A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning.
About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges. The sonorous, quavering sounds of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air, – a sound that comes from directly between us and the sky, an aerial sound, and yet so distinct, heavy, and sonorous, a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air.
I saw through my window some children looking up and pointing their tiny bows into the heavens, and I knew at once that the geese were in the air. It is always an exciting event. The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents.
These travellers are revealed to you by the upward-turned gaze of men. And though these undulating lines are melting into the southwestern sky, the sound comes clear and distinct to you as the clank of a chain in a neighboring stithy.
So they migrate, not flitting from hedge to hedge, but from latitude to latitude, from State to State, steering boldly out into the ocean of the air. It is remarkable how these large objects, so plain when your vision is rightly directed, may be lost in the sky if you look away for a moment, - as hard to hit as a star with a telescope.
It is a sort of encouraging or soothing sound to assuage their painful fears when they go over a town, as a man moans to deaden a physical pain. The direction of their flight each spring and autumn reminds us inlanders how the coast trends.
In the afternoon I met Flood, who had just endeavored to draw my attention to a flock of geese in the mizzling air, but encountering me he lost sight of them, while I, at length, looking that way, discerned them, though he could not.
This was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather.
P. M. – To the swamp in front of the C. Miles house.
The great white pines on the hill south of it were cut, apparently last winter. I count on two stumps about one hundred and twenty-five rings, and the sap averages in each case about three inches thick.
In a thick white pine wood, as in that swamp at the east end, where the ground is level, the ground now (and for some time) is completely covered with a carpet of pale-brown leaves, completely concealing the green mosses and even some lycopodiums. The effect is exactly as[if a uniform pale-brown matting had been spread over the green and russet floor. It is even soothing to walk over this soft and springy bed.
How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place! This additional warm matting is tucked about their roots to defend them from the frost. It is interesting to see the green of mosses peeping out here and there. You hear only the soft crisped sound of sinking needles under your feet.
I find in the swamp there by the larches the Kalmia glauca, good specimens.
I have no doubt that a good farmer, who, of course, loves his work, takes exactly the same kind of pleasure in draining a swamp, seeing the water flow out in his newly cut ditch, that a child does in its mud dikes and water-wheels. Both alike love to play with the natural forces.
There is quite a ravine by which the water of this swamp flows out eastward, and at the bottom of it many prinos berries are conspicuous, now apparently in their prime. These are appointed to be an ornament of this bare season between leaves and snow.
The swamp-pink's large yellowish buds, too, are conspicuous now.
I see also the swamp pyrus buds, expanded sometimes into small leaves. This, then, is a regular phenomenon. It is the only shrub or tree that I know which so decidedly springs again in the fall, in the Indian summer. It might be called the Indian-summer shrub.
The clethra buds, too, are decidedly expanded there, showing leafets, but very small.
Some of the new pyrus leaves are nearly full-grown. Would not this be a pretty device on some hale and cheery old man's shield, – the swamp pyrus unfolding its leaves again in the fall? Every plant enjoys some preéminence, and this is its. The most forward to respond to the warmer season. How much spring there is in it! Its sap is most easily liquefied. It takes the least sun and mildness to thaw it and develop it. It makes this annual sacrifice of its very first leaves to its love for the sun. While all other shrubs are reserved, this is open and confiding.
I see it not without emotion. I too have my spring thoughts even in November. This I see in pleasant October and November days, when rills and birds begin to tinkle in winter fashion through the more open aisles of the swamps.
I do not know exactly what that sweet word is which the chickadee says when it hops near to me now in those ravines.
The chickadee
Hops near to me.
When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we need not walk so far. We give our attention to nearer objects, being less distracted from them. I take occasion to explore some near wood which my walks commonly overshoot.
What a difference it makes between two ravines in other respects exactly similar that in the one there is a stream which drains it, while the other is dry!
I see nowadays in various places the scattered feathers of robins, etc., where some hawk or beast of prey has torn them to pieces.
I step over the slip-noose snares which some woodling has just set. How long since men set snares for partridges and rabbits?
Ah, my friends, I know you better than you think, and love you better, too. The day after never, we will have an explanation.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1857
The great white pines on the hill south of it were cut, apparently last winter. I count on two stumps about one hundred and twenty-five rings, , and the sap averages in each case about three inches thick. See July 8, 1857 ("Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet in diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings."); March 24, 1853 ("The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I like the smell of it,. . .and the purple color of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.
How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!. See November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.");
I see also the swamp pyrus buds, expanded sometimes into small leaves. See December 11, 1855 ("I thread the tangle of the spruce swamp, admiring the leafets of the swamp pyrus which had put forth again, now frost bitten")
When the air is thick and the sky overcast, we . . .give our attention to nearer objects. . . See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects")
Slip-noose snares. See November 28, 1857 ("I saw one that was sprung with nothing in it, another whose slip-noose was blown or fallen one side, and another with a partridge still warm in it.")
The third flock of geese –
now if ever expect a
change in the weather.
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