Such is November

November 18

P. M. — To Dam Meadows.

November 18, 2023

such is november

Going along the Bedford road at Moore's Swamp, I hear the dry rustling of seedy rattlesnake grass in the wind, a November sound, within a rod of me. 

The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight. 

Much cold, slate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the light like gossamer, pure green of pines whose old leaves have fallen, reddish or yellowish brown oak leaves rustling on the hillsides, very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November. 

The fine grass killed by the frost, withered and bleached till it is almost silvery, has clothed the fields for a long time. 

Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. 

Some corn is left out still even. What a mockery to turn cattle out into such pastures! Yet I see more in the fields now than earlier. 

I hear a low concert from the edge of Gowing's Swamp, amid the maples, etc., - suppressed warblings from many flitting birds. With my glass I see only tree sparrows, and suppose it is they. 

What I noticed for the thousandth time on the 15th was the waved surface of thin dark ice just frozen, as if it were a surface composed of large, perhaps triangular pieces raised at the edges; i. e., the filling up between the original shooting of the crystals – the midribs of the icy leaves – is on a lower plane. 

Flannery is the hardest-working man I know. Before surrise and long after sunset he is taxing his unweariable muscles. The result is a singular cheerfulness. He is always in good spirits. He often overflows with his joy when you perceive no occasion for it. If only the gate sticks, some of it bubbles up and over flows in his passing comment on that accident. How much mere industry proves! There is a sparkle often in his passing remark, and his voice is really like that of a bird. 

Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me. 

In one light, these are old and worn-out fields that I ramble over, and men have gone to law about them long before I was born, but I trust that I ramble over them in a new fashion and redeem them. 

I noticed on the 15th that that peculiar moraine or horseback just this side of J. P. Brown's extends southerly of Nut Meadow Brook in the woods, maybe a third or a half a mile long in all. The rocks laid bare here and there by ditching in the Dam Meadows are very white, having no lichens on them. 

The musquash should appear in the coat of arms of some of the States, it is so common. I do not go by any permanent pool but, sooner or later, I hear its plunge there. Hardly a bit of board floats in any ditch or pond hole but this creature has left its traces on it.

How singularly rivers in their sources overlap each other! There is the meadow behind Brooks Clark’s and at the head of which Sted Buttock’s handsome maple lot stands, on the old Carlisle road. The stream which drains this empties into the Assabet at Dove Rock. A short distance west of this meadow, but a good deal more elevated, is Boaz's meadow, whose water finds its way, naturally or artificially, northeast ward around the other, crossing the road just this side the lime-kiln, and empties into the Saw Mill Brook and so into the main river. 

There are many ways of feeling one's pulse. In a healthy state the constant experience is a pleasurable sensation or sentiment. For instance, in such a state I find myself in perfect connection with nature, and the perception, or remembrance even, of any natural phenomena is attended with a gentle pleasurable excitement. Prevailing sights and sounds make the impression of beauty and music on me. 

But in sickness all is deranged. I had yesterday a kink in my back and a general cold, and as usual it amounted to a cessation of life. I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. 

Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health. You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind. 

The cheaper your amusements, the safer and saner. They who think much of theatres, operas, and the like, are beside themselves. 

Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint. 

Many a man who should rather describe his dinner imposes on us with a history of the Grand Khan.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1857

The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight. See October 25, 1858 ("Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); October 27, 1858 ("We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts."); November 11, 1851 (" Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light.”); November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. “); November 14, 1853 (" the clear, white, leafless twilight of November,"); November 25, 1857 (“[T]he thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of”)

Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. See October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides, as that under the pitch pines by Walden shore, where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.”); April 26, 1857 (“At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place. . . . In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates.”)

I hear a low concert . . . suppressed warblings from many flitting birds. With my glass I see only tree sparrows, and suppose it is they. See  November 4, 1860 ("To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.”); November 20, 1857 ("The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring."); November 27, 1856 "Take a turn down the river . . .apparently tree sparrows along the shore.”)

Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me. September 18, 1852 ("The crows congregate and pursue me through the half-covered woodland path, cawing loud and angrily above me . . .”)

Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health. You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind. See August 23, 1853 (""Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health.”); May 28, 1854 (“To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe”); June 5, 1854 (“I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature. ”); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”)

I had yesterday a kink in my back and a general cold, and as usual it amounted to a cessation of life. I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. See June 21, 1852 ("Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shallow all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. ")

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