As I walk toward the sun, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets..

February 13

P. M. —— On ice to Fair Haven Pond. 

Yesterday there was no skating, unless you swept the snow from the ice; but to-day, though there has been no rain nor thaw, there is pretty good skating. Yesterday the water which had flowed, and was flowing, back over the ice on each side of the river and the meadows, a rod or two in width, was merely skimmed over, but last night it froze so that there is good skating there. Also the wind will generally lay bare some portion of the ice, unless the snow is very deep. 

This yellowish ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals very much like bits of asbestos, an inch or more long, sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; but where I broke in yesterday, and apparently wherever the water overflowed the thin ice late in the day, there are none. I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night. It is sprinkled like some kind of grain, and is in certain places much more thickly strewn, as where a little snow shows itself above the ice. 

The old ice is covered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch deep, from which, as I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if the dust of diamonds and other precious stones were spread all around. The blue and red predominate. Though I distinguish these colors everywhere toward the sun, they are so much more abundantly reflected to me from two particular directions that I see two distant rays, or arms, so to call them, of this rainbow-like dust, one on each side of the sun, stretching away from me and about half a dozen feet wide, the two arms including an angle of about sixty degrees. 

When I look from the sun, I see merely dazzling white points. I can easily see some of these dazzling grains fifteen or twenty rods distant on any side, though the facet which reflects this light cannot be more than a tenth or twelfth of an inch at most. 

Yet I might easily, and commonly do, overlook all this. 

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. Not till winter do we take possession of the whole of our territory. I have three great highways raying out from one centre, which is near my door. I may walk down the main river or up either of its two branches. Could any avenues be contrived more convenient? With this river I am not compelled to walk in the tracks of horses. 

Never is there so much light in the air as in one of these bright winter afternoons, when all the earth is covered with new-fallen snow and there is not a cloud in the sky. The sky is much the darkest side, like the bluish lining of an egg-shell. There seems nothing left to make night out of. With this white earth beneath and that spot[less] skimmed-milk sky above him, man is but a black speck inclosed in a white egg-shell. 

Sometimes in our prosaic moods, life appears to us but a certain number more of days like those which we have lived, to be cheered not by more friends and friendship but probably fewer and less. As, perchance, we anticipate the end of this day before it is done, close the shutters, and with a cheerless resignation commence the barren evening whose fruitless end we clearly see, we despondingly think that all of life that is left is only this experience repeated a certain number of times. And so it would be, if it were not for the faculty of imagination.

I see, under this ice an inch thick, a large bubble with three cracks across it, yet they are so fine — though quite distinct —— that they let no air up, and I release it with my knife. An air-bubble very soon makes the ice look whitish above it. It is whitest of all when it is fairly inclosed, with ice beneath it. When, by treading above it, I dislodge a bubble under this ice which formed only last night, I see that it leaves the outline of its form behind, the ice being a little thinner above it.

Here is the track of one who walked here yesterday. The age of the track is betrayed by a certain smoothness or shininess produced by the sun shining on the raw and disturbed edges and melting them. The fresh track is evidently made in a dry, powdery substance; that of yesterday, as if it were made in a slightly glutinous matter, or which possessed considerable tenacity. 

Then there is the wonderful stillness of a winter day. The sources of sound, as of water, are frozen up; scarcely a tinkling rill of it is to be heard. When we listen, we hear only that sound of the surf of our internal sea, rising and swelling in our ears as in two seashells. It is the sabbath of the year, stillness audible, or at most we hear the ice belching and crackling as if struggling for utterance. 

A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 13, 1859


As I walk toward the sun, this perfectly clear, bright afternoon, at 3.30 o’clock, the colors of the rainbow are reflected from a myriad fine facets. See December 11, 1855 ("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle")

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer. See February 13, 1851 ("The meadows were frozen just enough to bear."); February 13, 1856 ("A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences."); See also December 13, 1859 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer.").  December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited, not having a boat in the summer."); January 24, 1856 ("The snow is so deep along the sides of the river that I can now look into nests which I could hardly reach in the summer.");   February 8, 1852 ("I now walk over fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 10, 1860 ("No finer walking in any respect than on our broad meadow highway in the winter, when covered with bare ice"); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer. “)

Sometimes in our prosaic moods, life appears to us but a certain number more of days . . .as, perchance, we anticipate the end of this day before it is done, See. July 30, 1852 (" After midsummer we have a belated feeling and are forward to see in each sight and hear in each sound some presage of the fall, just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life")

I see, under this ice an inch thick, a large bubble with three cracks across it, yet they are so fine — though quite distinct —— that they let no air up, and I release it with my knife. An air-bubble very soon makes the ice look whitish above it. See January 24, 1859 ("("When I cut through with my knife an inch or two to one of the latter kind, making a very slight opening, the confined air, pressed by the water, burst up with a considerable hissing sound, sometimes spurting a little water with it, and thus the bubble was contracted, almost annihilated")

A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination. See  May 12, 1857 ("Our past experience is a never-failing capital which can never be alienated, of which each kindred future event reminds us. If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.")

Sometimes life appears 

as but a certain number 

more of shorter days.

Absorbed in picking chestnuts humming a thought of more significance.

October 24. 

P. M. — To Smith's chestnut grove. 

Rain last night, raising the springs a little. To-day and yesterday still, gray days, but not cold. 

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. 

I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; more than half under one tree. I believe I get more by resolving, where they are reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the leaves with your right hand in toward the stump, while your left holds the basket, and so go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about all then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. 

I find on a chestnut tree, while shaking it, fifteen or twenty feet high, on the bark of the trunk, a singular green kind of slug nearly half an inch long . . . and about three sixteenths high from the paper up, narrower on back . . .; a brown mark across middle of back and near tail . . .. It can elongate itself and also run out its head a little from beneath this soft kind of shell. Beneath, quite flat and fleshy-ribbed. Climbs up glass slowly but easily. Reminds me of a green beechnut, but flat-backed. Would hardly suspect it to have life at first sight. Sticks very firmly to the bark or glass; hard to be pushed aside. 

I find one of those small, hard, dark-brown millipede worms partly crawled into a hole in a chestnut. 

I read of an apple tree in this neighborhood that had blossomed again about a week ago. 

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, – turn over a new leaf. 

I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1857

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. See 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 in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses."); October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")

Brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile . . . I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. See
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")


I hear the dull thump of heavy stones ...far through the rustling wood where boys are ranging for nuts.  See October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.")

The world and my life are simplified .

November 7. 

Another drizzling day, — as fine a mist as can fall. 

November 7, 2021

I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. 

The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. 

I am more open to impressions, more sensitive (not calloused or indurated by sun and wind), as if in a chamber still. 

My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. 

The solitude is real, too, for the weather keeps other men at home. 

This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling. 

The sound of a wagon going over an unseen bridge is louder than ever, and so of other sounds. 

I am compelled to look at near objects. 

All things have a soothing effect; the very clouds and mists brood over me. 

My power of observation and contemplation is much increased.

My attention does not wander. 

The world and my life are simplified. 

I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk this dark day. It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago. 

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. 

Some green-briar leaves still left, a dull red or scarlet, others yellowish; also the silky cornel is conspicuously dull-red, and others yellowish-red. 

And the sallow on river’s brink (not cordata), with a narrow leaf pointed at both ends, shows some clear chrome yellow leaves atop. 

The white birches lose their lower leaves first, and now their tops show crescents or cones of bright-yellow (spring flames) leaves, some of the topmost even green still. 

The black willows almost everywhere entirely bare, yet the color of their twigs gives them the aspect of the crisp brown weeds of the river’s brink. 

How completely crisp and shrivelled the leaves and stems of the Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre, still standing above the water and grass! 

The river has risen a little more, the North Branch especially, and the pail-stuff which has drifted down it has been carried a few rods up the main stream above the junction. It rises and falls very suddenly, and I was surprised to see the other day a line of sawdust more than a foot above the water’s edge, showing that it had risen to that height and suddenly fallen without my knowledge. 

Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. Apparently they do not form that part yet. 

Birds are pretty rare now. I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain,— a jay at a distance; and see a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights. 

A gray squirrel —as day before yesterday—runs down a limb of an oak and hides behind the trunk and I lose him. A red one runs along the trees to scold at me, boldly or carelessly, with a chuckling, bird like note and that other peculiar sound at intervals, between a purr and a grunt. He is more familiar than the gray and more noisy. What sound does the gray make? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1855

More open to impressions. See June 14, 1853 ("open to great impressions . . .you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye.")

The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects. See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects”).  Also  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist")

The world and my life are simplified. See January 7, 1857 ("I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified.

I see a painted tortoise swimming. See November 1, 1855 ("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any."):  November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. See    November 7, 1853 ("A muskrat-house on the top of a rock, too thin round the sides for a passage beneath, yet a small cavity at top, which makes me think that they use them merely as a sheltered perch above water."); November 7, 1858 ("I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night. ") See also September 20, 1855 ("Open a new and pretty sizable muskrat-house with no hollow yet made in it.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Birds are pretty rare now.  See November 4, 1855 ("The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter,"):November 5, 1858 ("It is quite still; no wind, no insect hum, and no note of birds, but one hairy woodpecker."); November 24, 1857 ("Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes")

See a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights. 

See November 7, 1858 ("The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up. ") See also  October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs");  November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A gray squirrel. . . runs down a limb of an oak and hides behind the trunk See November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”); November 20, 1858 ("I have seen more gray squirrels of late . . . not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc.");  November 30, 1851 ("While the squirrels hid themselves in the tree-tops, I sat on an oak stump by an old cellar-hole and mused. This squirrel is always an unexpectedly large animal to see frisking about. ") 

A red one runs along the trees to scold at me, See December 1, 1857 ("I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

The world and my life

are simplified this still, dark

mizzling afternoon.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The world and my life are simplified 

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551107

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

December 8

P. M. —Up river and meadow on ice to Hubbard Bridge and thence to Walden.

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing. This is the life most lead in respect to Nature. How different from my habitual one! It is hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. The other is leisurely, fine, and glorious, like a flower. In the first case you are merely getting your living; in the second you live as you go along. You travel only on roads of the proper grade without jar or running off the track, and sweep round the hills by beautiful curves.

Here is the river frozen over in many places, I am not sure whether the fourth night or later, but the skating is hobbly or all hobbled like a coat of mail or thickly bossed shield, apparently sleet frozen in water. Very little smooth ice.

December 8, 2024

How black the water where the river is open when I look from the light, by contrast with the surrounding white, the ice and snow! A black artery here and there concealed under a pellicle of ice.

Go over the fields on the crust to Walden, over side of Bear Garden. Already foxes have left their tracks. 

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! There is a glorious clear sunset sky, soft and delicate and warm even like a pigeon’s neck. 

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1854

Up river and on ice to Hubbard Bridge. See December 13, 1859 (“My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer.”)

Winter has come unnoticed by me, I have been so busy writing . . . hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you were a spindle in a factory. See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture . . . After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself."); December 12, 1851("I have been surveying for twenty or thirty days, living coarsely, - indeed, leading a quite trivial life ");  December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . .I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business.") See also December 7, 1856 ("That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine . . . I see with surprise the pond a dumb white surface of ice speckled with snow . . . It seemed as if winter had come without any interval since midsummer, and I was prepared to see it flit away by the time I again looked over my shoulder. It was as if I had dreamed it.")

Already foxes have left their tracks. Compare December 8, 1855 ("Saturday. Still no snow, nor ice noticeable . . .Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected"); See  December 12, 1855 ("The snow having come, we see . . . now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice."); December 13, 1859  ("I see that the fox too has already taken the same walk before me, just along the edge of the button-bushes, where not even he can go in the summer. We both turn our steps hither at the same time."); December 14, 1855 ("Thus by the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Clear sunset sky, soft and delicate.  See December 8, 1853 ("Now the sun is set, Walden (I am on the east side) is more light than the sky . . . while the sky is yellowish in the horizon and a dusky blue above "); See also December 5, 1856 ("It is a perfectly cloudless and simple winter sky . . . The sun goes down and leaves not a blush in the sky."); December 9, 1859 ("Methinks it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer." ); December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? This could not be till the cold and the snow came.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

How the crust shines afar, the sun now setting! See December 8, 1850 ("This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields? See November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another . . . to him who has."); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth,  . . . These hills extend our plot of earth; they make our native valley or indentation in the earth so much the larger."); September 27, 1852 ("From the mountains we do not discern our native hills; but from our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them."); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

To travel only

on roads of the proper grade

and sweep round the curves.

How black the water 

 when I look from the light – how  

 white the ice and snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Winter comes unnoticed – already foxes have left their tracks.

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541208

I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence.

December 6.

I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture.  

After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, ie., to interest my audiences. 

I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suited myself less. 

I feel that the public demand an average man, —average thoughts and manners, — not originality, nor even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. 

I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e., I would rather write books than lectures. That is fine, this coarse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 6, 1854

I see thick ice and boys skating . . . but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture. See December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but . . . I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."). See also November 25, 1850 ("But some times it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village; the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses");  August 21, 1851 ("A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed."); February 12, 1860 ("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him.")

This winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer . . . I would rather write books than lectures. See Thoreau's Lectures Before Walden, Lecture 46 (Wednesday, December 6, 1854, 7:30 PM Thoreau read at Railroad Hall in Providence, Rhode Island his lecture “What Shall it Profit“, in which he argues “a man had better starve at once than loose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.” Over the course of time this lecture evolved evolved into "Life Without Principle.")

December 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 6

I see boys skating

but know not when the ice froze –

so busy writing.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  I see thick ice and boys skating

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541206

Noticing buds

November 6.

It is surprising how little most of us are contented to know about the sparrows which drift about in the air before us just before the first snows. These little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, have flitted before me so many falls and springs, yet they have been strangers to me. 

I have not inquired whence they came or whither they were going, or what their habits are. It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.

The witch-hazel spray is peculiar and interesting, with little knubs at short intervals, zig zag, crinkle-crankle. How happens it? Did the leaves grow so close? The bud is long against the stem, with a neck to it. 

The fever bush has small roundish buds, two or three commonly together, probably the blossom-buds. 

The alternate cornel, small, very dark reddish buds, on forking, smooth, slender twigs at long intervals. 

The panicled andromeda, minute pointed red buds, hugging the curving stems.

The plump, roundish, club-shaped, well-protected buds of the alders, and rich purplish or mulberry catkins, three, four, or five together. 

The red maple buds, showing three or more sets of scales. 

The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry. 

The four-sided, long spear-head-shaped buds of the Viburnum Lentago, at the end of forked twigs, probably blossom-buds, with minute leaf-buds lower on sides of twigs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1853

The sparrows which drift about in the air before us just before the first snows. These little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late. See November 1, 1851 ("At this season there are stranger sparrows or finches about."); November 2, 1853 ("What are those sparrows in loose flocks which I have seen two or three weeks, . . .whitish over and beneath the eye, and some white observed in tail when they fly?. . . Can they be the grass-bird ? They resemble it in marking. They are much larger than the tree sparrows. Methinks it is a very common fall bird."); November 4, 1860 (" Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north."); November 4, 1855("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis . . . rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach. There are a few tree sparrows with them."); November 5, 1854 ("I think it is the fox-colored sparrow I see in flocks and hear sing now by wood-sides."): November 7, 1855 (" I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain.”)

It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us... See November 8, 1857 ("How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!"); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it.”); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most."); See also January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive . . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”)

. . .unless our genius directs our attention that way. See June 23, 1851 ("My genius makes distinctions which my understanding cannot, and which my senses do not report.”); March 21, 1853 ("We become, as it were, pliant and ductile again to strange but memorable influences; - we are led a little way by our genius.”); March 22, 1853 ("I am waked by my genius, surprised to find myself expecting the dawn in so serene and joyful and expectant a mood.”); September 2, 1856 ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood").

Buds. See October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); November 4, 1854 ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already.”);  December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring."); December 6, 1856 ("Our eyes go searching along the stems for what is most vivacious and characteristic, the concentrated summer gone into winter quarters."); January 12, 1855 ("Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.")

The four-sided, long spear-head-shaped buds of the Viburnum Lentago. See April 11, 1852 ("Is that the Viburnum Lentago with the spear-shaped buds?"). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

November 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 6

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Noticing buds

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

The pensive season of the day.

August 11.

Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle. 

Evening draws on, smoothing the waters and lengthening the shadows, now half an hour or more before sundown. 

Some fiat has gone forth and stilled the ripples of the lake; each sound and sight has acquired ineffable beauty.  Broad, shallow lakes of shadow stretch over the lower portions of the top of the woods. A thousand little cavities are filling with coolness. Hills and the least inequalities in the ground begin to cast an obvious shadow. The shadow of an elm stretches quite across the meadow. From far over the pond and woods I hear a farmer calling loudly to his cows, in the clear still air, "Ker, ker, ker, ker." 

What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the twilight?  The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season.

The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1853

Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle. See. August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days.");  August 13, 1856 ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs

What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening. . . before the twilight? See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive . . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water."); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night.") and A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset

Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence.  See January 21, 1853 ("The silence rings; it is musical and thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible."); See also  Basho:

The silence–

the voice of the cicadas

penetrates the rocks.

August 11.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 11

Evening draws on 

lengthening the shadows and

smoothing the waters.

Each sound has a broad 

and deep relief of silence 

clearer than before. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1853

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 © 2009-2021

Aug. 11.

 5 A. M. — Up North Branch.

 A considerable fog.

 The weeds still covered by the flood, so that we have no Bidens Beckii.

 B. chrysanthemoides just out.

 The small, dull, lead-colored berries of the Viburnum dentatum now hang over the water.

 The Amphicarpæa monoica appears not to have bloomed.

 Chickweed ( Stellaria media ) appears the most constant flower and most regardless of seasons.

 Cerastium blooms still.

 Button-bush and mikania now in prime, and cardinals.

 Lilies rather scarce (? ), but methinks less infested with insects.

 The river sprinkled with meadow-hay afloat.

 P. M. – To Conantum.

 This is by some considered the warmest day of the year thus far; but, though the weather is melting hot, yet the river having been deepened and cooled by the rains, we have none of those bathing days of July,’52.

 Yesterday or day before, I heard a strange note, me thought from somebody’s poultry, and looking out saw, I think a bittern, go squawking over the yard — from the river southwestward.

 A bittern, flying over, mingles its squawk with the cackling of poultry.

 Did I not hear a willet yesterday? At the Swamp Bridge Brook, flocks of cow troopials now about the cows.

 These and other blackbirds, flying in flocks now, make a great chattering, and also the bobolinks.

 What a humming of insects about the sweet-scented clethra blossoms, honey-bees and others, and flies and various kinds of wasps!

I see some naked viburnum berries red and some purple now.

 There are berries which men do not use, like choke-berries, which here in Hubbard’s Swamp grow in great profusion and blacken the bushes.

 How much richer we feel for this unused abundance and superfluity! Nature would not appear so rich, the pro fusion so rich, if we knew a use for everything.

 Plums and grapes, about which gardeners make such an ado, are in my opinion poor fruits compared with melons.

 The great rains have caused those masses of small green high blueberries, which commonly do not get ripe, to swell and ripen, so that their harvest fulfills the promise of their spring.

 I never saw so many, — even in swamps where a fortnight ago there was no promise.

 What a helpless creature a horse is out of his element or off his true ground!

Saw John Potter’s horse mired in his meadow, which has been softened by the rains.

 His small hoofs afford no support.

 He is furious, as if mad, and is liable to sprain himself seriously.

 His hoofs go through the crust like stakes, into the soft batter beneath, though the wheels go well enough.

 Woodbine is reddening in some places, and ivy too.

 Collinsonia just begun.

 Found — rather garrulous (his breath smelled of rum).

 Was complaining that his sons did not get married.

 He told me his age when he married (thirty-odd years ago), how his wife bore him eight children and 369 then died, and in what respect she proved herself a true woman, etc., etc.

 I saw that it was as impossible to speak of marriage to such a man — to the mass of men-as of poetry.

 Its advantages and disadvantages are not such as they have dreamed of.

 Their marriage is prose or worse.

 To be married at least should be the one poetical act of a man's life.

 If you fail in this respect, in what respect will you succeed?

The marriage which the mass of men comprehend is but little better than the marriage of the beasts.

 It would be just as fit for such a man to discourse to you on the love of flowers, thinking of them as hay for his oxen.

 The difference between men affects every phase of their lives, so that at last they cannot communicate with each other.

 An old man of average worth, who spoke with the downrightness and frankness of age, not exaggerating aught, said he was troubled about his water, etc., — altogether of the earth.

 

 Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height.

 I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.

 Evening draws on, smoothing the waters and lengthening the shadows, now half an hour or more before sundown.

 What constitutes the charm of this hour of the day?

Is it the condensing of dews in the air just beginning, or the grateful increase of shadows in the landscape?

Some fiat has gone forth and stilled the ripples of the lake; each sound and sight has acquired ineffable beauty.

 How agreeable, when the sun shines at this angle, to stand on one side and look down on flourishing sprout-lands or copses, where the cool shade is mingled in greater proportion than before with the light!

 Broad, shallow lakes of shadow stretch over the lower portions of the top of the woods.

 A thousand little cavities are filling with coolness.

 Hills and the least inequalities in the ground begin to cast an obvious shadow.

 The shadow of an elm stretches quite across the meadow.

 I see pigeons (?) in numbers fly up from the stubble.

 I hear some young bluebird’s plaintive warble near me and some young hawks uttering a puling scream from time to time across the pond, to whom life is yet so novel.

 From far over the pond and woods I hear also a farmer calling loudly to his cows, in the clear still air, “ Ker, ker, ker, ker.”

 

 What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this severe and placid season of the day, most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the dampness and twilight of evening!

 The serene hour, the Muses ’hour, the season of reflection!

 It is commonly desecrated by being made tea time.

 It begins perhaps with the very earliest condensation of moisture in the air, when the shadows of hills are first observed, and the breeze begins to go down, and birds begin again to sing.

 The pensive season.

 It is earlier than the “chaste eve” of the poet.

 Bats have not come forth.

 It is not twilight.

 There is no dew yet on the grass, and still less any early star in the heavens.

 It is the turning-point between afternoon and evening.

 The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious.

 It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than  before.

 The clearing of the air by condensation of mists more than balances the increase of shadows.

 Chaste eve is merely preparing with “dewy finger” to draw o’er all “the gradual dusky veil.

 ”Not yet“ the plough man homeward plods his weary way, ” nor owls nor beetles are abroad.

 It is a season somewhat earlier than is celebrated by the poets.

 There is not such a sense of lateness and approaching night as they describe.

 I mean when the first emissaries of Evening come to smooth the lakes and streams.

 The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.

 He postpones tea indefinitely.

 Thought has taken her siesta.

 Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence

To be married should 

be the one poetical 

act of a man's life.