A Book of the Seasons: Gossamer Days ( Why should this day be so distinguished?)

There are very few phenomena 

which can be described indifferently 

as occurring at different seasons of the year.

Henry Thoreau November 3, 1853 

Looking westward now

I see against the sunlight –

gossamer waving!

 November 3, 1857

All this is distinct

to an observant eye yet

unnoticed by most.

November 3, 1861

September 29. Looking toward the sun, some fields reflect a light sheen from low webs of gossamer which thickly cover the stubble and grass. September 29, 1858

October. 14.  There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. October 14, 1857

October 16. The lespedezas stand like frost-covered wands, and now hoary goldenrods and some bright-red blackberry vines amid the tawny grass are in harmony with the rest; and if you sharpen and rightly intend your eye you see the gleaming lines of gossamer (stretching from stubble to stubble over the whole surface) which you are breaking. How cheerful these cold but bright white waving tufts! October 16, 1859

October 17. A fine Indian-summer afternoon. There is much gossamer on the button-bushes, now bare of leaves, and on the sere meadow-grass, looking toward the sun, in countless parallel lines, like the ropes which connect the masts of a vessel.  October 17, 1855 

October 18. To-day my shoes are whitened with the gossamer which I noticed yesterday on the meadow-grass. October 18, 1855

October 19.   Indian-summer-like and gossamer. October 19, 1860

October 20. Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.  October 20, 1856

October 20. Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons.  October 20, 1858

October 26. I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere. October 26, 1854 

October 31. It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon . . . .  I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day. I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything . . .They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, spun out of air I know not for what purpose . . . These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the middle, like the rigging of vessels . . . Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, "in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called ' Der fliegender Sommer' (the flying or departing summer)" October 31, 1853

A gossamer day –

As if the year were weaving

her shroud out of light.

October 31, 1853

October 31.  It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees . . . the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. October 31, 1858

November 1. It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. It looks as if the birds would be incommoded. They have the effect of a shimmer in the air. This shimmer, moving along them as they are waved by the wind, gives the effect of a drifting storm of light. It is more like a fine snow-storm which drifts athwart your path than anything else. What is the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, to call forth this activity? If there were no sunshine, I should never find out that they existed, I should not know that I was bursting a myriad barriers. Though you break them with your person, you feel not one. Why should this day be so distinguished? November 1, 1851 

November 1. A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M . . . Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. November 1, 1860  

November 2. The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones. November 2, 1853

November 3.   Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other.  November 3, 1857 [see November lights, below]

November 7.  Looking west over Wheeler’s meadow, I see that there has been much gossamer on the grass, and it is now revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it. November 7, 1855 

November 11. Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October). November 11, 1858 

November 13. Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.  November 13,1855 

November 15.  This afternoon has wanted no condition to make it a gossamer day, it seems to me, but a calm atmosphere. Plainly the spiders cannot be abroad on the water unless it is smooth. The one I witnessed this fall was at time of flood. May it be that they are driven out of their retreats like muskrats and snow-fleas, and spin these lines for their support? Yet they work on the causeway, too  November 15, 1853

November 15.  Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass to the first half of November. November 15, 1858 (see November lights, below)

November 15. A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it. As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off. November 15, 1859

November 19. This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm. My boat I find to be covered with spiders, whose fine lines soon stretch from side to side.  November 19, 1853 

December 20. I see some gossamer on the weeds above the ice. December 20, 1855

---

Gossamer-like snow flakes

November 20, 1857 ("I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.") April 4, 1859 ("There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer.")

 

***

November lights

As I stand looking down the hill over Emerson's young wood-lot there, perhaps at 3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon. November 28, 1856

 

October 16. This clear, cold, Novemberish light is inspiriting. Some twigs which are bare and weeds begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary fight on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. October 16, 1859

October 25. In the cool Novemberish air and light we observe and enjoy the trembling shimmer and gleam of the pine-needles. I do not know why we perceive this more at this season, unless because the air is so clear and all surfaces reflect more light; and, besides, all the needles now left are fresh ones, or the growth of this year. Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.  October 25, 1858 

November 3.  Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig. November 3, 1857 

November 18.  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. November 18, 1857

November 22. A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. November 22, 1860

See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

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 © 2009-2024

A Book of the Seasons: November 15 (buds and twigs and gossamer reflecting November light)

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

November 15

Clear yellow light of

the western sky reflected

in this smooth water.

November 15, 1853

November 15, 2016

I saw to-day a very perfect lichen on a rock in a meadow. It formed a perfect circle about fifteen inches in diameter though the rock was uneven, and was handsomely shaded by a darker stripe of older leaves, an inch or more wide, just within its circumference, like a rich lamp-mat. November 15, 1850

Here is a rainy day, which keeps me in the house. November 15, 1851

It is Indian-summer-like. November 15, 1853

A very pleasant Indian-summer day. P. M. -- To Ledum Swamp. November 15, 1859

The first snow, a mere sugaring which went off the next morning. November 15, 1854

A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. November 15, 1858

Slight as the snow is. . . I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog.  November 15, 1858 

By the first of November, or at most a few days later, the trees generally wear, in the main, their winter aspect, their leaves gradually falling until spring. November 15, 1857

The obvious falling of leaves (i.e., not to include the fall of the pitch pines and larches and the complete fall of the birches, white willows, etc.) ended about the first of November. November 15, 1857

At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling. November 15, 1857

The white willows, which retain many of their leaves even yet, are of a peculiar buff or fawn color. November 15, 1857

A very few bright-colored leaves on small shrubs, such as oak sprouts, black cherry, blueberry, etc., have lingered up to this time in favorable places. November 15, 1857

As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off. November 15, 1859

A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it. November 15, 1859

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. November 15, 1858

I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time. November 15, 1858

Buds and twigs . . . and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass [belong] to the first half of November. November 15, 1858

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf. November 15, 1857

The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants.  November 15, 1857

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. November 15, 1857

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown. November 15, 1858

The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig. . . so that when the twig is held up to the light it appears alternately thicker and thinner. November 15, 1857

I look up the river from the railroad bridge. It is perfectly smooth between the uniformly tawny meadows, November 15, 1859

I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light. November 15, 1859

The river has risen yet higher than last night, so that I cut across Hubbard's meadow with ease. November 15, 1853

The river rising. I see a spearer’s light to-night. November 15, 1855

I see no ants on the great ant-hills, and methinks I have not for three weeks at least. November 15, 1857

My walk is the more lonely when I perceive that there are no ants now upon their hillocks in field or wood. These are deserted mounds. They have commenced their winter's sleep. November 15, 1857

This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools. November 15, 1857

I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight. November 15, 1859

There is but little insect-life abroad now. November 15, 1857

As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks. November 15, 1859

Just after sundown, the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water, making it doubly light to me on the water, diffusing light from below as well as above. November 15, 1853

The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now. November 15, 1859

Were those insects on the surface after the moon rose skaters or water-bugs? November 15, 1853

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. November 15, 1851

November 15, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Seen from a Hillside

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be 

more beautiful than now

*****

November 15, 2019

Walking (1861 ("Travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.. . .So every man has an original wild name. . . . Our true names are nicknames.")
February 11, 1858 ("The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched")
April 8, 1853 ("The spearer's light last night shone into my chamber on the wall and awakened me. ")
April 16, 1855 ("The spearer’s light to-night, and, after dark, the sound of geese honking")
April 25, 1856 ("At evening see a spearer’s light.")
April 25, 1855 ("A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is.")
April 30, 1852 ("To-night and last night the spearer's light is seen on the meadows; he has been delayed by the height of the water.")
June 4, 1856 ("He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.")
August 18, 1854 ("We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty.")
August 19, 1851 ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal");

September 28, 1851 ("This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.")

October 15, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. ")
October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores . .So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags.")
October 16, 1851 ("To-night the spearers are out again")

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.")

November 1, 1857 ("I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light")

November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change.")

November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.")

November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods, -- is seen through the woods, — the leaves being gone.")

November 2, 1857 (“The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums now have their day; now is the flower of their age, and their greenness is appreciated. They are much the clearest and most liquid green in the woods”)
November 2, 1857 (“My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed. ”);
November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.")
November 4, 1855 ("Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather.")
November 4, 1855 (" Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")
November 5, 1857 ("The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green.”)
November 5, 1857 ("At this season polypody is in the air. ")
November 5, 1857 ("The larches are fast falling.")

November 5, 1857 ("The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling.”)

November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess”)

November 8, 1853 ("The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines")

November 8, 1858 ("Lichens . . .are the various grays and browns which give November its character.")

November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.")

November 9, 1850 ("The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off")

November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. )

November 11, 1855 ('The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”)

November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October).")

November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. ")
November 11, 1858 ("Hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset.")
November 12, 1853 ("The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.")

November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”)
November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters.")

November 13, 1858 ("[Snow] comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth. Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.")

November 13,1855 (" I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”);
November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . .So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”)
November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

November 13, 1858 ("The larch looks brown and nearly bare.")

November 14, 1858 ("The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights.")

November 16, 1858 (“Probably the larch about fallen.”)
November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock and various other ferns.")

November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape.")
November 17, 1858 ("Evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still")

November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”)
November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.")

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.")

November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”)

November 20, 1857 ("The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees.")

November 20, 1858("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces.")

November 23, 1857 ("The water andromeda [at Gowing's Swamp] makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which. . .makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, wholesome surface, even as grass or moss.")

November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”)
November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

November 25, 1857 (“[T]he thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of”)

November 28, 1856 ("Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches... remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.").
November 29, 1856 ("Begins to snow this morning and snows slowly and interruptedly with a little fine hail all day till it is several inches deep. This the first snow I have seen...")
December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night.”)
December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.")
December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening."); This evening and night,
December 6, 1852 ("In the evening I see the spearer's light on the river.")

December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca.")

December 9, 1859 ("The air being very quiet and serene, I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .Methinks it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer.")
December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.")
December 22, 1860 ("the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now ")
December 8, 1850 (“The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible! This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.”)

December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

December 26,1853 (“This forenoon it snows pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”)
December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.”)

 December 31, 1859 ("The sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds.")

January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . .the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.Very delicate evergreen opposite linear leaves, strongly revolute, somewhat reddish-green above, the blossom-buds quite conspicuous. . . .The pretty little blossom-buds arranged crosswise in the axils of the leaves as you look down on them.")

January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer")

January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.")

January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")

January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);
February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”).

November 15, 2013

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 

November 14 <<<<<<<<<  November 15  >>>>>>>> November 16

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 15

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 © 2009-2024

Late these afternoons, yellow sunlight reflected through the clear, cold air.

November 25. 


This is November of the hardest kind, —
bare frozen ground

covered with pale-brown
or straw-colored herbage,

a strong, cold, cutting
northwest wind

which makes you seek
to cover your ears,

a perfectly clear
and cloudless sky.

***

You are surprised,
late these afternoons,

a half an hour perhaps before sunset,
after walking in the shade

or on looking round from a height,
to see the singularly bright

yellow light of the sun
reflected from pines, especially pitch pines,

or the withered oak leaves,
through the clear, cold air,

the wind, it may be, blowing
strong from the northwest.

***

A very great collection of crows
far and wide on the meadows,

evidently gathered by this cold
and blustering weather.

They flit before you in countless numbers,
flying very low 

on account of the strong northwest wind
that comes over the hill,

and a cold gleam reflected
from the back and wings of each,

as from a weather-
stained shingle.

November 25, 1857, November 25, 1858 & November 25, 1860

The mildest and pleasantest days since November came in..

November 29, 30, and December 1. 

The snow which fell the 23d whitened the ground but a day or two. 

These have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in. November 29th, walked in p. m. to old stone bridge and down bank of river by Sam Barrett's house.

When I stood on the caving swallow banks by the bridge about 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything. 

The patches of winter rye, at this season so green by contrast, are an interesting feature in the landscape.

When I got out of the wood, going toward Barrett's, the softness of the sunlight on the russet landscape, the smooth russet grassy fields and meadows, was very soothing, the sun now getting low in a November day. 

The stems and twigs of the maples, etc., looking down the river, were beautifully distinct. You see distinctly the form of the various clumps of maples and birches. 

Geese in river swam as fast as I walked. 

Many broken but apparently rather recent turtles' eggs on the bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1852

November 29, 30, and December 1. have been the mildest and pleasantest days since November came in. See December 2, 1859 ("Nov. 30, Dec. 1 and 2 were remarkably warm and springlike days, — a moist warmth.”)

About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described. See November 29, 1853 ("I begin to see, under the clouds in the west horizon, a clear crescent of yellowish sky, and suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape . . . I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.") See also November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year."); November 10, 1858 (" dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow."); November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine. . . .After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire."); November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to - night as the last."); November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.")
");

The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

November 17

November 17, 2015

November 17, 2018

The ground has remained frozen since the morning of the 12th. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The polypody on the rock is much shrivelled by the late cold. The edges are curled up, and it is not nearly so fair as it was ten days ago. 

I see a small botrychium in the swampy wood west of river, opposite Emerson’s field, quite fresh, not at all injured. 

The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. They dive off the round-backed, black mossy stones, which, when small and slightly exposed, look much like themselves. In swimming show commonly three parts with water between. One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on. 

Much Lycopodium complanatum did not shed pollen on the 3d, and the Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum sheds it only within a very few days  (was apparently in its prime yesterday). So it would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. It was coincident with this prominence. 

Leaving my boat, I walk through the low wood west of Dove Rock, toward the scarlet oak. The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. 

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm. 

Looking toward the sun now when an hour high, there being many small alders and birches between me and it for half a dozen rods, the light reflected from their with closely concentric lines, of which I see about one fourth, on account of the upward curve of the twigs on each side, and the light not being reflected to me at all from one side of the trees directly in front of me. The light is thus very pleasantly diffused. 

We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. 

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. It was quite like the sunlight reflected from grass and weeds covered with hoar frost. Yet in an ordinary light these are but dark or dusky looking twigs with scarcely a noticeable downiness. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. 

A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. 

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up from the weeds within a stone’s throw of my boat’s place. It drops its excrement from thirty feet in the air, and this falling, one part being heavier than another, takes the form of a snake, and suggests that this may be the origin of some of the stories of this bird swallowing a snake or eel which passed through it.

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. 

Winter is not all white and sere. Some trees are evergreen to cheer us, and on the forest floor our eyes do not fall on sere brown leaves alone, but some evergreen shrubs are placed there to relieve the eye. Mountain laurel, lambkill, checkerberry, Wintergreen, etc., etc., etc., and a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still. 

Aspidium spinulosum

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed). 
• Asplenium trichomanes. 
• A. ebeneum.  
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th. 
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond. 
• A. marginale (common). 
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1853 

The polypody on the rock. See November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock. ") See alss A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); May 23, 1853 ( Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”;  October 26, 1857 (“The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.”); November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”);   June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood”);April 24, 1859  (" There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season....The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. See November 13, 1858 ("Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight”)

The hundred silvery lights of November. See November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) See also October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); November 11, 1851 (" Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. . . . the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring.): November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.”); .November 14, 1853("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November"); November 15, 1859 ("I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light"); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”)

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern .there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. See December 7, 1857 (“I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.”)

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up. See September 20, 1855("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. “); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. See June 14, 1851 ("How moderate, deliberate, is Nature!"); January 26, 1858 ("Nature loves gradation.")

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody  [Polypodium virginianum — rock polypody] (though shrivelled by cold where exposed)
• Asplenium trichomanes [maidenhair spleenwort].
• A. ebeneum [or Asplenium platyneuron – ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort].
• Aspidium spinulosum (?) [or Dryopteris carthusiana or Polypodium spinulosum, –  spinulose shield fern, spinulose woodfern or toothed wood fern] large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?) [or Dryopteris cristata – crested wood fern], Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common) [or Dryopteris marginalis, – marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern]
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield)[or Polystichum acrostichoides, – Christmas fern]

See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."). See also August 30, 1853  ('I find at this time in fruit: (1) Polypodium vulgare,

. . .( 5 ) Asplenium Trichomanes ( dwarf spleenwort), also ( 6 ) A. ebeneum ( ebony spleenwort ),. . .(8) Dryopteris marginalis  marginal shield fern), (9) Polystichum acrostichoides (terminal shield fern). . . Nos . 1, 5 , 6 , and 8 common at Lee's Cliff . No.. . . 9 at Brister's Hill.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort

The last especially[ handsome], it has so thick a frond. See July 29, 1853 ("Brister's Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.")

Note: Did HDT observe Dryopteris intermedia? Although intermediate woodfern (Dryopteris intermedia) a/k/a "evergreen woodfern" is a common evergreen fern, Henry's only reference to “intermediate fern" is likely a mistranscription of "interrupted fern" (Osmunda claytoniana. The Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal. See May 13, 1860 (“The intermediate ferns and cinnamon, a foot and a half high, have just leafeted out.”) Compare May 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places."); May 23, 1860 (" Interrupted fern fruit probably a day or two, and cinnamon, say the same or just after."); May 26, 1855 ("Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day.")

November 17.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 17

November 17, 2015

The manifold ways

at this season that light is 

reflected to us.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

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 ©  2009-2024

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