A Book of the Seasons: The Witch Hazel (under consruction)

  I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau,

April 18, 1852

Witch-hazel in prime –

yellow leaves by their color

concealing flowers.

October 4, 1858

The witch-hazel has one of the broadest leaves now. May 11, 1859,

The witch-hazel on Dwarf Sumach Hill looks as if it would begin to blossom in a day or two. September 8, 1854

Witch-hazel out, maybe a day or two, in some places,  but the Browns do not think the fringed gentian out yet. September 8, 1856 (Brattleboro)

Witch-hazel opened –

a third or half of its leaves

are yellow and brown.

The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th. (It was abundantly out yesterday on Wachusett Mountain, where it is probably more exposed to the sun and drier. Sophia was there.) Its leaves, a third or a half of them, are yellow and brown. September 15, 1854

The witch-hazel at Conantum just begun here and there; some may have been out two or three days. Yet I saw the witch-hazel out in Brattleboro September 8th, then apparently for a day or two .

 It is still a question, perhaps, though unquestionably the gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel. September 18, 1856

The witch-hazel fruit appears to be now opening. The double-fruited stone splits and reveals the two shining black oblong seeds. It has a peculiarly formed nut, in pretty clusters, clothed, as it were, in close-fitting buckskin, amid the now yellowing leaves. September 18, 1859

From the observation of this year I should say that the fringed gentian opened before the witch-hazel.  September 18, 1859

Heard in the night a snapping sound and the fall of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found that it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite across the chamber, hard and stony as these nuts are.  For several days they are shooting their shining black seeds about my chamber.  September 21, 1859

 

I suspect that it is not when the witch-hazel nut first gapes open that the seeds fly out, for I see many (if not most of them) open first with the seeds in them; but when I release a seed (it being still held by its base), it flies as I have said. I think that its slippery base is compressed by the unyielding shell, which at length expels it, just as I can make one fly by pressing it and letting it slip from between my thumb and finger. It appears to fit close to the shell at its base, even after the shell gapes. 

September 21, 1859

Witch-hazel well out.   September 24, 1853

Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. September 27, 1857

The witch-hazel at Lee's Cliff, in a fair situation, has but begun to blossom; has not been long out, so that I think it must be later than the gentian. Its leaves are yellowed.   September 29, 1853

October 2.   The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here, though a week ago last Wednesday they were fully changed at Bangor. There is fully a fortnight's difference, and methinks more. The witch-hazel, too, was more forward there. October 2, 1853

October 2.  The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively. As the witch-hazel is raised above frost and can afford to be later, for this reason also I think it is so.  October 2, 1853

Witch-hazel in prime,

Yellow leaves by their color

conceal the flowers.

October 4. Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime. The leaves are often richly spotted reddish and greenish brown. October 4, 1858

The witch-hazel here

is in full blossom on this

magical hillside.

October 9.  The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. Some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-colored they strew the ground. It is an extremely interesting plant, — October and November's child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally flourishes, is untouched. It stands here in the shadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight from over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other. I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. While its leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then, is indeed a spring. All the year is a spring . . .When I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects to extract honey from its flowers, – that perchance they yielded no honey, – I saw a bee upon it. How important, then, to the bees this late-blossoming plant! October 9, 1851

October 10. The blossoming of spring flowers, — not to mention the witch-hazel, — the notes of spring birds, the springing of grain and grass and other plants. October 10, 1851

October 10.  As I stood amid the witch-hazels near Flint's Pond, a flock of a dozen chickadees came flitting and singing about me with great ado, — a most cheering and enlivening sound, — with incessantday-day-dayand a fine wiry strain between whiles, flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me; then suddenly, their curiosity satiated, they flit by degrees further away and disappear, and I hear with regret their retreatingday-day-days.  October 10, 1851

October 11.  Witch-hazel, grape, smooth sumach, and common hazel are partly fallen, — some of the first-named wholly, — yet full of bloom. It is a cool seat under the witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! The leaves are greenish and brownish yellow. October 11, 1858

October 13.  I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around, which at first I refer to the decaying leaves. October 13, 1859

October 16. Am surprised to find an abundance of witch-hazel, now at the height of its change, where S. Wheeler cut off, at the bend of the Assabet. The tallest bushes are bare, though in bloom, but the lowest are full of leaves, many of them green, but chiefly clear and handsome yellow of various shades, from a pale lemon in the shade or within the bush to a darker and warmer yellow with out. Some are even a hue of crimson; some green, with bright yellow along the veins.  October 16, 1857

October 18. By the brook, witch-hazel, as an underwood, is in the height of its change, but elsewhere exposed large bushes are bare. October 18, 1858

October 19. Wachusett Mountain.The prevailing tree on this mountain, top and all, is apparently the red oak, which toward and on the top is very low and spreading. On the sides, beside red oak, are rock maple, yellow birch, lever-wood, beech, chestnut, shagbark, hemlock, striped maple, witch-hazel, etc., etc.  October 19, 1854

October 19. Witch-hazel is  in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone. They form large clumps on the hillside there, even thirty to fifty stems from one to two or three inches in diameter and the highest twelve feet high, falling over on every side. The now imbrowned ferns around indicate the moist soil which they like. October 19, 1856

October 19, 2018

October 19.  Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare. October 19, 1859

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

October 23, 2020

October 23. The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved. October 23, 1852

October 23.  I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. Witch hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. October 23, 1857

October 26.  The witch-hazel is still freshly in flower. October 26, 1855

November 1.  The witch-hazels have mostly lost their blossoms, perhaps on account of the snow. November 1, 1851

November 1. I see much witch-hazel in the swamp by the south end of the Abiel Wheeler grape meadow. Some of it is quite fresh and bright. Its bark is alternate white and smooth reddish-brown, the small twigs looking as if gossamer had lodged on and draped them. What a lively spray it has, both in form and color! Truly it looks as if it would make divining-rods, – as if its twigs knew where the true gold was and could point to it. The gold is in their late blossoms. Let them alone and they never point down to earth. They impart to the whole hillside a speckled, parti-colored look.  November 1, 1857

November 2. The witch-hazel appears to be nearly out of bloom, most of the flowers withering or frost-bitten. November 2, 1853

November 4. Saw witch-hazels out of bloom, some still fresh.  November 4, 1852

November 6. 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.   November 6, 1853

November 14.  Probably the witch-hazel and many other flowers lingered till the 11th, when it was colder. The last leaves and flowers (?) may be said to fall about the middle of November. November 14, 1858

November 15. The river has risen yet higher than last night, so that I cut across Hubbard's meadow with ease. Take up a witch-hazel with still some fresh blossoms. November 15, 1853

November 24. At Spanish Brook Path, the witch-hazel (one flower) lingers.  November 24, 1859

December 9. A few petals of the witch-hazel still hold on. A man tells me he saw a violet to-day. December 9, 1852

December 19. The witch-hazel is covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still remaining. December 19, 1850

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

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 ©  2009-2025

Saw Ktaadn from a hill.

September 24

Saturday. 

Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor on the road to Pushaw. It is about eighty miles from Bangor. This was the nearest point from which we made out to see it. 

In the afternoon, walked up the Kenduskieg. 

White golden-rod, fall dandelion, hog peanut, Solidago arguta and altissima, Aster macrophyllus (?), and red maple (?). 

Witch-hazel well out. 

Epilobium coloratum, Solidago squarrosa, S. latifolia, Aster cordifolius (?). 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1853

Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor See September 21, 1853 ("Rained all day, which prevented the view of Ktaadn, otherwise to be seen in very many places . . . Reached Bangor at dark.")

The Kenduskeag Stream flows from the northwest into the Penobscot at Bangor.

White golden-rod . . . Solidago arguta and altissima . . . Solidago squarrosa, S. latifolia. See September 24, 1854 ("Solidago nemorosa . . . generally withered or dim"); September 24, 1856 ("Early S. stricta, done some time. . . S. altissima, much past prime . . . S. bicolor . . . in prime . . S. lalifolia, in prime..") See also  July 31, 1857 ("The commonest solidago on the East Branch, Solidago squarrosa."): August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season"); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta. . .; 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom. Then there is the odora, 5th, out some time, but not common; and, 6th, the bicolor, just begun in some places"); August 24, 1853 ("The altissima . . . is just beginning to be abundant. Its tops a foot or more broad, with numerous recurved racemes on every side, with yellow and yellowing triangular points. It is the most conspicuous of all . . . Solidago latifolia not yet."); August 31, 1853 (" The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing . . . goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head"); September 1, 1856 ("Solidago stricta, still very abundant, though probably a little past prime. S. gigantea, say in prime. S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant. S. altissima, perhaps in prime. S. odora, in prime, or maybe a little past. . . .S. bicolor, not quite in prime, but common . . .S. latifolia, not yet at all.");  September 6, 1856 ("Solidago arguta very common, apparently in prime"); September 15, 1856 ("Early Solidago stricta (that is, arguta) done "); September 12, 1859 ("The golden-rod on the top and the slope of the hill are the Solidago nemoralis, at the base the taller S. altissima. ); September 16, 1857 ("Solidago latifolia in prime at Botrychium Swamp.");  September 21, 1856 ("Solidago altissima past prime . . .[On top of Cliff, behind the big stump] is a great place for white goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees.");  October 2, 1856 ("Solidago bicolor considerably past prime"); October 6, 1858 ("Solidago latifolia in bloom still, but always sparingly."); October 8, 1856 ("S. latifolia, far gone."); October 11, 1856 ("The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees."); October 20, 1852 ("Tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. ");September 19, 1857("Solidago arguta variety done, say a week or more.") [Solidago arguta in old usage, or (misapplied) solidago stricta, is solidago juncea (early goldenrod) ~Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts; see September 11, 1857 ("My old S. stricta (early form) must be S. Arguta var. juncea.")]

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

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. (All the year is a spring.)

 October 9

October 9, 2023

Heard two screech owls in the night.

Boiled a quart of acorns for breakfast, but found them not so palatable as raw, having acquired a bitterish taste, per chance from being boiled with the shells and skins; yet one would soon get accustomed to this.

The sound of foxhounds in the woods, heard now, at 9 A. M., in the village, reminds me of mild winter mornings.

2 P. M. - To Conantum.

In the maple woods the ground is strewn with new fallen leaves.

I hear the green locust again on the alders of the causeway, but he is turned a straw-color. The warm weather has revived them.

All the acorns on the same tree are not equally sweet. They appear to dry sweet.

From Conantum I see them getting hay from the meadow below the Cliffs. It must have been quite dry when cut.

The black ash has lost its leaves, and the white here is dry and brownish yellow, not having turned mulberry.

I see half a dozen snakes in this walk, green and striped (one very young striped one), who appear to be out enjoying the sun. They appear to make the most of the last warm days of the year.

The hills and plain on the opposite side of the river are covered with deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks.

On Lee's hillside by the pond, the old leaves of some pitch pines are almost of a golden-yellow hue, seen in the sunlight, a rich autumnal look. The green are, as it were, set in the yellow.

***

October 9, 2023

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. Some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-colored they strew the ground.

It is an extremely interesting plant, — October and November's child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally flourishes, is untouched.

It stands here in the shadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight from over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other.

I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. 

While its leaves fall, its 

blossoms spring. The autumn, then, 

is indeed a spring.

All the year is a spring.

I see two blackbirds high overhead, going south, but I am going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms.  It is a faery place.

This is a part of the immortality of the soul.

When I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects to extract honey from its flowers, – that perchance they yielded no honey, – I saw a bee upon it. How important, then, to the bees this late-blossoming plant!

October 9, 2023

***

The circling hawk steers himself through the air, like the skater, without a visible motion.

The hoary cinquefoil in blossom.

A large sassafras tree behind Lee's, two feet diameter at ground.

As I return over the bridge, I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring.

I see a large sucker rise to the surface of the river.

I hear the crickets singing loudly in the walls as they have not done (so loudly) for some weeks, while the sun is going down shorn of his rays by the haze.

There is a thick bed of leaves in the road under Hubbard's elms.

This reminds me of Cato, as if the ancients made more use of nature.
He says, “ Stramenta si deerunt, frondem iligneam legito, eam substernito ovibus bubusque.” (If litter is wanting, gather the leaves of the holm oak and strew them under your sheep and oxen.) In another place he says, “Circum vias ulmos serito, et partim populos, uti frondem ovibus et bubus habeas.” 

I suppose they were getting that dry meadow grass for litter. There is little or no use made by us of the leaves of trees, not even for beds, unless it be sometimes to rake them up in the woods and cast into hog-pens or compost-heaps.

Cut a stout purple cane of pokeweed.

H. D, Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1851

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. See October 4, 1858 ("Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime."); October 11, 1858 ("Witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! "); October 13, 1859 ("I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom "); October 18, 1858 ("By the brook, witch-hazel, as an underwood, is in the height of its change, but elsewhere exposed large bushes are bare"); October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects. See Bernd Heinrich, “Thermoregulation in Winter Moths.” Sci. Am 277: 73–83 (1987. ); Anderson & Hill (2002)("Given the morphology of H. virginiana flowers, the exposed glistening staminodes where a thin film of nectar is produced, the small exposed floral parts, the sugar ratio, and documented visits to some of the flowers open in late September or early October, small bees are also potential pollinators") and The Pollination Puzzle of American Witch Hazel (December 2020)

Heard two screech owls in the night. See September 9, 1859 ("Within a week I think I have heard screech owls at evening from over the river once or twice."); October 28, 1855 ("As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sitting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. . . . So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand. "); November 24, 1858 ("I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home") and note to September 23, 1855 ("I hear from my chamber a screech owl — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl

Deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks. See October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit."); November 25, 1858 ("Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground. "); November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner."); December 1. 1856 ("The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields . . .The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch.")

On Lee's hillside by the pond, the old leaves of some pitch pines are almost of a golden-yellow hue, seen in the sunlight, a rich autumnal look. The green are, as it were, set in the yellow. See October 19, 1856 ("The rich sunny yellow of the old pitch pine needles, just ready to fall, contrasting with the new and unmixed masses above, makes a very pleasing impression, as I look down into the hollows this side of Lee's Cliff");  October 23, 1852 ("The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored.")

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. See October 4, 1858 ("Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime. The leaves are often richly spotted reddish and greenish brown"); October 13, 1859 (" I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

 The hoary cinquefoil in blossom. See October 9, 1852 ("Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed.") See also June 23, 1851 ("P. argentea, hoary cinquefoil, also is now in blossom.")

A large sassafras tree behind Lee's, two feet diameter at ground. See October 5, 1857 ("Am surprised to see a large sassafras tree, with its rounded umbrella-like top, without limbs beneath, on the west edge of the Yellow Birch Swamp, or east of Boulder Field. It is some sixteen inches in diameter"); March 3, 1859 ("Channing tells me he has met with a sassafras tree in New Bedford woods, which, according to a string which he put round it, is eleven and three quarters feet in circumference at about three feet from the ground.") See also September 28, 1854 ("The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet as seen from my window, and the small ones elsewhere are also changed.") September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")

I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring. See October 8, 1856 ("A song sparrow utters a full strain"); October 26, 1855 ("The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

Cut a stout purple cane of pokeweed. See August 23, 1853 ("Poke stems are now ripe. . . .Their stems are a deep, rich purple with a bloom, contrasting with the clear green leaves. Its stalks, thus full of purple wine, are one of the fruits of autumn. . . .I could spend the evening of the year musing amid the poke stems"); August 26, 1856 ("I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed."); October 5, 1857 ("There is a great abundance of poke [on Eb Hubbard's hill]. That lowest down the hill, killed by frost, drooping and withered, no longer purple-stemmed, but faded; higher up it is still purple.")

The circling hawk steers himself through the air, like the skater, without a visible motion. See September 17, 1839 ("The wise man. . . each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step")

The witch-hazel here

is in full blossom on this

magical hillside.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Witch hazel in bloom

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/HDT511009

We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, — clear white light.

November 2


What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing within her?

Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shows most beautiful.

P. M. – To Walden and Flint’s.

What are those sparrows in loose flocks which I have seen two or three weeks, — some this afternoon on the railroad causeway, — with small heads and rather long necks in proportion to body, which is longish and slender, yellowish-white or olivaceous breast, striped with dark, ashy sides of neck, whitish over and beneath the eye, and some white observed in tail when they fly ? I think a dark bill and legs.

They utter a peculiar note, not heard here at other seasons, somewhat like the linarias, a sort of shuffling or chuckling iche-tche tche-tche, quickly uttered.

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.

C. says he saw succory yesterday, and a loon on the pond the 30th ult.

The prinos berries are almost gone.

I am somewhat surprised to find that the Aster undulatus at Walden is killed by the frost; only one low and obscure one has any flowers left.

Therefore, though it is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even Tradescanti.

I see no other flowers on the Peak.

Poke berries there are still partly green, partly ripe, as usual.

The leaves of the umbelled pyrola are as glossy as in the spring, which proves that they do not owe their glossiness in the spring to the influence of that season.

Two ducks on Walden.

The Canada snap dragon is still fresh and in flower by roadside near pond, and a sprig from root of Solidago nemoralis.

I gather some fine large pignuts by the wall (near the beech trees) on Baker's land. It is just the time to get these, and this seems to be quite early enough for most pignuts.

I find that there have been plenty of beechnuts, and there are still some empty burs on the trees and many nuts on the ground, but I cannot find one with meat in it.

The beech leaves have all fallen except some about the lower part of the trees, and they make a fine thick bed on the ground.  They are very beautiful, firm, and perfect leaves, unspotted and not eaten by insects, of a handsome, clear leather color, like a book bound in calf. Crisp and elastic; no wonder they make beds of them.

Of a clear [space left in manuscript ] or leather-color, more or less dark and remarkably free from stains and imperfections.

They cover the ground so perfectly and cleanly as to tempt you to recline on it and admire the beauty of their smooth boles from that position, covered with lichens of various colors-green, etc. — which you think you never see elsewhere.

They impress you as full of health and vigor, so that their bark can hardly contain their spirits but lies in folds or wrinkles about their ankles like a sock, with the embonpoint of infancy, wrinkles of fat.

The pollen [sic] of the Lycopodium dendroideum falls in showers or in clouds when my foot strikes it. How long? 

The witch-hazel appears to be nearly out of bloom, most of the flowers withering or frost-bitten.

The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns.

I examined a squirrel's nest in a tree which suggested to me(it having a foundation of twigs, coarse basketwork; above, shreds or fibres of bark and a few leaves) that perchance the squirrel, like the mouse, sometimes used a deserted bird's nest,-a crow's or hawk' .

A red-tailed hawk.

Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, — the minute red buds of the panicled andromeda, the roundish plump ones of the common hazel, the longish sharp ones of the witch-hazel, etc.

The sun sets.

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.

When the sun is set, there is no sudden contrast, no deep darkening, but a clear, strong white light still prevails, and the west finally glows with a generally diffused and moderate saffron-golden (?).

Coming home by boat the other evening, I smelled a traveller's pipe very strongly a third of a mile distant. He was crossing Wood ' s Bridge.

The evening star is now very bright; and is that Jupiter near it?

 I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf.

I see hedge-mustard very fresh.

Those plants which are earliest in the spring have already made the most conspicuous preparation for that season. The skunk-cabbage spathes have started, the alder catkins, as I have said, hazel, etc.; and is there anything in the double scales of the maples, the prominent scales of willow and other catkins, sometimes burst (?) ? 

A part of the lambkill is turned dull-reddish.

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

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1853

Can they be the grass-bird? See October 3, 1860 ("I have seen and heard sparrows in flocks, more as if flitting by, within a week, or since the frosts began.); October 11, 1856 ("Bay-wing sparrows numerous."); October 12, 1859 ("I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences."); October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book"); October 23, 1853 ("And many birds flit before me along the railroad, with faint notes, too large for linarias. . . .Probably the white-in-tail [i. e. vesper sparrow, or grass finch.]")

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. See 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.”); October 27, 1858 (“the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”); November 1, 1858 ("The November twilights just begun!"); November 14, 1853 (" This [October] light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November.")  November 17, 1858 ("The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me.");   November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”) See also  note to November 10, 1858 ("The warmer colors are now rare. A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; all the light of November may be called an afterglow.")

Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, See November 6, 1853 ("The plump, roundish, club-shaped, well-protected buds of the alders, and rich purplish or mulberry catkins, three, four, or five together.")

The Canada snap dragon is still fresh and in flower by roadside near pond. See August 21, 1851 ("Canada snap dragon by roadside (not conspicuous).")

The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones. See November 1, 1860 ("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 19, 1853 ('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.") See also note to November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

The November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. See November 10, 1858 (" Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost."); November 5, 1855 (“I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers. ”); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”).; November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc.,")

November 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 2 

November twilight,

clear white light seen through the woods —

the leaves being gone.

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 © 2009-2025