It is a dark, almost rainy day; the winter is approaching.

November 4.

November 4, 2015

To Hill by Assabet. 

This forenoon the boys found a little black kitten about a third grown on the Island or Rock, but could not catch it. We supposed that some one had cast it in to drown it. 

This afternoon, as I was paddle by the Island, I see what I think a duck swimming down the river diagonally, to the south shore just below the grassy island, opposite the rock; then I think it two ducks, then a muskrat. 

It passes out of sight round a bend. 

I land and walk alongshore, and find that it is a kitten, which had just got ashore. It is quite wet excepting its back. It swam quite rapidly, the whole length of its back out, but was carried down about as fast by the stream. 

It had probably first crossed from the rock to the grassy island, and then from the lower end of this to the town side of the stream, on which side it may have been attracted by the noise of the town. 

It is rather weak and staggers as it runs, from starvation or cold, being wet, or both. A very pretty little black kitten. 

It is a dark, almost rainy day. Though the river appears to have risen considerably, it is not more than nine or ten inches above the lowest summer level, as I see by the bridge. Yet it brings along a little drift wood. 

Whatever rails or boards have been left by the water’s edge the river silently takes up and carries away. Much small stuff from the pail-factory. 

The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct. 

The autumnal dandelion sheltered by this apple-tree trunk is drooping and half closed and shows but half its yellow, this dark, late wet day in the fall.

Gather a bag of wild apples. A great part are decayed now on the ground. The snail slug is still eating them. Some have very fiery crimson spots or eyes on a very white ground. 

From my experience with wild apples I can understand that there may be a reason for a savage preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.

I remember two old maids to whose house I enjoyed carrying a purchaser to talk about buying their farm in the winter, because they offered us wild apples, though with an unnecessary apology for their wildness.

Return, and go up the main stream.

Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall. The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling, except a few yellowed sallow leaves, - though beyond in the meadows there is some fresh greenness. 

Cattle seem to stray wider for food than they did. They are turned into the meadows now, where is all the greenness. New fences are erected to take advantage of all the fall feed. 

But the rank herbage of the river’s brink is more tender and has fallen before the frosts. Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather, and much gnawed root is floating. 

When I look away to the woods, the oaks have a dull, dark red now, without brightness. The willow-tops on causeways have a pale, bleached, silvery, or wool-grass-like look.   

See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach. There are a few tree sparrows with them. These and one small soaring hawk are all the birds I see. 

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. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1855

The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter . See   November 4, 1851(“[These little cheerful hemlocks] remind me of winter, the snows which are to come . . .and the chickadees that are to flit and lisp amid them.”) See also  October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. “);October 11, 1851( The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 15, 1856  (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”);; November 26, 1859 (“The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant.”); March 1, 1856 ("I hear several times the fine-drawn phe-be note of the chickadee, which I heard only once during the winter. Singular that I should hear this on the first spring day.”)

It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple. See October 27, 1855 ("It is remarkable that the wild apples which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields and woods, when brought into the house have a harsh and crabbed taste. To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air ")