Reflecting the November sun without its heats.

November 8. 

A pleasant day. 

P. M. — To Nut Meadow and Fair Haven Hill. 

I hear a small z-ing cricket. 

Coombs says that quite a little flock of pigeons bred here last summer. He found one nest in a small white pine near his pigeon-stand (where he baited them in the summer), so low he could put his hand in it(!?). 

I saw, while talking with him, a trout playing about in the open roadside watering-place, on the Jimmy Miles road (i. e. in Nut Meadow Brook), which was apparently fifteen inches long; not lurking under the bank but openly swimming up and down in midstream.

How richly and exuberantly downy are many golden- rod and aster heads now, their seed just on the point of falling or being blown away, before they are in the least weather-beaten  They are now puffed up to their utmost, clean and light.

The tufts of purplish withered andropogon in Witherell Glade are still as fair as ever, soft and trembling and bending from the wind; of a very light mouse-color seen from the side of the sun, and as delicate as the most fragile ornaments of a lady's bonnet; but looking toward the sun they are a brilliant white, each polished hair (of the pappus?) reflecting the November sun without its heats, not in the least yellowish or brown like the goldenrods and asters.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, November 8, 1859

Coombs says that quite a little flock of pigeons bred here last summer. See September 14, 1859 (“They are catching pigeons nowadays. Coombs has a stand west of Nut Meadow, ”)

I saw a trout playing in Nut Meadow Brook which was apparently fifteen inches long. See November 14, 1857 (“I hear that Gardiner Heywood caught a trout in Walden Pond the other day and that it weighed five pounds.”)

How richly and exuberantly downy are many golden- rod and aster heads now. See November 5, 1855 (“The downy, fuzzy globular tops of the Aster puniceus . . .  are slightly tinged with yellow, compared with the hoary gray of the goldenrod. ”)

Looking toward the sun they are a brilliant white, reflecting the November sun. See November 10, 1858 (“This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces. A true November seat is amid the pretty white-plumed Andropogon scoparius, the withered culms of the purple wood grass which covers so many dry knolls. . . .Looking toward the sun, as I sit in the midst of it rising as high as my head, its countless silvery plumes are a very cheerful sight. At a distance they look like frost on the plant.”)