I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed? -- The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

April 16, 2017

 I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed?

Walking the dog just after 7 AM I notice that I am hearing a hermit thrush singing a call so familiar it seems like it had always been here.  The world can never be more beautiful. 

It’s hard to explain. I was present with the song until a moment when I noticed it. Then there was a flood of excitement and confusion whether the bird had been singing all along, or even yesterday. But clearly now later as I write, the bird has just first arrived. And, as I walk around the trails near the house with the dog this song both stops and starts —as the bird does not sing constantly— and the song also comes in and out of consciousness -- especially returning up the stairs, projecting my thoughts forward into the day and room ahead, the voice  comes to me again: it is here in my presence but I hear it only now. To hear without listening. To listen without hearing. To hear with the side of the ear.  zphx ~April 16, 2022 7AM

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

See   May 10, 1853 ("All at once a strain that sounds like old times and recalls a hundred associations. Not at once do I remember that a year has elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink is formed in my mind.”);May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); April 5, 1860 ("Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general."); April 15, 1859 ("[W]hether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in . . . If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them "); April 30, 1856 ("I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work."); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! . . .for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
I

The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

Aprill 6. l hear my first hermit thrush sing east of the house while walking the dog in the morning. April 6, 2025. 

April 10. Hear my first hermit thrush midafternoon at the fort. Vreee vreeen; then the song. She is looking at a trillium at the noisy stream and does not hear. April 10, 2021

April 10. I hear the vreeen call at sunset north of the house after a drizzly day, distinctly as a new sound and think hermit -- but no song.  April 10, 2024

April 11. On the way back on the road for the first time this spring  we both hear the hermits' song in the hemlocks  We stop and listen.  Heard the call note last night.

We stop and listen -

the song of the Hermit Thrush

among the hemlocks

April 11, 2024

April 12. The ice is out on Lake Champlain. April 12, 1856.  

April 12. This morning  it comes to me that I am listening to a hermit thrush while walking the dog. April 12, 2023

April 14. Hear my first hermit thrush of the season this morning before dawn on my way to work -- later I learn the ice is out of the Broad lake and it reaches 80° in Burlington. April 14, 2014

April 14. Just at dusk we hear the hermit thrush ( I for the first time) and then later in Eastland its clucking sound. I have to be reminded it is the hermit.  April 14, 2017 

April 15. Open the garage early this morning and hear the hermit thrush after a night of rain. April 15, 2019

April 16. She says that hermit thrush is back. Not singing, but clucking. April 16, 2016

April 16. A quarter moon in the sky follows us back through the old growth trees, coming home after our walk at dusk,  orange sky in the west, to end a perfect day we first hear the hermit thrush. April 16, 2016

April 16. I hear the hermit thrush singing it’s familiar song near the driveway first thing in the morning. April  16, 2022 

April 16.  I first hear the Hermit thrush singing this morning, west of the house. April 16, 2026

April 18.  Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. April 18, 1854.

April 18. Coming back next to the pond. There we stop and listen to the Hermit Thrush. The first clear song. Evoking memories. April 18, 2024 

April 19.  First thrush heard in the morning. April 19, 2015.

April 20. H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush. April 20, 1861

April 21. At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves.  April 21, 1855

April 21. The hermit thrush loudly sounds it's vreeen note but does not sing. April 21, 2017.

April 21,  At the top of the upper ramp She sees a hermit thrush.  April 21, 2018

April 24. Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.  April 24, 1856

April 25. Hermit thrush is back! The first day. Perhaps five in one spot. She teaches me how to distinguish its voice from the wood thrush. Aprill 25, 2009 

April 27. What a shy fellow my hermit thrush!  April 27, 1854

May 4.  Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?  May  4, 1855 

May 6. And on the way home at dusk the hermit thrush and Woodthrush (ee-oo-LAY) alternate.  May 6, 2017. 

May 7. A wood [sic] thrush which . . . betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch. May 7, 1852 . 

May 12. Hermit thrushes are still singing in the woods in the nearly complete darkness. May 12, 2016 

 

May 29. Dusk. We go out after the rain to find the Lady's slipper.  The woods are dripping wet, the hemlocks' bright new growth just beginning to show.   The hermit thrush sings. Along the cliff edge three Lady's slippers in bloom.  May 29, 2016

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HDT needed brushing up on his thrushes. See May 7, 1852 ("A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch.”); May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”);; April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?).

 

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

First of all a man must see, before he can say.

November 1.

November 1, 2021

It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately, to digest some experience cleanly, to say “yes” and “no” with authority, to make a square edge, to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact, even as a waterfowl an eel, as it flies over the meadows, thus stocking new waters.

First of all a man must see, before he can say.

Statements are made but partially. Things are said with reference to certain conventions or existing institutions, not absolutely.

A fact truly and absolutely stated is taken out of the region of common sense and acquires a mythologic or universal significance. Say it and have done with it. Express it without expressing yourself.  See not with the eye of science, which is barren, nor of youthful poetry, which is impotent. But taste the world and digest it.

It would seem as if things got said but rarely and by chance.

As you see, so at length will you say.

When facts are seen superficially, they are seen as they lie in relation to certain institutions, perchance.

But I would have them expressed as more deeply seen, with deeper references; so that the hearer or reader cannot recognize them or apprehend their significance from the platform of common life, but it will be necessary that he be in a sense translated in order to understand them; when the truth respecting his things shall naturally exhale from a man like the odor of the muskrat from the coat of the trapper.

At first blush a man is not capable of reporting truth; he must be drenched and saturated with it first.

What was enthusiasm in the young man must become temperament in the mature man. Without excitement, heat, or passion, he will survey the world which excited the youth and threw him off his balance.

As all things are significant, so all words should be significant.

It is a fault which attaches to the speaker, to speak flippantly or superficially of anything.

Of what use are words which do not move the hearer, are not oracular and fateful? 

A style in which the matter is all in all, and the manner nothing at all.

In your thoughts no more than in your walks do you meet men.

In moods I find such privacy as in dismal swamps and on mountain-tops.

Man recognizes laws little enforced, and he condescends to obey them. In the moment that he feels his superiority to them as compulsatory, he, as it were, courteously reënacts them but to obey them.

This on my way to Conantum, 2.30 P. M. 

November 1, 2018

It is a bright, clear, warm November day. I feel blessed. I love my life. I warm toward all nature.

The woods are now much more open than when I last observed them; the leaves have fallen, and they let in light, and I see the sky through them as through a crow's wing in every direction.

For the most part only the pines and oaks (white?) retain their leaves. At a distance, accordingly, the forest is green and reddish.

The crickets now sound faintly and from very deep in the sod.

Minott says that G. M. Barrett told him that Amos Baker told him that during Concord Fight he went over behind the hill to the old Whittaker place (Sam Buttrick's) and stayed. Yet he was described as the only survivor of Concord Fight. Received a pension for running away? 

Fall dandelions look bright still.

The grass has got a new greenness in spots.

At this season there are stranger sparrows or finches about.

The skunk-cabbage is already pushing up again.

The alders have lost their leaves, and the willows except a few shrivelled ones.

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? 

The rain of night before last has raised the river at least two feet, and the meadows wear a late-fall look. The naked and weedy stems of the button-bush are suddenly submerged; you no longer look for pickerel from the bridges. The shallow and shrunken shore is also submerged.

I see so far and distinctly, my eyes seem to slide in this clear air.

The river is peculiarly sky-blue to-day, not dark as usual.

It is all in the air.

The cinquefoil on Conantum.

Counted one hundred and twenty five crows in one straggling flock moving westward.

The red shrub oak leaves abide on the hills.

The witch-hazels have mostly lost their blossoms, perhaps on account of the snow.

The ground wears its red carpet under the pines.

The pitch pines show new buds at the end of their plumes. How long this?

Saw a canoe birch by road beyond the Abel Minott house; distinguished it thirty rods off by the chalky whiteness of its limbs.
It is of a more unspotted, transparent, and perhaps pinkish white than the common, has considerable branches as well as white ones, and its branches do not droop and curl downward like that. There will be some loose curls of bark about it.

The common birch is finely branched and has frequently a snarly head; the former is a more open and free-growing tree.

If at a distance you see the birch near its top forking into two or more white limbs, you may know it for a canoe birch. You can tell where it has grown after the wood has turned to mould by a small fragment of its bark still left,-if it divides readily.

The common birch is more covered with moss, has the aspect of having grown more slowly, and has many more branches.

I have heard of a man in Maine who copied the whole Bible on to birch bark.

It was so much easier than to write that sentence which the birch tree stands for.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1851

I feel blessed. I love my life. I warm toward all nature. See July 16, 1851 ("I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world.");  August 15, 1851 ("May I love and revere myself above all the gods that men have ever invented.")

At first blush a man is not capable of reporting truth; he must be drenched and saturated with it first. See November 1, 1857 ("A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. ");  See also December 16, 1837("The fact will one day flower out into a truth.");June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”); February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success . . . I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant . . . I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); February 23. 1860 ("A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.")

It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately. See May 21, 1851 ("I think that the existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts."); November 9, 1851 ("Facts should only be as the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology which I am writing;. . .facts to tell who I am, and where I have been or what I have thought:. . . I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); February 18, 1852 ("I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”); May 10, 1853 (“I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant”); May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. ”); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)

It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. See November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air."). See also November 7, 1855 ("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 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November"); see also note to November 3, 1857 ("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,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Counted one hundred and twenty five crows in one straggling flock moving westward. See November 1, 1853 ("I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.") See also October 20, 1859 ("I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations."); October 29, 1855 ("I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.");  October 28, 1860 ("See a very large flock of crows").Compare March 5, 1854 ("And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.") Also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The American Crow

November 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 1

It is a bright clear

warm November day.

I feel blessed.

I love my life.

I warm toward all nature.

Gossamer cobwebs

shimmer in the air as a

drifting storm of light

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First of all a man must see, before he can say.

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-511101

This tallest aspen.

The other day

Walking through the woods

I came to a tall aspen

that I had not seen

standing in the midst

of the woods in the next town,

leaves yellowish green.

All summer – and it

chances for so many years  –

it has been concealed.

Perhaps the largest

of its species that I know,

I stumbled on it

by mere accident

after walking a couple

hours the other day.

Peculiar in 

its solitude it seemed the

obscurest of trees.

From this hilltop

Now to my surprise

a mile off across the pond

I see one large tree

which I distinguish

by form and color to be

my new acquaintance

Tremulifomis

the only yellow I see –

my tallest aspen

the most distinct tree

in all the landscape coming

half-way to meet me

the most distinct tree 

in all the landscape, as if 

it recognized me.

October 31, 1858

October 29, 2022

See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.") and December 15 , 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens; November 4, 1858 (“The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different . . .We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it”); November 28, 1858 (“And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!”)

October 31, 2023

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, 

I came to the base of a tall aspen, 

which I do not remember to have seen before, 

standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, 

still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. 

It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. 

It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, 

and if I had been sent to find it, 

I should have thought it to be, as we say, 

like looking for a needle in a haymow.

All summer, and it chances for so many years, 

it has been concealed to me; 

but now, walking in a different direction,

to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, 

and looking off just before sunset, 

when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, 

I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 
Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity.

It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, 

and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. 

Thus it plays its part in the choir. 

I made a minute of its locality,

glad to know where so large an aspen grew. 

Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity.

It seemed the obscurest of trees. 

Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence . . .

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, 

coming half-way to meet me,
and now the acquaintance 

thus propitiously formed will,
I trust, be permanent.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

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/HDTaspen

Each phase of nature is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention.

November 8. 

P. M. — To Boulder Field.

 Goodwin, laying wall at Miss Ripley’s, observed to me going by, “Well, it seems that __ thought that he had lived long enough.” He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. A boy slept in the chamber with him, and, hearing a noise, got and found  __  on the floor with both his jugular veins cut, but his windpipe whole. He said to the boy, “Take the razor and cut deeper,” but the boy ran, and __ died, and Garfield said it was about time, for __, in revenge for being sent to the house of correction, had set fire to a pile of wood of his, that long pile by the road side beyond William Wheeler’s, that I stood under in a rain once.  __ probably burned Witherell’s house too, and perhaps Boynton’s stable. 

The red osier at Mrs. Simmons’s is quite bare; how long? Her hawthorn is still quite leafy and pretty, yellow-brown, dotted. A thorn at Hall’s fence is dark scarlet and pretty. There are many leaves on the buckthorn still.

Common thorn bushes, long since bare, when many grow together in clumps, make another such a smoke, though smaller, as the maples, — the same color. I can often distinguish the bush by this. 

Alders are a very dark gray, sort of iron gray, and, if near enough, you see dark lines (the stems) and specks (the fruit) like cinders, like a very dense, dark, and unconsumed uliginous smoke, in which many cinders rise. 

Those trees and bushes which grow in dense masses and have many fine twigs, being bare, make an agreeable misty impression where there are a myriad retreating points to receive the eye, not a hard, abrupt wall; just as, in the sky, the visual ray is cushioned on clouds, unless it is launched into the illimitable ether. The eye is less worn and wearied, not to say wounded, by looking at these mazes where the seer is not often conscious of seeing anything. 

It is well that the eye is so rarely caught and detained by any object in one whole hemisphere of its range, i. e. the sky. It enjoys everlasting holiday on this side.  Only the formless clouds and the objectless ether are presented to it. For they are nervous who see many faces in the clouds. Corresponding to the clouds in the sky are those mazes now on the earth. 

Nature disposes of her naked stems so softly as not to put our eyes out. She makes them a smoke, or stationary cloud, on this side or that, of whose objective existence we rarely take cognizance. She does not expect us to notice them. She calls our attention to the maple swamp more especially in October. 

There is also the coarse maze produced by an oak wood (when nearly all the leaves are fallen), in which, however, the large boughs reflecting the light have considerable distinctness, and that of the forest in general. 

I thought, from a small specimen, that the brushy yellow birch tops were of the same hue with the alders. [Vide Nov. 11th.] 

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness, now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow.[I read that snow fell two or three inches deep in Bangor yesterday morning.] Some green she thinks so good for our eyes, like blue, that she never banishes it entirely, but has created evergreens. 

It is remarkable how little any but a lichenist will observe on the bark of trees. The mass of men have but the vaguest and most indefinite notion of mosses, as a sort of shreds and fringes, and the world in which the lichenist dwells is much further from theirs than one side of this earth from the other. They see bark as if they saw it not. These objects which, though constantly visible, are rarely looked at are a sort of eye-brush. 

Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not too distinct and obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. 

It is like a silent but sympathizing companion in whose company we retain most of the advantages of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking in a strain foreign to the place. I know of but one or two persons with whom I can afford to walk. 

With most the walk degenerates into a mere vigorous use of your legs, ludicrously purposeless, while you are discussing some mighty argument, each one having his say, spoiling each other’s day, worrying one another with conversation, hustling one another with our conversation. I know of no use in the walking part in this case, except that we may seem to be getting on together toward some goal; but of course we keep our original distance all the way. Jumping every wall and ditch with vigor in the vain hope of shaking your companion off. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, though they sit at opposite points of [the] compass, to see nature and do the honors to one who does not. 

Animals generally see things in the vacant way I have described. They rarely see anything but their food, or some real or imaginary foe. I never saw but one cow looking into the sky. 

Lichens as they affect the scenery, as picturesque objects described by Gilpin or others, are one thing; as they concern the lichenist, quite another. These are the various grays and browns which give November its character. 

There are also some red mazes, like the twigs of the white maple and our Cornus sericea, etc. (the red osier, too, further north), and some distinct yellow ones, as willow twigs, which are most interesting in spring. The silvery abeles are steadily , falling nowadays. The chalky white under side of these leaves is remarkable. None of our leaves is so white. 

I think I admire again about this time the still bright red or crimson fruit of the sumach, now when not only its own but most other leaves have fallen and there are few bright tints, it is now so distinct on its twigs. Your attention is not distracted by its brilliant leaves now. 

I go across N. Barrett’s land and over the road beyond his house. The aspect of the Great Meadows is now nearly uniform, the new and exposed grass being nearly as brown and sere as that which was not cut. Thus Nature has been blending and harmonizing the colors here where man had interfered. 

I wandered over bare fields where the cattle, lately turned out, roamed restless and unsatisfied with the feed; I dived into a rustling young oak wood where not a green leaf was to be seen; I climbed to the geological axis of elevation and clambered over curly-pated rocks whose strata are on their edges, amid the rising woods; and again I thought, They are all gone surely, and left me alone. Not even a man Friday remains. What nutriment can I extract from these bare twigs? Starvation stares me in the face. 

“Nay, nay!” said a nuthatch, making its way, head downward, about a bare hickory close by.

 “The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat. Only the superfluous has been swept away. Now we behold the naked truth. If at any time the weather is too bleak and cold for you, keep the sunny side of the trunk, for there is a wholesome and inspiring warmth such as the summer never afforded. There are the winter mornings, with the sun on the oak wood tops. While buds sleep, thoughts wake.”

  (“Hear! hear!” screamed the jay from a neighboring copse, where I had heard a tittering for some time.)

“Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” 

And then the speaker shifted to another tree, further off, and reiterated his assertions, and his mate at a distance confirmed them; and I heard a suppressed chuckle from a red squirrel that heard the last remark, but had kept silent and invisible all the while. Is that you? “Yes-sir-ee,” said he. 

Then, running down a slanting bough, he called out rather impudently, “Look here! just get a snug-fitting fur coat and a pair of fur gloves like mine, and you may laugh at a northeast storm,” and then he wound up with a slang phrase, in his own lingo, accompanied by a flourish of his tail, just as a newsboy twirls his fingers with his thumb on his nose and inquires, “Does your mother know you are out?” 

The wild pear tree on Ponkawtasset has some yellow leaves still. 

The now more noticeable green radical leaves of the buttercup in the russet pastures remind me of the early spring to come, of which they will offer the first evidence. 

Now, too, I can see (for the same reason) where grows our only patch of broom, a quarter of a. mile off, it such a distinct, somewhat yellowish, green. 

Already the creeping juniper is a ripe glaucous green, with a distinct ruddy tinge to the upper surface, —— the whole bush a ripe tint like a fruit. 

I stand in Ebby Hubbard’s yellow birch swamp, ad miring some gnarled and shaggy picturesque old birches there, which send out large knee-like limbs near the ground, while the brook, raised by the late rain, winds fuller than usual through the rocky swamp. I thought with regret how soon these trees, like the black birches that grew on the hill near by, would be all cut off, and there would be almost nothing of the old Concord left, and we should be reduced to read old deeds in order to be reminded of such things, —deeds, at least, in which some old and revered bound trees are mentioned. These will be the only proof at last that they ever existed. 

Pray, farmers, keep some old woods to match the old deeds. Keep them for history’s sake, as specimens of what the township was. Let us not be reduced to a mere paper evidence, to deeds kept in a chest or secretary, when not so much as the bark of the paper birch will be left for evidence, about its decayed stump. 

The sides of the old Carlisle road where it is low and moist are (and have for a long time been), for many rods together and a rod in width, brown or cinnamon-colored with the withered dicksonia fern, not like the brown of trees (their withered leaves), but a peculiar cinnamon-brown. The bare huckleberry bushes and the sweet ferns are draped with them as a kind of mourning.

Solidago puberula still out, for you see a few bright yellow solidago flowers long after they are generally turned to a dirty-white fuzzy top. 

Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week. He shows me samphire, plucked three weeks ago in Brighton, when it was a very brilliant crimson still. 

Looking from Pratt’s window at sunset, I saw that  purple or rosy light reflected from some old chestnut rails on the hilltop before his house. Methinks it is pinkish, even like the old cow-droppings in the pastures. So universally does Nature blush at last. The very herbage which has gone through the stomachs and intestines of the cow acquires at last a faint pinkish tinge. 

The button-bush balls are now blackish (really dark brown) and withered, looking much blacker against the light than a month ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1858

Each phase of nature is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. See March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye"); November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”);  July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.); November 4, 1858 ("All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. "); November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.",)

Lichens as they affect the scenery, as picturesque objects described by Gilpin or others, are one thing; as they concern the lichenist, quite another. See 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.”); March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk"); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”).; January 26, 1858 ("The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed.")

"While buds sleep, thoughts wake,” said the nuthatch, “Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” See January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.")

With most the walk degenerates into a mere vigorous use of your legs, ludicrously purposeless, while you are discussing some mighty argument, each one having his say, spoiling each other’s day. See August 31, 1856 ("Some are so inconsiderate as to ask to walk or sail with me regularly every day. . . Suppose a man asks, not you to go with him, but to go with you! Often, I would rather undertake to shoulder a barrel of pork and carry it a mile than take into my company a man."); November 25, 1857 ("I believe there is no man with whom I can associate who will not, comparatively speaking, spoil my afternoon"); September 16, 1859 ("Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons.");

The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.

November 4

November 4, 2018

A rainy day. 

Called to C. from the outside of his house the other afternoon in the rain. At length he put his head out the attic window, and I inquired if he didn’t want to take a walk, but he excused himself, saying that he had a cold. “But,” added he, “you can take so much the longer walk. Double it.” 

On the 1st, when I stood on Poplar Hill, I saw a man, far off by the edge of the river, splitting billets off a stump. Suspecting who it was, I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. As surely as the ants which he disturbs go into winter quarters in the stump when the weather becomes cool, so does G. revisit the stumpy shores with his axe. As usual, his powder-flask peeped out from a pocket on his breast, his gun was slanted-over a stump near by, and his boat lay a little further along. He had been at work laying wall still further off, and now, near the end of the day, betook himself to those pursuits which he loved better still. It would be no amusement to me to see a gentleman buy his winter wood. It is to see G. get his. I helped him tip over a stump or two. He said that the owner of the land had given him leave to get them out, but it seemed to me a condescension for him to ask any man’s leave to grub up these stumps. The stumps to those who can use them, I say, — to those who will split them. He might as well ask leave of the farmer to shoot the musquash and the meadow-hen, or I might as well ask leave to look at the landscape. Near by were large hollows in the ground, now grassed over, where he had got out white oak stumps in previous years. But, strange to say, the town does not like to have him get his fuel in this way. They would rather the stumps would rot in the ground, or be floated down-stream to the sea. They have almost without dissent agreed on a different mode of living, with their division of labor. They would have him stick to laying wall, and buy corded wood for his fuel, as they do. He has drawn up an old bridge sleeper and cut his name in it for security, and now he gets into his boat and pushes off in the twilight, saying he will go and see what Mr. Musquash is about. 

When the Haverhill fishermen told me that they could distinguish the Concord River stuff (i. e. driftwood) I see they were right, for much of it is chestnut rails, and of these they have but few, and those in the southern part of New Hampshire. 

If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of the town and look over the forest, you will see, amid the brown of other oaks, which are now withered, and the green of the pines, the bright-red tops or crescents of the scarlet oaks, very equally and thickly distributed on all sides, even to the horizon. Complete trees standing exposed on the edges of the forest, where you have never suspected them, or their tops only in the recesses of the forest surface, or perhaps towering above the surrounding trees, or reflecting a warm rose red from the very edge of the horizon in favorable lights. All this you will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. 

Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is at this season sere and brown. Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, —not a grain more. 

The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. 

In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name. 

Take one of our selectmen and put him on the highest hill in the township, and tell him to look! What, probably, would he see? What would he select to look at? Sharpening his sight to the utmost, and putting on the glasses that suited him best, aye, using a spy-glass if he liked, straining his optic nerve to its utmost, and making a full report. Of course, he would see a Brocken spectre of himself. 

Now take Julius Caesar, or Emanuel Swedenborg, or a Fiji-Islander, and set him up there! Let them compare notes afterward. Would it appear that they had enjoyed the same prospect? For aught we know, as strange a man as any of these is always at our elbows. It does not appear that anybody saw Shakespeare when he was about in England looking off, but only some of his raiment. 

Why, it takes a sharpshooter to bring down even such trivial game as snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what he is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance if he fired at random into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so it is with him that shoots at beauty. Not till the sky falls will he catch larks, unless he is a trained sportsman. He will not bag any if he does not already know its seasons and haunts and the color of its wing, —if he has not dreamed of it, so that he can anticipate it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step, shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in cornfields. 

The sportsman trains himself, dresses, and watches unweariedly, and loads and primes for his particular game awake and asleep, with gun and paddle and boat, he goes out after meadow-hens, — which most of his townsmen never saw nor dreamed of, — paddles for miles against a head wind, and therefore he gets them. He had them half-way into his bag when he started, and has only to shove them down. 

The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. The hen scratches, and finds her food right under where she stands; but such is not the way with the hawk. The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows. It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it, with the feathers on. He will keep himself supplied by firing up his chimney. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and honk when they get there. Twenty musquash have the refusal of each one of his traps before it is empty.

H.D Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1858

Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax . . .one of the phenomena of the season.  See October 29,1857 ("Melvin asked if I had seen “Pink-eye,” meaning Goodwin.");  November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. . . . while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips ")

The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. See Autumnal Tints. and February 22, 1859 ("Go to Worcester to lecture in a parlor") Also October 31, 1858 ("After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before")

You will see, if you are prepared to see it, — if you look for it. See  July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”) . Also November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.”);  September 2, 1856; ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”); September 9, 1858 (“A man sees only what concerns him.”);  Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”); February 25, 1859 ("I am more than ever convinced . . . that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.");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.”);  Compare March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. “); March 29, 1853 (“It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”) ; December 11, 1855; ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”)

Before I see it,

the idea of a thing

occupies my thoughts.