Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

November 24

Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

November 24, 2020

I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally, but I commonly part from them early with a certain bitter-sweet sentiment. That which we love is so mixed and entangled with that we hate in one another that we are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and estranged from one another, by meeting than by absence.

Some men may be my acquaintances merely, but one whom I have been accustomed to regard, to idealize, to have dreams about as a friend, and mix up intimately with myself, can never degenerate into an acquaintance.  

I must know him on that higher ground or not know him at all. We do not confess and explain, because we would fain be so intimately related as to understand each other without speech. 

Our friend must be broad. His must be an atmosphere coextensive with the universe, in which we can expand and breathe.

For the most part we are smothered and stifled by one another. I go and see my friend and try his atmosphere. If our atmospheres do not mingle, if we repel each other strongly, it is of no use to stay.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1850

Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day. See November 2, 1852 ('Tall buttercups, red clover, houstonias"); November 14, 1852 ("Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy"); 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) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); November 20, 1857 ("In the large Tommy Wheeler field, Ranunculus bulbosus in full bloom!")

We are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and estranged from one another, by meeting than by absence. See, e.g. February 15, 1851 ("Alas! Alas! when my friend begins to deal in confessions, breaks silence, makes a theme of friendship"); November 16, 1851 ("I love my friends very much , but I find that it is of no use to go to see them  I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually. "); December 18, 1851 ("When they who have aspired to be friends cease to sympathize, it is the part of religion to keep asunder. . . To explain to a friend is to suppose that you are not  intelligent of one another. If you are not, to what purpose will you explain?"); January 21, 1852 ("I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. I perceive that it is possible that we may have a better understanding now than when we were more at one. . . . Simply our paths diverge."); June 11, 1855 ("What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me"); March 4, 1856 ("I do not believe in complaint, nor in explanation. The whole is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that we do not love each other, that we cannot confide in each other."); March 28, 1856 ("Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that."); February 8, 1857 ("And now another friendship is ended. I do not know what has made my friend doubt me, but I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. . . . I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than the thought of you from my mind. ");  February 23, 1857 ('That aching of the breast, the grandest pain that man endures, which no ether can assuage . . . If the teeth ache they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?");  November 3, 1858 ("How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there.. . . Thus I am taught that my friend is not an actual person. When I have withdrawn and am alone, I forget the actual person and remember only my ideal. Then I have a friend again "); February 5, 1859 ("When we have experienced many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did")

A Book of the Seasons: November days (now there is nothing but how bright the stars)

A year is made up of 

a certain series and number 

of sensations and thoughts 

which have their language in nature.

Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857

November 22, 2022

November 

November 

whose name sounds 

so bleak and cheerless. 

Perhaps its harvest of thought 

is worth more than 

all the other crops of the year. 

 November 11, 1858

Now is there nothing

Now is there nothing

but the echo of your steps

over frozen ground.

In this cold weather

your deep inward fires burn

with a clearer flame.

 November 13, 1851

The willow twigs

The willow twigs right

of the Red Bridge causeway

are bright greenish-

yellow and reddish

as in the spring.

November 14, 1854

Just after sundown

Just after sundown the waters

become suddenly smooth

and the clear yellow light

of the western sky

reflected in the water

making it doubly light

to me on the water

diffusing light from below

as well as above.

November 15, 1853

The pines on shore

Colder weather

very windy

but still no snow.

Ice along the river

does not melt. 

The waves run high

with white caps

give a pleasant motion

to the boat. 

Pines on shore look very cold

reflecting a silvery light.

 November 16, 1852

November lights

We are interested at this season

by the manifold ways in which

the light is reflected to us. 

Looking toward the sun now

when an hour high,

many small birches between,

the light pleasantly diffused.

Ascending a little knoll

covered with sweet-fern

the sunlight reflected

as from grass and weeds

covered with hoar frost

a perfect halo of light

resting on the knoll

as I move to right or left. 

The setting sun reflected from windows

more brightly than any other season.

The hundred silvery lights of November.

A myriad of surfaces now 

prepared to reflect the light.

November 17, 1858

Such is November

Much cold slate-colored cloud

bare twigs seen gleaming

toward the light like gossamer,

pure green of pines

whose old leaves have fallen,

reddish or yellowish brown oak leaves

rustling on the hillsides,

pale brown bleaching almost hoary

grass or hay in the fields

akin to the frost which has killed it.

And flakes of clear yellow sunlight

falling on it here and there –

such is November. 

November 18, 1857

A cold gray day

A cold gray day

once spitting snow. 

Water froze in tubs 

 last night. 

November 19, 1855

Seen when the sun is low

Seen when the sun is low –

the rare wholesome

and permanent beauty

of withered oak leaves

of various hues of brown --

Quaker colors, sober ornaments

beauty that quite satisfies the eye.

The richness and variety same as before –

the colors different, incorruptible and lasting.

November 20, 1858

Fair Haven Pond

I see Fair Haven Pond

with its island and meadow

between the island

and the shore and a

strip of perfectly still 

and smooth water in the

lee of the island

and two hawks 

fish hawks perhaps

sailing over it.

I do not see how

it could be improved –

or yet what these things can be.

I begin to see

such an object when I

cease to understand it.

and I see that I

did not appreciate or

realize it before –

how adapted these

forms and colors to my eye!

meadow and island!

Nature so reserved!

the hawks and ducks so aloof!

What are these things? 

I get no further than this:

we are made to love

pond and meadow as the wind

to ripple water.

November 21, 1850

November's bare bleak 

inaccessible beauty 

seen through a clear air.

A very beautiful November day - 

a cool but clear, crystalline air. 

 I rejoice in the bare, bleak, 

hard, and barren-looking 

surface of the tawny pastures, 

the firm outline of the hills, 

and the air so bracing 

and wholesome.

 

Simply to see to a distant

 horizon through a clear air, –

this is wealth enough for one afternoon. 

It is glorious November weather

and only November fruits are out.

 

November 22, 1860

November 22, 2017

The new-fallen snow

This morning is white –

the beauty and purity

of new-fallen snow.

The new-fallen snow

seen lying just as it fell

on the twigs and leaves.

With the first snowfall

Nature seems to relent her

November harshness.

November 23, 1852

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

November 24, 1858

Amber light in the west 

A clear amber light in the west 

and, turning about, 

we are surprised

 at the darkness in the east –

 a crescent of night

 as if a thick snow-storm gathering

that we are not prepared for –

 yet the air is clear.

November 25, 1851

The unexpected

exhilarating yellow 

light of November.

November 25, 1857

November 25, 2017

The warmth of existence.

The air this afternoon  

is indescribably clear and exhilarating

and though the thermometer 

would show it to be cold

I think that there is a finer and

purer warmth than in summer –

a warmth hardly sensuous

but rather the satisfaction of existence.

I  experience such an interior comfort

 

as if the thin atmosphere  

were the medium of invisible flames

as if the whole landscape 

were one great hearthside .

When I get up so high on the side of the Cliff 

the sun is setting like an Indian-summer sun.  

There is a purple tint in the horizon. 

It is warm on the face of the rocks 

and I could sit till the sun disappears 

to dream there. A a mild sunset 

such as is to be attended to.

Just as the sun shines into us 

warmly and serenely

our Creator 

breathes on us 

and re-creates us.

 

November 25, 1850

The bare, barren earth 

cheerless without ice and snow –

but how bright the stars. 

November 27, 1853

Twilight makes so large

a part of the afternoon

these November days.

November 28, 1859

A regular snow-storm

A very few fine snowflakes 

falling for many hours, and now, 

by 2 P. M., a regular snow-storm --

fine flakes falling steadily

 rapidly whitening all the landscape. 

In half an hour the russet earth 

is painted white even to the horizon. 

Do we know of any other

 so silent and sudden a change? 

I cannot now walk without 

leaving a track behind me.

November 28, 1858

Glorious yellow sunlight

Cloudy and milder this afternoon

but now I begin to see under the clouds

 

in the west horizon a clear 

crescent of yellowish sky

 

and suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight

 falls on all the eastern landscape --

      russet fields and hillsides,

      evergreens and rustling oaks

      and single leafless trees. 

The clearness of the air at this season 

  the light is all from one side

  

 reflected  from russet earth and clouds 

so intensely bright --

all the limbs of a maple 

far eastward rising over a hill 

wonderfully distinct and lit.

I think that we have some such sunsets 

 peculiar to the season every year. 

 

I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.

November 29, 1853

Wholesome colors

Again I am struck 

by the wholesome colors of

 the withered oak leaves --

  the clear reddish-brown

of the shrub oak, contrasting

 whitish undersides 

 so strong and cheerful

as if it rejoiced at the 

advent of winter

and exclaimed

 “Winter, come on!”

November 29, 1857

Sparkling windows and

vanes of the village now seen

against the mountains.

 November 30, 1852

Recognition from white pines

A cold and windy

afternoon with snow not yet

melted on the ground.  

My eye wanders as

I sit on an oak stump by

an old cellar hole.

Methinks that in my 

mood I am asking Nature 

to give me a sign.

Transient gladness.

I do not know what it is – 

something that I see.

This recognition

from white pines now reflecting

a silvery light.

And  by the old site

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

November 30, 1851

November 30, 2015

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-novdays

The willow twigs on the right of the Red Bridge causeway are bright greenish-yellow and reddish as in the spring

November 14.

November 14, 2024

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.")

November 14. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 14

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

Collected Poems that Strike Me

The Light Continues

Every evening, an hour before

the sun goes down, I walk toward

its light, wanting to be altered.

Always in quiet, the air still.

Walking up the straight empty road

and then back. When the sun

is gone, the light continues

high up in the sky for a while:

When I return, the moon is there.

Like a changing of the guard.

I don't expect the light

to save me, but I do believe

in the ritual. I believe

I am being born a second time

in this very plain way.

~Linda Gregg

Happy Life

At my desk all morning

In the woods all afternoon

Headed home now

through the yellow light . . .

~ David Budbill,

Western Sky

There is one advantage

in walking eastward

these afternoons, at least,

that in returning you may have

the western sky before you.

~HDT October 20, 1858

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

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

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .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, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

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

I wear mittens now.

I hear the cawing of crows

toward the distant wood.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

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-531111

Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf.

 

October 31

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

The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods. See October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 22, 1858 (" The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. . . . The lowermost leaves turn golden and fall first; so their autumn change is like a fire which has steadily burned up higher and higher, consuming the fuel below, till now it has nearly reached their tops.")

The Aspidium spinulosum and cristatum. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. Apparently Aspidium cristatum elsewhere . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum