Minott hears geese to-day.
Hear to-day in my chamber, about 11 A. M., a singular sharp crackling sound by the window, which makes me think of the snapping of an insect (with its wings, or striking something). It is produced by one of three small pitch pine cones which I gathered on the 7th, and which lay in the sun on the window-sill.
I notice a slight motion in the scales at the apex, when suddenly, with a louder crackling, it bursts, or the scales separate, with a snapping sound on all sides of it. 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.
I was remarking to-day to Mr. Rice on the pleasantness of this November thus far, when he remarked that he remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way when his team was crossing it, and the team falling on him walking at its side.
P. M. — Up Assabet with Sophia.
November 14, 2025
A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.
The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows. The old weedy margin is covered and a new grassy one acquired.
The current is stronger, though the surface is smooth. Leaves and sticks and billets of wood come floating down in middle of the full, still stream, turning round in the eddies, and I mistake them for ducks at first.
The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there, as if a tortoise were tumbling through it.
Two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1855
Minott hears geese to-day. See November 13, 1855 ("In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows . . . over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); See also November 11, 1854 ("Minott heard geese go over night before last, about 8 P. M"), January 28, 1858 ("Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird . . . he commonly hears them sooner than the widest rambler. Maybe he listens all day for them, or they come and sing over his house, — report themselves to him and receive their season ticket. He is never at fault. If he says he heard such a bird . . .you may depend on it."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn
A singular sharp crackling sound . . . produced by one of three small pitch pine cones which I gathered on the 7th, and which lay in the sun on the window-sill. See November 20, 1855 ("Again I hear that sharp, crackling, snapping sound and, hastening to the window, find that another of the pitch pine cones gathered November 7th . . . opens its scales with a smart crackling and rocks and seems to bristle up, scattering the dry pitch on the surface . . . As soon as the tension is relaxed in one part, it is relaxed in every part.")
A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank. See November 7, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water . . . It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago."); November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!"); November 11, 1855 ("I am surprised to see quite a number of painted tortoises out on logs and stones and to hear the wood tortoise rustling down the bank") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)
The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge. See November 25, 1859 ("There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat."); December 2, 1852 ("The waves we make in the river nibble and crumble its edge, and produce a rustling of the grass and reeds, as if a muskrat were stirring.")
Two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow. See September 20, 1859 ("Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time"); October 16, 1858 (" I have not seen red-wings [for] a long while."); October 28, 1857 ("On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright iris"); October 29, 1859 (''A flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles")
November 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 14
My boat's motion sends
an undulation ashore
rustling the dry sedge.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, An undulation rustles the dry sedge
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 © 2009-2025
No comments:
Post a Comment