HDT ~ November 19, 1855
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
New and collected mind-prints. by Zphx. Following H.D.Thoreau 170 years ago today. Seasons are in me. My moods periodical -- no two days alike.
The river is slightly over the meadows.
The willow twigs on the right of the Red Bridge causeway are bright greenish-yellow and reddish as in the spring. Also on the right railroad sand-bank at Heywood's meadow. Is it because they are preparing their catkins now against another spring?
The first wreck line -- of pontederia, sparganium, etc. -- is observable.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1854
The river is slightly over the meadows . . . The first wreck line . . . is observable. See November 14, 1855 ("The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows. The old weedy margin is covered and a new grassy one acquired.") See also November 8, 1853 ("To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it.")
The willow twigs on the right of the Red Bridge causeway are bright greenish-yellow and reddish as in the spring. See November 18, 1858 ("Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. They are prominent now, first, because they are bare; second, because high-colored always and this rarity of bright colors at present; third, because of the clear air and November light."); March 17, 1859 ("The blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the pleasure of late November, of winter or of early spring walks to look into these mazes of twigs of different colors"); March 18, 1861 ("When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in December, or in midwinter above the snow, my spirits rise as if it were an oasis in the desert."); See also December 2, 1852 (" It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osier in Winter and early Spring
Pontederia, sparganium, etc. See September 28, 1851 ("The pontederia, which apparently makes the mass of the weeds by the side of the river, is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it."); October 16, 1859 ("So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags.")7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place.
A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost.
Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now.
Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.
Aster puniceus left.
A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night.
I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck!
А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat.
The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.
The river is smooth as polished silver.
A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat.
I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over.
Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before.
The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries.
I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow.
I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle.
It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.
There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice.
The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water.
I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered.
I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time.
At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move?
The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all.
I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank.
I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants.
I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by. The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance.
This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass.
There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with!
The wind has risen and sky overcast.
I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back.
Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853
Cloudy still and, in the afternoon, rain, the ninth day.
The sugar maple and elm leaves are fallen, but I still see
many large oaks, especially scarlet ones, which have lost very few leaves.
Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet.
The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at
their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods.
***
Aspidium spinulosum
In the Lee farm swamp, by the old Sam Barrett mill site, I
see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium
spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?).
They are also common in other swamps now. They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now. The atmosphere of the house is less congenial to them.
In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves.
You are inclined to approach and raise each frond in succession, moist, trembling, fragile greenness. They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under the bare maples and grape-vines and witch-hazels, and about each trickling spring which is half choked with fallen leaves.
What means this persistent vitality, invulnerable to frost and wet? Why were these spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken down? They stay as if to keep up the spirits of the cold-blooded frogs which have not yet gone into the mud; that the summer may die with decent and graceful moderation, gradually,
Is not the water of
the spring improved by their presence ? They fall back and droop here and there,
like the plumes of departing summer, — of the departing year,
Even in them I feel an argument for immortality. Death is so far from being universal. The same destroyer does not destroy all,
How valuable they are (with the lycopodiums) for cheerfulness. Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf, as in a hale old age.
To my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and always some forest noble-ness seems to have its haunt under their umbrage. Each such green tuft of ferns is a grove where some nobility dwells and walks.
All that was immortal in the swamp's herbage seems here crowded into smaller compass, the concentrated greenness of the swamp.
How dear they must be to the chickadee and the rabbit! The cool, slowly retreating rear-guard of the swamp army.
What virtue is theirs that enables them to resist the frost?
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1857
Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet. See October 31, 1858 ("The woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak
It is never too late to learn.
I observed to-day the Irishman who helped me survey twisting the branch of a birch for a withe, and before he cut it off; and also, wishing to stick a tall, smooth pole in the ground, cut a notch in the side of it by which to drive it with a hatchet.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1851
Twisting the branch of a birch for a withe. See October 1, 1851 ("There is art to be used, not only in selecting wood for a withe, but in using it. Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent; or is it only by accident that they are twisted?"); August 29, 1858 ("[Farmer] calls the Viburnum nudum 'withe-wood' and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking.")