Infinite regret

October 26.

I awoke this morning to infinite regret . . .

And then I was walking in a meadow . . .  and there I met Mr. Alcott, and we fell to quoting and referring to grand and pleasing couplets and single lines which we had read in times past; and I quoted one which in my waking hours I have no knowledge of, but in my dream it was familiar enough. I only know that those which I quoted expressed regret , and were like the following, though they were not these:

 " The short parenthesis of life was sweet,"

"The remembrance of youth is a sigh," etc.

The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument from which I heard a strain die out, a bugle, or a clarionet, or a flute. 

My body was the organ and channel of melody, as a flute is of the music that is breathed through it. My flesh sounded and vibrated still to the strain, and my nerves were the chords of the lyre . . .

I heard the last strain or flourish, as I woke, played on my body as the instrument. Such I knew I had been and might be again, and my regret arose from the consciousness how little like a musical instrument my body was now . . . 

I awoke, therefore, to an infinite regret, — to find myself, not the thoroughfare of glorious and world-stirring inspirations, but a scuttle full of dirt . . .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1851

I awoke this morning. See May 24, 1851 ("Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret . . . the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. . . My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around . . .It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence."); June 12, 1851 ("Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear."); June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind.”);; July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. To have such sweet impressions made on us"); March 17, 1852 ("I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual")
September 12, 1853 ("It occurred to me when I awoke this morning . . . that man was to be treated as a musical instrument, and if any viol was to be made of sound timber and kept well tuned always, it was he, so that when the bow of events is drawn across him he may vibrate and resound in perfect harmony. A sensitive soul will be continually trying its strings to see if they are in tune."); December 19, 1856 ("For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously "); October 29, 1857 ("Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind . . . we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. "); January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps?"); November 30, 1858 ("I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life. "); August 27, 1859 ("All our life, i.e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake.");  November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream."); April 1, 1860 ("I occasionally awake in the night simply to let fall ripe a statement which I had never consciously considered before, and as surprising and novel and agreeable to me as anything can be. As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep.") and Walden (“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”)

A Book of the Seasons: October 23 (autumnal tints, the fall of the leaf, witch hazel, fall flowers, seeds, nuts and berries, the pine fall, signs of spring)

 

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

October 23.

The flowers bloom and

the birds warble their spring notes

like a second spring.

October 23, 1853

October 23, 2020

More or less rain to-day and yesterday. October 23, 1860

October has been the month of autumnal tints.  October 23, 1852 

By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part.  October 23, 1852

What a peculiar red has the white! And some black have now a rich brown.  October 23, 1853

I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib.  October 23, 1855

I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. October 23, 1858

I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a handsome clear yellow, — and some (the R. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red.   October 23, 1858 

I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaleaves turned a light red or scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there.   October 23, 1858

You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson.   October 23, 1858

October 23, 2022

Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet.   October 23, 1858

The meadow-sweet is yellowish and yellow-scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now.   October 23, 1858

Beach plum is still green with some dull red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen.   October 23, 1858

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling.   October 23, 1858

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous.     October 23, 1858

Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish.   October 23, 1858 

Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson.   October 23, 1858

Viburnum Lentago, with ripe berries and dull-glossy red leaves.   October 23, 1853

In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more.   October 23, 1858

Panicled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen.   October 23, 1858

Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen.   October 23, 1858

Choke-cherries are bare; how long?    October 23, 1858

Wild holly fallen.   October 23, 1858

Amelanchier bare.   October 23, 1858

Butternuts are bare.   October 23, 1858

Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare.  October 23, 1858

The prinos is bare, leaving red berries. October 23, 1853 

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. October 23, 1855 

The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. October 23, 1852 

The high bank-side is mostly covered with fallen leaves of pines and hemlocks, etc. . . .The fallen pine-needles, as well as other leaves, now actually paint the surface of the earth brown in the woods, covering the green and other colors, and the few evergreen plants on the forest floor stand out distinct and have a rare preeminence. October 23, 1857

The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears. October 23, 1857 

Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. October 23, 1853 

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. October 23, 1853 

Also a hieracium quite freshly bloomed, October 23, 1853 

The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia. October 23, 1853

A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. October 23, 1852

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved. 

October 23, 1852

Witch hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. October 23, 1857

A striped snake out. October 23, 1852

I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days . . . In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. October 23, 1853 

The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. October 23, 1852 

The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free.  October 23, 1852  

It is the season of fuzzy seeds, — goldenrods, everlasting, senecio, asters, epilobium, etc., etc. October 23, 1853

Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries, calls the soapwort gentian “blue vengeance,” mistaking the word. A masculine wild eyed woman of the fields. Somebody has her daguerreotype. October 23, 1857 

I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. October 23, 1857

October 23, 2016

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hawkweeds (hieracium)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

October 23, 2021

October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me")

October 11, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is generally a dull red on a green ground, but its leaves are yet quite fresh.").

 October 13, 1852    ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ")

 October 13, 1859 ("The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. It is like a youthful or poetic thought in old age. Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. I would not fear the winter more than the shad-bush which puts forth fresh and tender leaves on its approach.")

October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out.")

October 18, 1857  ("Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones")

October 20, 1852  ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers.")

October 22, 1851  ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.")

October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.")  

October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.”)    

October 25, 1853  ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.")

October 26, 1855  ("The hillside is slippery with new-fallen white pine leaves")

October 26, 1855  ("The witch-hazel is still freshly in flower,")

October 28, 1858 ("There are now but few bright leaves to be seen.")

October 31, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is about bare")

November 1, 1860  ("A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves. ")

November 1, 1853  ("I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.")

November 4, 1854  ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already. ")

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

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 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet,") 

December 1, 1853 ("inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. 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.")

Witch-hazel in bloom

October 23, 2020

 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.

  April 7, 1853 

October 22 <<<<<<<<<  October 23. >>>>>>>>  October 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 23

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

tinyurl.com/HDT23Oct

A Book of the Season: October 21 (first ice, winter encamped to the north, birds migrating, the showy big- toothed aspen, cold white light, gradual changes)

 

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

October 21

Before I get home

the sun has set with a cold

white light in the west.

October 21, 1857

October 21, 2013

It began to rain about 10 o’clock last evening after a cloudy day, and it still rains, gently but steadily, this morning. October 21, 1855

The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly; yet I sit with an open window, it is so warm. October 21, 1855

A damp cloudy day only, after all, and scarcely any rain; a good day for all hunters to be out, especially on the water. October 21, 1855

A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat.  October 21, 1856

Cooler to-day, yet pleasant. October 21, 1858

On the hilltop, the sun having just risen, I see on my note-book that same rosy or purple light, when contrasted with the shade of another leaf, which I saw on the evening of the 19th, though perhaps I can detect a little purple in the eastern horizon. October 21, 1858

Cool and windy. October 21, 1857

First ice that I’ve seen or heard of, a tenth of an inch thick in yard, and the ground is slightly frozen. October 21, 1857

The brook between John

Flint's house and the river is

half frozen over.

October 21, 1859

It is very cold and blustering to-day. It is the breath of winter, which is encamped not far off to the north. October 21, 1859

Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard. October 21, 1857

The birds that fly at the approach of winter are come from the north. October 21, 1852

I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. .October 21, 1857

They keep flying up against the house and the window and fluttering there, as if they would come in, or alight on the wood-pile or pump. October 21, 1857

They would commonly be mistaken for sparrows, but show more white when they fly, beside the yellow on the rump and sides of breast seen near to and two white bars on the wings. Chubby birds.October 21, 1857

The Populus grandidentata is quite yellow and leafy yet,— the most showy tree thereabouts. October 21, 1858

The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day.  October 21, 1858

The currant row is bare, but the gooseberries at the end are full of scarlet leaves still. October 21, 1855

The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look.  October 21, 1855

The red oak is more red. October 21, 1855

But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses. October 21, 1855

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first. October 21, 1852

This gradualness in the changing and falling of the leaves produces agreeable effects and contrasts.  October 21, 1855

Most leaves now on the water. They fell yesterday, — white and red maple, swamp white oak, white birch, black and red oak, hemlock (which has begun to fall), hop-hornbeam, etc., etc.  October 21, 1858

They cover the water thickly, concealing all along the south side for half a rod to a rod in width, and at the rocks, where they are met and stopped by the easterly breeze, form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. October 21, 1858

Some time since I might have said some birds are leaving us, others, like ducks, are just arriving from the north, the herbs are withering along the brooks, the humming insects are going into winter quarters. October 21, 1852

All the country over the frosts have come and seared the tenderer herbs along all brook sides. October 21, 1852

How unobserved this change until it has taken place. October 21, 1852

The goldenrods, being dead, are now a dingy white along the brooks (white fuzz dark brown leaves), together with rusty, fuzzy trumpet-weeds and asters in the same condition.

This is a remarkable feature in the landscape now the abundance of dead weeds. The frosts have done it.  October 21, 1852

Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them.  October 21, 1852

Polygonum articulaium lingers still.   October 21, 1852

Silvery cinquefoil, hedge-mustard, and clover.   October 21, 1852

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year from June 1st to October 1st perhaps.  October 21, 1852

The clump of mountain laurel in Mason's pasture is of a triangular form, about six rods long by a base of two and a third rods, — or seven or eight square rods, — beside some separate clumps. October 21, 1859

A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever.  October 21, 1859

Winter comes on gradually. October 21, 1852

As I am paddling home swiftly before the northwest wind, absorbed in my wooding, I see, this cool and grayish evening, that peculiar yellow light in the east, from the sun at little before its setting.   October 21, 1857

It has just come out beneath a great cold slate-colored cloud that occupies most of the western sky, as smaller ones the eastern, and now its rays, slanting over the hill in whose shadow I float, fall on the eastern trees and hills with a thin, yellow light like a clear yellow wine, but somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors. October 21, 1857

Now again, as in the spring, we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit.  October 21, 1857

Before I get home the sun has set and a cold white light in the west succeeded. October 21, 1857

October 21, 2017

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Scarlet Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October Moods

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October

October 21, 2017

March 23, 1860 ("The descent to extreme cold occupies seven months and is therefore more gradual (though a part of it is more rapid) than the ascent to extreme heat, which takes only five months. ")

April 26, 1857 (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.”)

October 5, 1851 ("The earth has gradually turned more northward; the birds have fled south after the sun, and this impresses me as a deserted country.")

October 6, 1858 ("Only one of the large maples on the Common is yet on fire.")

October 10, 1859 ("White-throated sparrows in yard and close up to house, together with myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills")

October 12, 1851 ("  I hear Lincoln bell tolling for church. . . . Heard at a distance, the sound of a bell acquires a certain vibratory hum, . . . its vibrating echoes, that portion of the sound which the elements take up and modulate,–– a sound which is very much modified, sifted, and refined before it reaches my ear. . . . is in some measure the voice of the wood")  

October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it“)

October 14, 1855 (“One flies up against the house and alights on the window-sill within a foot of me inside. Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt”)

October 15, 1856("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet. . .")

October 15, 1859 ("I see some black oak acorns on the trees still and in some places at least half the shrub oak acorns. The last are handsomer now that they have turned so much darker.")

October 15, 1859 ("I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches, and that they are the birds I saw on them a week or two ago, — apparently, or probably, after the birch lice.")

October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye.")

October 17, 1857("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them”)

October 17, 1858 (" Up Assabet. There are many crisped but colored leaves resting on the smooth surface of the Assabet,”)

October 15, 1859 ("Standing on this hilltop this cold and blustering day, when dark and slate-colored clouds are flitting over the sky, the beauty of the scenery is enhanced by the contrast in the short intervals of sunshine.")

October 16, 1857  (“The large poplar (P. grandidentata) is now at the height of its change, – clear yellow, but many leaves have fallen.”)

October 18, 1853 ("Poplars (grandidentata) clear, rich yellow.")

October 18, 1856 ("The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green.”)

October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty.")

October 19, 1853 ("The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them.”)

October 19, 1856 (“See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds.") 

October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you.")

Cold and blustering.

It is the breath of winter

encamped not far north.

October 21, 1859

October 24, 1855 (“The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees ")

October 25, 1858 (“The leaves of the Populus grandidentata,though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. .. . I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.”)

 October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides . . .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.")

 October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.")

October 28, 1853 ("Little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds, — one, quite slaty with black streaks and a bright-yellow crown and rump, which I think is the yellow-crowned warbler,") 

October 28, 1858 (“Its leaves are large and conspicuous on the ground, and from their freshness make a great show there”)

November 22, 1853 ("I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color . . . I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata...”)

October 21, 2017

October 21, 2018

October 21, 2022

 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.

  April 7, 1853 

October 20 <<<<<<<<<  October 21 >>>>>>>>  October 22

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 21

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT21Oct