In E. Hubbard's gray oak wood

November 30.

I see in E. Hubbard's gray oak wood, four rods from the old wall line and two or three rods over the brow of the hill, an apparent downy woodpecker's nest in a dead white oak stub some six feet high. It looks quite fresh, and I see by the very numerous fresh white chips of dead wood scattered over the recently fallen leaves beneath that it must have been made since the leaves fell.

This has been a very pleasant month, with quite a number of Indian-summer days, - a pleasanter month than October was. It is quite warm today, and as I go home at dusk on the railroad causeway, I hear a hylodes peeping.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1859

This has been a very pleasant month, a pleasanter month than October was. See November 29, 1856 (“It has been a remarkably pleasant November, warmer and pleasanter than last year.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

An apparent downy woodpecker's nest in a dead white oak, See January 5, 1860 (“I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

A flock of snow buntings not yet very white.

November 29. 

P. M. — To Copan.

There is a white birch on Copan which has many of the common birch fungus of a very peculiar and remarkable form, not flat  but shaped like a bell or short horn,  as if composed of a more flowing material which  had settled downward like a drop. As C. said, they were shaped like icicles, especially those short and spreading ones about bridges.

Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1859

The common birch fungus of a very peculiar and remarkable form. See January 17, 1858 ("The common birch fungus, which is horizontal and turned downward, splits the bark as it pushes out very simply, thus”)

I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.  See November 7, 1858 ("Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment."); January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion."); January 6, 1856 ("While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings.”);  January 6, 1859 (“They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring.”); January 21, 1857 (“Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter”). March 3, 1859 ("I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

The joy of firewood.

November 28. 

Goodwin tells me that Therien, who lives in a shanty of his own building and alone in Lincoln, uses for a drink only checkerberry-tea. (G. also called it "ivory- leaf.") Is it not singular that probably only one tea-drinker in this neighborhood should use for his beverage a plant which grows here? Therien, really drinking his checkerberry-tea from motives of simplicity or economy and saying nothing about it, deserves well of his country. As he does now, we may all do at last. 

There is scarcely a wood of sufficient size and density left now for an owl to haunt in, and if I hear one hoot I may be sure where he is. 

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. This has been Hubbard's practice for thirty years or more, and so, it would seem, they are all dead before he gets to them. Saw Abel Brooks there with a half-bushel basket on his arm. He was picking up chips on his and neighboring lots; had got about two quarts of old and blackened pine chips, and with these was returning home at dusk more than a mile. 

Such a petty quantity as you would hardly have gone to the end of your yard for, and yet he said that he had got more than two cords of them at home, which he had collected thus and sometimes with a wheelbarrow. He had thus spent an hour or two and walked two or three miles in a cool November evening to pick up two quarts of pine chips scattered through the woods. 

He evidently takes real satisfaction in collecting his fuel, perhaps gets more heat of all kinds out of it than any man in town. He is not reduced to taking a walk for exercise as some are. It is one thing to own a wood-lot as he does who perambulates its bounds almost daily, so as to have worn a path about it, and another to own one as many another does who hardly knows where it is. 

Evidently the quantity of chips in his basket is not essential; it is the chippy idea which he pursues. It is to him an unaccountably pleasing occupation. And no doubt he loves to see his pile grow at home. 

Think how variously men spend the same hour in the same village! The lawyer sits talking with his client in the twilight; the trader is weighing sugar and salt; while Abel Brooks is hastening home from the woods with his basket half full of chips. 

I think I should prefer to be with Brooks. He was literally as smiling as a basket of chips. A basket of chips, therefore, must have been regarded as a singularly pleasing (if not pleased) object. 

We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1859

Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot. See October 22, 1853 (" One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("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. ")

Early twilights of these November days. See  December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight”); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”);  and note to December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day")

***

Today I bring the chainsaw into the woods to clear fallen trees from the trails. A sunny refreshing afternoon. Careful with the saw, it does not bind except in one old rotten log I think will be like butter. I kick the log open and retrieve the saw.

On the porcupine trail a snarl of grape vines pulls the trees down. I cleared this same spot a few years ago. And here, on the upper trail a log across the main path with two old cuts where I ran out of gas long ago. I finish the work and head to the stream.

Next to the crossing a large maple is uprooted across the trail. The stream is rushing by with last night's rain. I cut a narrow opening for the trail, leaving the maple as a bench by the stream.

Now kneeling I put the saw to the side so it won't get wet, bring my mouth to the water and take two large gulps. The water is cold and fresh.

Zphx 20091128

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)

To Colburn Farm wood-lot.

November 26.

Lotting off a large wood-lot for auction, I find i have been cutting new paths to walk in.

This part of the earth was an open cultivated field some thirty years ago, but, the wood being suffered to spring up, became a covert and concealed place. Nobody has walked here, nobody has penetrated its recesses. The walker habitually goes round it, or follows the single cart-path that winds through it. Its denseness excludes man.

How private and sacred a place a grove thus becomes! Woods, both the primitive and those which are suffered to spring up in cultivated fields, preserve the mystery of nature.

The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant.

I see here today one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course.

It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1859

Brown creeper . . .suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree. See May 16, 1860 ("flies across to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices.”)

The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. . . . At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. See November 4, 1855 (“The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter”); November 16, 1860 (“In my two walks I saw only one squirrel and a chickadee. Not a hawk or a jay.”); December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)

It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town. . . See January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. . . Where still wild creatures haunt .How long will these last?”); Walking ("A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”)

Paddle to Baker Farm.

November 25.

For some days since colder weather, I notice the snow-fleas skipping on the surface the shore. I see them today skipping by thousands in the wet clamshells left by the muskrats. These are rather a cool-weather phenomenon.

There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat. 

A large whitish-breasted bird is perched on an oak under Lee's Cliff, for half an hour at least. I think it must be a fish hawk.

In this clear, cold water I see no fishes now, and it is as empty as the air. Our hands and feet are quite cold, and the water freezes on the paddles.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1859

I notice the snow-fleas skipping on the surface the shore.  See November 11, 1858 ("Snow-fleas are skipping on the surface of the water at the edge"); January 22, 1860 ("This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

A thin ice along the shore shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat. See November 14, 1855 ("The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there.”)

Indian summer. Andromeda Pond

November 17.

Another Indian-summer day, as fair as any we've had. 

I go down the railroad to Andromeda Ponds this afternoon. 

Captain Hubbard is having his large wood — oak and white pine, on the west of the railroad this side the pond — cut. I see one white oak felled with one hundred and fifteen rings to it; another, a red, oak has about the same number. 

Thus disappear the haunts of the owls. The time may come when their aboriginal hoo-hoo-hoo will not be heard hereabouts. 

I have been so absorbed of late in Captain Brown's fate as to be surprised whenever I detected the old routine running still, — met persons going about their affairs indifferent. It appeared strange to me that the little dipper should be still diving in the river as of yore; and this suggested that this grebe might be diving here when Concord shall be no more. Any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. 

At the pond-side I see titmice alighting on the now hoary gray golden rod and hanging back downward from it, as if eating its seeds; or could they have been looking for insects? There were three or four about it.

I sit in the sun on the northeast side of the first Andromeda Pond, looking over it toward the sun. How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp - a glowing, warm brown red in the Indian-summer sun, like a bed of moss in a hollow in the woods, with gray high blueberry and straw-colored grasses interspersed.

And when, going round it, you look over it in the opposite direction, it presents a gray aspect.

The musquash are active, swimming about in the further pond to-day, — this Indian-summer day. Channing also sees them thus stirring in the river this afternoon. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1859

When you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp.  See The Andromeda Phenomenon and  January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...); January 10, 1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows..."); April 17, 1852 (Observed in the second of the chain of ponds between Fair Haven and Walden a large (for the pond) island patch of the dwarf andromeda, I sitting on the east bank; its fine brownish-red color very agreeable and memorable to behold. In the last long pond, looking at it from the south, I saw it filled with a slightly grayish shrub which I took for the sweet-gale, but when I had got round to the east side, chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda. The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color; but when I looked to the right or left, i. e. north or south, the more the swamp had the mottled light or grayish aspect where the light was reflected from the surfaces of the leaves. And afterward, when I had risen higher up the hill, though still opposite the sun, the light came reflected upward from the surfaces, and I lost that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows. Let me look again at a different hour of the day, and see if it is really so. It is a very interesting piece of magic.")

To Ledum Swamp.

November 15

A very pleasant Indian-summer day.

P. M. -- To Ledum Swamp.

I look up the river from the railroad bridge.

It is perfectly smooth between the uniformly tawny meadows, and I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light.

I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight.

The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now, as I look up the Cyanean Reach from Clamshell.

A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.

As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off.

I turn down Witherell Glade, only that I may bring its tufts of andropogon between me and the sun for a moment. They are pretty as ever. [Vide Oct. 16th and Nov. 8th.]

In the midst of Ledum Swamp I came upon a white cat under the spruces and the water brush, which evidently had not seen me till I was within ten feet. There she stood, quite still, as if hoping to be concealed, only turning her head slowly away from and toward me, looking at me thus two or three times with an extremely worried expression in her eyes, but not moving any other part of her body. It occurred to me from her peculiar anxious expression and this motion, as if spellbound, that perhaps she was deaf; but when I moved toward her she found the use of her limbs and dashed off, bounding over the andromeda by successive leaps like a rabbit, no longer making her way through or beneath it.

I noticed on the 3d, in Worcester, that the white pines had been as full of seed there as here this year.

Also gathered half a pocketful of shagbarks, of which many still hung on the trees though most had fallen.

All through the excitement occasioned by Brown's remarkable attempt and subsequent behavior, the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defense of her citizens who are likely to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, is absorbed in a liquor-agency question.

That has, in fact, been the all-absorbing question with it !! I am sure that no person up to the occasion, or who perceived the significance of the former event, could at present attend to this question at all. As for the Legislature, bad spirits occupied their thoughts.

If any person, in a lecture or a conversation, should now cite any ancient example of heroism, such as Cato, or Tell, or Winkelried, passing over the recent deeds and words of John Brown, I am sure that it would be felt by any intelligent audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, in Roman, or English, or any, history. 

It is a fact proving how universal and widely related any transcendent greatness is, like the apex of a pyramid to all beneath it, that when I now look over my extracts of the noblest poetry the best is oftenest applicable in part or wholly to this man's position. Almost any noble verse may be read either as his elegy or eulogy or be made the text of an oration on him. Indeed, such are now first discerned to be the parts of a divinely established liturgy, applicable to those rare cases for which the ritual of no church has provided, the case of heroes, martyrs, and saints. This is the formula established on high, their burial service, to which every great genius has contributed its line or syllable. Of course the ritual of no church which is wedded to the state can contain a service applicable to the case of a state criminal unjustly condemned,--a martyr.

The sense of grand poetry read by the light of this event is brought out distinctly like an invisible writing held to the fire.

About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another.

Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon as observed by him there since ( says he saw the birds picking out the seeds), though he did not know what birds they were. William Rice says that these birds get so much of the lettuce seed that you can hardly save any. They get sunflower seeds also. Are called “lettuce-birds” in the books.

A lady who was suitably indignant at the outrage on Senator Sumner, lamenting to me to-day the very common insensibility to such things, said that one woman to whom she described the deed and on whom she thought that she had made some impression, lately inquired of her with feeble curiosity: “How is that young man who had his head hurt? I haven't heard anything about him for a good while." 

As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, — for they had no more form at that distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1859

I saw cows . .. the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, See July 16, 1851 ("The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red!");

The first sprinkling of snow.

November 12.

The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 12, 1859

The first sprinkling of snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Our first snow, the wind southerly, the air chilly and moist; a very fine snow, looking like a mist toward the woods or horizon, which at 2 o’clock has not whitened the ground. The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.");  November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon."); November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”); November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”);  December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night."); December 8, 1850 ( . . ."the ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible! This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.")

Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?  See August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.")