The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
December 1, 2021
At this season we
observe the form of the buds
now prepared for spring.
The chickadee hops
nearer and nearer as the
winter advances.
I love the shrub oak,
its scanty garment of leaves
whispering to me.
I hear the faintest
possible quivet from a
nuthatch, quite near me.
December 1, 2017
By path around Walden. With this little snow of the 29th ult. there is yet pretty good sledding, for it lies solid. December 1, 1856
It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. December 1, 1850
Will wonder become extinct in me? Shall I become insensible as a fungus? December 1, 1856
I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. December 1, 1850\
I saw a little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter and eight or nine inches high. December 1, 1850\
It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each plant, crowded close together, made the firm and compact surface of the bed. December 1, 1850
It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid. December 1, 1850
It was quite saturated with water, though firm and solid. December 1, 1850
At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,
- the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink,
- the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows,
- the red ones of the blueberry,
- the long, sharp ones of the amelanchier,
- the spear-shaped ones of the viburnum;
Those trees and shrubs which retain their withered leaves through the winter serve as a shelter to rabbits and partridges and other winter quadrupeds and birds. December 1, 1853
Even the little chickadees love to skulk amid them and peep out from behind them. December 1, 1853
I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. December 1, 1853
They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker. December 1, 1853
I hear the faintest possible quivet from a nuthatch, quite near me on a pine. December 1, 1857
I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here December 1, 1857.[Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).]
Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast. December 1, 1856
A hundred kinds of indigenous grain are harvested now, broadcast upon the surface of the snow. December 1, 1856
Thus at a critical season these seeds are shaken down on to a clean white napkin, unmixed with dirt and rubbish, and off this the little pensioners pick them. December 1, 1856
Their clean table is thus spread a few inches or feet above the ground. December 1, 1856
Now, too, I remark in many places ridges and fields of fine russet or straw-colored grass rising above the snow, and beds of empty straw-colored heads of everlasting and ragged-looking Roman wormwood. December 1, 1856
The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice. December 1, 1856
The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice. December 1, 1856
A ridge of earth, with the red cockscomb lichen on it, peeps out still at the rut's edge. December 1, 1856
What are acanthus leaves and the rest to this? Emblem of my winter condition. December 1, 1856
The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. December 1, 1856
The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields. December 1, 1856
I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue. December 1, 1856
Tenacious of its leaves, which shrivel not but retain a certain wintry life in them, firm shields, painted in fast colors a rich brown. December 1, 1856
Covert which the hare and the partridge seek, and I too seek. December 1, 1856
What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? December 1, 1856
What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? December 1, 1856
Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak. In proportion as I know and love it, I am natural and sound as a partridge.December 1, 1856
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.December 1, 1856
I can winter more to my mind amid the shrub oaks. I have made arrangements to stay with them. December 1, 1856
The deer mouse, too, knows the shrub oak and has its hole in the snow by the shrub oak's stem. December 1, 1856
The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it. Well-nigh useless to man. A sturdy phalanx, hard to break through. Product of New England's surface. Bearing many striped acorns. December 1, 1856
Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins. December 1, 1856
How many rents I owe to you! how many eyes put out! how many bleeding fingers! How many shrub oak patches I have been through, stooping, winding my way, bending the twigs aside, guiding myself by the sun, over hills and valleys and plains, resting in clear grassy spaces! December 1, 1856
I love to go through a patch of shrub oak in a bee-line, where you tear your clothes and put your eyes out. December 1, 1856
Walking in Ebby Hubbard's woods, I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. December 1, 1857
How securely he travels there, fifty feet from the ground, leaping from the slender, bending twig of one tree across an interval of three or four feet and catching at the nearest twig of the next, which so bends under him that it is at first hard to get up it. December 1, 1857
His travelling a succession of leaps in the air at that height without wings! December 1, 1857
And yet he gets along about as rapidly as on the ground. December 1, 1857
Examine the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. These hickories are most numerous in openings . . . very far from other trees of any kind. I infer that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road.
I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner, with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines. How is this to be accounted for? December 1, 1860
I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day. December 1, 1857
The landscape is the color of a russet apple which has no golden cheek. The sunset sky supplies that. December 1, 1852
How can any man suffer long? For a sense of want is a prayer, and all prayers are answered. December 1, 1856
The year looks back toward summer, and a summer smile is reflected in her face. December 1, 1852
December 1, 2020
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush,
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets
*****
April 26, 1852 ("Rambled amid the shrub oak hills beyond Hayden's. Lay on the dead grass in a cup-like hollow sprinkled with half-dead low shrub oaks. . . . It is a dull, rain dropping and threatening afternoon, inclining to drowsiness. I feel as if I could go to sleep under a hedge. The landscape wears a subdued tone, quite soothing to the feelings; no glaring colors.")
May 7, 1855 ("Scare up two gray squirrels in the Holden wood, which run glibly up the tallest trees on the opposite side to me, and leap across from the extremity of the branches to the next trees, and so on very fast ahead of me.")
October 2, 1857 (“The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you.”);
October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. “)
October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”)
November 4, 1857 ("I notice the new and as yet unswollen scales of willow catkins or buds")
November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.")
The chickadee
Hops near to me.
November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”)
November 21, 1850 ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”)
November 25, 1858 (“Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.”)
November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off. This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.")
November 29, 1852 ("November 29, 30, and December 1. have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in.”)
November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least”)
November 30, 1856 ("Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.")
December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)
December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.”)
December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.”)
December 4, 1856 ("How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow?")
December 6, 1856 ("On all sides, in swamps and about their edges and in the woods, the bare shrubs are sprinkled with buds, more or less noticeable and pretty, their little gemmae or gems, their most vital and attractive parts now, almost all the greenness and color left, greens and salads for the birds and rabbits.")
December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring . . . the great yellow buds of the swamp-pink, the round red buds of the high blueberry, and the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda")
December 31, 1859 ("The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter.")
January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")
December 1, 2022
December 1, 2023
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 1
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 © 2009-2022
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 © 2009-2023
https://tinyurl.com/HDT01DEC
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