first, and now their tops show crescents or cones of bright-yellow (spiring flames) leaves, some of the topmost even green still.")
November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)
November 7, 1858 (" I can find no fringed gentian, blue, near Bateman’s Pond.")
November 8, 1857 ("How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!.")
November 10, 1858 ("Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost.")
November 11, 1852 ("Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day?")
November 7, 1858 (" I can find no fringed gentian, blue, near Bateman’s Pond.")
November 8, 1857 ("How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!.")
November 10, 1858 ("Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost.")
November 11, 1852 ("Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day?")
November 11, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook, two black ducks, which rise black between me and the sun, but, when they have circled round to the east, show some silvery sheen on the under side of their wings.")
November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October).")November 11, 1859 ("A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds?")
November 13, 1855 ("From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape.”
November 13, 1855 ("See the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”)
November 13, 1855 ("See the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”)
November 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November")
November 15, 1859 ("A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.")
November 15, 1859 ("About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling.")
November 18, 1858 ("Some mocker-nuts, and I think some hickories, on Conantum are not yet bare. Their withered leaves hold on almost like the oaks. Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts. ")
November 19, 1858 ("The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed; in shelter are green yet. ")
November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”)
November 20, 1857 (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 25, 1853 ("There is first the clean light-reflecting russet earth, the dark-blue water, the dark or dingy green evergreens, the dull reddish-brown of young oaks and shrub oaks, the gray of maples and other leafless trees, and the white of birch stems.”) November 25, 1858 ("You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, after walking in the shade or on looking round from a height, to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines, especially pitch pines, or the withered oak leaves, through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.")
November 28, 1856 ("Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches ... remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.").
November 30, 1856 ("Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November.")
November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”)
November 20, 1857 (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 25, 1853 ("There is first the clean light-reflecting russet earth, the dark-blue water, the dark or dingy green evergreens, the dull reddish-brown of young oaks and shrub oaks, the gray of maples and other leafless trees, and the white of birch stems.”) November 25, 1858 ("You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, after walking in the shade or on looking round from a height, to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines, especially pitch pines, or the withered oak leaves, through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.")
November 28, 1856 ("Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches ... remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.").
November 30, 1856 ("Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November.")
November 3, 2022
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2016
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
No comments:
Post a Comment