November 30

Rec'd of James Bliss forty two dollars & forty four cents in full.

Paid for Board & washing $ 4.19

EDK, November 30, 1860

The value of the Concord Lynx

November 29. 

I told a man the other day that I had got a Canada lynx here in Concord, and his instant question was, "Have you got the reward for him?"

What reward?

Why, the ten dollars which the State offers.

As long as I saw him he neither said nor thought anything about the lynx, but only about this reward.

“Yes," said he, "this State offers ten dollars reward."

You might have inferred that ten dollars was something rarer in this neighborhood than a lynx even, and he was anxious to see it on that account. I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight.

The fact was that, instead of receiving ten dollars for the lynx, I had paid away some dollars in order to get him.

Though we are never made truly rich by the possession of money, the value of things generally is commonly estimated by the amount of money they will fetch. A thing is not valuable - e.g. a fine situation for a house – until it is convertible into so much money, that is, can cease to be what it is and become something else which you prefer. The mean and low values of anything depend on its convertibility into something else and have nothing to do with its intrinsic value.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1860

See September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . . From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx."); September 13, 1860 ("They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx . . . I do not think it necessary even to suppose it a straggler, but only very rare hereabouts. I have seen two lynxes that were killed between here and Salem since '27. Have heard of another killed in or near Andover. There may have been many more killed as near within thirty years and I not have heard of it, for they who kill one commonly do not know what it is "); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx."); November 10, 1860 ("Richardson in his "Fauna Boreali-Americana," which I consulted at Cambridge on the 7th , says that the French-Canadians call the Canada lynx indifferently Le Chat or Le Peeshoo"); See also September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago"); October 20, 1857 ("Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); November 28, 1857 ("Spoke to Skinner about that wildcat which he says he heard a month ago in Ebby Hubbard’s woods . . a low sort of growling and then a sudden quick-repeated caterwaul, or yow yow you, or yang yang yang. He says they utter this from time to time when on the track of some prey."); February 15, 1858 ("Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx. ") Compare Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared "); March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”)

November 29

Thanksgiving day. Down to Wallace's in the afternoon.

EDK, November 29, 1860

Seen through the mist

November 29. 

The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist, perhaps because, though near, yet being in the visible horizon and there being nothing beyond to compare them with, we naturally magnify them, supposing them further off. 

The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the actual to the imaginary. The near are more distinct, the distant more faint, till at last they are a mere shadowy cone in the distance.  As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes. 

You are reminded of your dreams. Life looks like a dream. You are prepared to see visions. 

And now, just before sundown, the night wind blows up more mist through the valley, thickening the veil which already hangs over the trees, and the gloom of night gathers early and rapidly around. 

Birds lose their way.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1850

The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist... See February 6, 1852("mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing." );April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."); January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 7, 1856  ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.")

To Annursnack.

November 28. 

P. M. - To Annursnack.

Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there is more oak woodland than pine to be seen, especially in the north and northeast, but it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of mid-afternoon. 

Most of the oak is quite young. As for pines, I cannot say surely which kind is most prevalent, not being certain about the most distant woods. 

I look down now on the top of a pitch pine wood southwest of Brooks's Pigeon-place, and its top, so nearly level, has a peculiarly rich and crispy look in the sun. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1860

To Annursnack. Looking from the hilltop it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of mid-afternoon. See November 14, 1853 ("I climb Annursnack. . . From this hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had been combed by the flowing water. . . .. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.");  May 8, 1853 ("They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects. The landscape is in some respects more interesting because of the overcast sky, threatening rain; a cold southwest wind. . . .The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look, and the evergreens were more sharply divided from them, but now they have the appearance of being merged in or buoyed up in a mist."); May 15, 1853 ("I looked again on the forest from this hill, which view may contrast with that of last Sunday. The mist produced by the leafing of the deciduous trees has greatly thickened now and lost much of its reddishness in the lighter green of expanding leaves, has be come a brownish or yellowish green, except where it has attained distinctness in the light-green foliage of the birch, the earliest distinct foliage visible in extensive great masses at a great distance, the aspen not being common. The pines and other evergreens are now fast being merged in a sea of foliage."); July 20, 1851 ("Annursnack. The under sides of the leaves, exposed by the breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them. Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool night side, — a triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set. The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale."); September 13, 1858 ("Looking from the top of Annursnack, the aspect of the earth generally is still a fresh green, especially the woods, but many dry fields, where apparently the June-grass has withered uncut, are a very pale tawny or lighter still. It is fit that some animals should be nearly of this color. The cougar would hardly be observed stealing across these plains. In one place I still detect the ruddiness of sorrel."); October 12, 1857 ("Looking from the Hill. . . .. I am not sure but the yellow now prevails over the red in the landscape, and even over the green. The general color of the landscape from this hill is now russet, i.e. red, yellow, etc., mingled. The maple fires are generally about burnt out. Yet I can see . . .yellows on Mt. Misery, five miles off, also on Pine Hill, and even on Mt. Tabor, indistinctly. Eastward, I distinguish red or yellow in the woods as far as the horizon, and it is most distant on that side")

Brooks's Pigeon-place. See September 13, 1858 ("A small dense flock of wild pigeons dashes by over the side of the hill, from west to east, — perhaps from Wetherbee’s to Brooks’s, for I see the latter’s pigeon place. They make a dark slate-gray impression") and note to  September 15, 1859 ("To Annursnack. Dense flocks of pigeons hurry-skurry over the hill. Pass near Brooks's pigeon-stands. There was a flock perched on his poles, and they sat so still and in such regular order there, being also the color of the wood, that I thought they were wooden figures at first.")

November 28.

P. M. - To Annursnack.

Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there was more oak woodland than pine to be seen, especially in the north and northeast, but it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of midafternoon.

Most of the oak, however, is quite young.

As for pines, I cannot say surely which kind is most prevalent, not being certain about the most distant woods.

The white pine is much the most dispersed, and grows oftener in low ground than the pitch pine does.  It oftenest forms mixed woods with oak, etc., growing in straight or meandering lines, occasionally swelling into a dense grove.

The pitch pines commonly occupy a dry soil a plain or brow of a hill, often the site of an old grain-field or pasture — and are much the most seclusive, for, being a new wood, oaks, etc., have had no opportunity to grow up there, if they could.

I look down now on the top of a pitch pine wood southwest of Brooks's Pigeon-place, and its top, so nearly level, has a peculiarly rich and crispy look in the sun. Its limbs are short and its plumes stout as compared with the white pine and are of a yellowish green.

There are many handsome young walnuts ten or twelve feet high scattered over the southeast side of Annursnack, or above the orchard.  How came they there? Were they planted before a wood was cut? It is remarkable how this tree loves a hillside.

Behind G. M. Barrett's barn a scarlet oak stump 18 1/2 inches diameter and about 94 rings, which has sent up a sprout two or three years since.

On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.'s oaks, many oaks were sawed off about a year ago. Those I look at are seedlings and very sound and rings very distinct and handsome. Generally no sprouts from them, though one white oak sprout had been killed by frost.

• One white oak, 17 inches diameter, has 100 rings.

• A second, 16 1/2 inches diameter, also 100 rings. 

The last has two centres which coalesced at the thirtieth ring, which went round them both including old bark between them. This was an instance of natural grafting.

Many seem to be so constituted that they can respect only somebody who is dead or something which is distant.

The less you get, the happier and the richer you are.

The rich man's son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man's, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut.

That on which commerce seizes is always the very coarsest part of a fruit, — the mere husk and rind, in fact, — for her hands are very clumsy. This is what fills the holds of ships, is exported and imported, pays duties, and is finally sold at the shops.

It is a grand fact that you cannot make the finer fruits or parts of fruits matter of commerce.

You may buy a servant or slave, in short, but you cannot buy a friend.

You can't buy the finer part of any fruit— i. e. the highest use and enjoyment of it.

You cannot buy the pleasure which it yields to him who truly plucks it; you can't buy a good appetite even. 

What are all the oranges imported into England to the hips and haws in her hedges? She could easily spare the one, but not the others. Ask Wordsworth, or any of her poets, which is the most to him.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box trap set therein.

Whatever a great many grown-up boys are seriously engaged in is considered great and good, and, as such, is sure of the recognition of the churchman and statesman.

What, for instance, are the blue juniper berries in the pasture, which the cowboy remembers so far as they are beautiful merely, to church or state? Mere trifles which deserve and get no protection. As an object of beauty, though significant to all who really live in the country, they do not receive the protection of any community.

Anybody may grub up all that exist.

But as an article of commerce they command the attention of the civilized world. I read that “several hundred tons of them are imported annually from the continent” into England to flavor gin with; "but even this quantity,” says my author, “is quite insufficient to meet the enormous consumption of the fiery liquid, and the deficiency is made up by spirits of turpentine.”

Go to the English Government, which, of course, is representative of the people, and ask, What is the use of juniper berries ? The answer is, To flavor gin with.

This is the gross abuse of juniper berries, with which an enlightened Government — if ever there shall be one — will have nothing to do.

Let us make distinctions, call things by the right names.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1860

November 14, 1853 ("From this hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had been combed by the flowing water. Not merely the sandy roads, but the fields are swept. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.")

 

November 29

Thanksgiving day. Down to Wallace's in the afternoon.

EDK, November 29, 1860

November 27

Very rainy.

Bot a Qrt of bourbon of G W Barry      .43

1 bottle Pachanly                              .30

4 lbs Castena nuts                            .20

                                                       .93

EDK, November 27, 1860

A Nuthatch

November 26.

In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off.

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.

Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. May it not have been the meat of an acorn?

The value of these wild fruits is not in the mere possession or eating of them, but in the sight or enjoyment of them.

The very derivation of the word "fruit" would suggest this. It is from the Latin fructus, meaning that which is used or enjoyed.

If it were not so, then going a-berrying and going to market would be nearly synonymous expressions.

Of course it is the spirit in which you do a thing which makes it interesting, whether it is sweeping a room or pulling turnips.

Peaches are unquestionably a very beautiful and palatable fruit, but the gathering of them for the market is not nearly so interesting as the gathering of huckleberries for your own use.

A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year it comes back with a load of pineapples.

Now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, — if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, — I am less interested in this expedition than in some child's first excursion a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of huckleberries in its basket.

I know that the newspapers and the politicians declare otherwise, but they do not alter the fact.

Then, I think that the fruit of the latter expedition was finer than that of the former. It was a more fruitful expedition.

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

If a New England boy's dealings with oranges and pineapples have had more to do with his development than picking huckleberries or pulling turnips have, then he rightly and naturally thinks more of the former; otherwise not.

Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant, while those of some foreign land are noble and memorable. Our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be.

They educate us, and fit us to live in New England.

Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1860

The faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. See October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. “); November 7, 1855 (". . .see a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights.”); February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”) and J. J. Audubon ("The notes of the White-breasted Nuthatch are remarkable on account of their nasal sound. Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables hank, hank, kank, kank; but now and then in the spring, they emit a sweeter kind of chirp, whenever the sexes meet, or when they are feeding their young.”)

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter . . . See December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here * [but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59")

 
May it not have been the meat of an acorn? See J.J. Audubon("Their bill is strong and sharp, and they not unfrequently break acorns, chestnuts, &c., by placing them in the crevices of the bark of trees, or between the splinters of a fence-rail, where they are seen hammering at them for a considerable time. “)

The fruits of New England . . .our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be. They educate us, and fit us to live in New England. Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, See November 23, 1860 ("Famous fruits imported from the tropics and sold in our markets — as oranges, lemons, pineapples, and bananas do not concern me so much as many an unnoticed wild berry whose beauty annually lends a new charm to some wild walk"); November 24, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. "); December 22, 1850 ("Apples are now thawed. . . . are now filled with a rich, sweet cider . . . a sweet and luscious food, — in my opinion of more worth than the pineapples which are imported from the torrid zone. "); May 28, 1854 ("One of the great crops of the year . . .the blossoms of the Vacciniece, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these.")

November 26

Thermometer at 24º below zero.
Came to Boston from Danvers this morning.
Subscribed for the Boston  Journal.
                                            .50
                                          1.50
                        incd.             .50

EDK, November 26, 1860

To E. Hubbard's Wood.

November 26

November 26.

I see in the open field east of Trillium Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. Here is one just noticeable on the sod - though by most it would be mistaken for a single sprig of moss - that came from the seed this year.

It is, as it were, a little green star with many rays, half an inch in diameter, lifted an inch and a half above the ground on a slender stem. What a feeble beginning for so long-lived a tree!

By the next fall it will be a star of greater magnitude, and in a few years, if not disturbed, these seedlings will alter the face of nature here. How significant, how ominous, the presence of these green moss-like stars is to the grass, heralding its doom!

Thus from pasture this portion of the earth's surface becomes forest. These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left.

But where did the pitch pines stand originally? Who cleared the land for its seedlings to spring up in? Who knows but the fires or clearings of the Indians may have to do with the presence of these trees there?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1860

But where did the pitch pines stand originally? See note to November 13, 1860 ("J. Baker’s pitch pines south of upper wood-path north of his house abundantly confirm the rule of young white pines under pitch pines.")

November 25

Stayed at Merritt's all day. Coldest day of the Season.

EDK, November 25, 1860

An immense cohort of cawing crows

November 25.

Winter weather has come suddenly this year. Last night and to-day are very cold and blustering. The house was shaken by wind last night, and there was a general deficiency of bedclothes. This morning some windows are as handsomely covered with frost as ever in winter.

There is much ice on the meadows now, the broken edges shining in the sun. 

As I go up the meadow-side toward Clamshell, I see a very great collection of crows far and wide on the meadows, evidently gathered by this cold and blustering weather. They flit before me in countless numbers, flying very low on account of the strong northwest wind that comes over the hill, and a cold gleam is reflected from the back and wings of each, as from a weather-stained shingle. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1860 

Very cold and blustering. The house was shaken by wind last night. See November 25, 1857 (“A clear, cold, windy afternoon. ”) ;; November 25, 1858 (“Most keep close to their parlor fires this cold and blustering Thanksgiving afternoon”); November 25, 1853 ('A clear, cold, windy day.“);November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house.”); 


Flying very low on account of the strong northwest wind that comes over the hill. See October 6, 1860 ("One crow lingers on a limb of the dead oak . . . and when it launches off to follow its comrades it is blown up and backward still nearer to me. It is obliged to tack four or five times just like a vessel, first to the right, then to the left, before it can get off; for as often as it tries to fly directly forward against the wind, it is blown upward and . . . it only advances directly forward at last by stooping very low within a few feet of the ground where the trees keep off the wind.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

First snow.

November 24.

P. M. - To Easterbrooks's. 

Under the two white oaks by the second wall south east of my house, on the east side the wall, I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, — frequently more than a dozen on the short sward within a square foot, each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. 

But many have had their radicle broken or eaten off, and many have it now dead and withered. 

So far as my observation goes there, by far the greatest number of white oak acorns were destroyed by decaying (whether in consequence of frost or wet), both before and soon after falling. 

Not nearly so many have been carried off by squirrels and birds or consumed by grubs, though the number of acorns of all kinds lying under the trees is now comparatively small to what it was early in October. 

It is true these two trees are exceptions and I do not find sound ones nearly as numerous under others. Nevertheless, the sound white oak acorns are not so generally and entirely picked up as I supposed. 

However, there are a great many more shells or cups than acorns under the trees; even under these two trees, I think, there are not more than a third as many of any kind sound or hollow — as there were, and generally those that remain are a very small fraction of what there were. 

It will be worth the while to see how many of these sprouted acorns are left and are sound in the spring. 

It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted, — though I have not seen the chestnut oak and little chinquapin at all. 

It remains to be seen how many of the above will be picked up by squirrels, etc., or destroyed by frost and grubs in the winter.




The first spitting of snow — a flurry or squall – from out a gray or slate-colored cloud that came up from the west. This consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. 

These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind. The plowed fields were for a short time whitened with them. 

The green moss about the bases of trees was very prettily spotted white with them, and also the large beds of cladonia in the pastures. They come to contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, which you had not noticed before. Striking against the trunks of the trees on the west side they fell and accumulated in a white line at the base. 

Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. 

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that we could not not see a hill half a mile off for an hour. 

The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. 

The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. Methinks the winter gives them more liberty, like a night. 

I see where a boy has set a box trap and baited it with half an apple, and, a mile off, come across a snare set for a rabbit or partridge in a cow-path in a pitch pine wood near where the rabbits have nibbled the apples which strew the wet ground. How pitiable that the most that many see of a rabbit should be the snare that some boy has set for one! 




The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. 

We do not think much of table-fruits. They are especially for aldermen and epicures. They do not feed the imagination. That would starve on them. These wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination. 

The south may keep her pineapples, and we will be content with our strawberries. 



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1860 

I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted.  See October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”); October 8, 1860 ("I find a great many white oak acorns already sprouted, although they are but half fallen, and can easily believe that they sometimes sprout before they fall. It is a good year for them."); October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall."); October 13, 1860 ("This is a white oak year"); October 29, 1860 ("At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled. The good appear to be all sprouted now."); and note to November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)

The first spitting of snow. The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. See November 24, 1858 ("There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. ") See also November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”) and note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen, ")

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that for an hour we could not see a hill half a mile off. See January 30, 1856 ("It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.”); December 14, 1859( Snow-storms might be classified. . . .Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather. Probably never have much of it.”)

The plowed fields were for a short time whitened. See November 24, 1858 (“Plowed ground is quite white”); See also  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now.");;December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

Snow pellets . . .contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, not noticed before. See December 26, 1855 ("The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all ”)

The first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. See November 24, 1858 ("When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig,") See also November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess. ”); November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.")

The winter gives them more liberty, like a night. See December 8, 1850 ("The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)

November 24

Warm in the morning but very cold at night.  Went to So. Danvers to see Merritt.
    Paid Fare                .50
    Incidentals             .45

EDK, November 24, 1860

November 23

Bot a sheet of music and sent it to Lizzy & Eva Kendall.

EDK, November 23, 1860

Live all that can be lived .

November 23

To-day it has been finger-cold. Unexpectedly I find ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick.  If I am surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I am much more surprised to find a pond in the woods, containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that I walk across it. 

It is in a cold corner, where a pine wood excludes the sun. (In the larger ponds and the river, of course, there is no ice yet.) It is a shallow, weedy pond. I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself and live a life of prudence and commonsense, but to see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1850

It is in a cold corner, where a pine wood excludes the sun. See November 14, 1851 ("Unexpectedly find Heywood's Pond frozen over thinly, it being shallow and coldly placed. ")

To make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. Compare November 23, 1853 ("I must make my life more moral, more pure and innocent. . . .I must not live loosely, but more and more continently."). . See also September 17, 1851 (“How to live. How to get the most life. The art of spending a day. Can a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life is to be found? To observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart of me!”); March 15, 1852 (" My life partakes of infinity.”); May 6, 1854 ("All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities."); July 21, 1853 ("The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I shade my face with my hands. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life."); March 13, 1853 ("The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body. For instance, a poet must sustain his body with his poetry. You must get your living by loving."); May 8, 1854 ("I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk, whereon is no trace of footstep, unstained as glass. I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves . . .");and Walden, Where I lived and what I lived for ("I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”)

Nov. 23. To-day it has been finger-cold. Unexpectedly I found ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick. Prudent people get in their barrels of apples to-day. The difference of the temperature of various localities is greater than is supposed. If I was surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I was much more surprised to find quite a pond in the woods, containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that I walked across it. It was in a cold corner, where a pine wood excluded the sun. In the larger ponds and the river, of course, there is no ice yet. It is a shallow, weedy pond. I lay down on the ice and looked through at the bottom. The plants appeared to grow more up rightly than on the dry land, being sustained and protected by the water. Caddis-worms were everywhere crawling about in their handsome quiver-like sheaths or cases. The wild apples, though they are more mellow and edible, have for some time lost their beauty, as well as the leaves, and now too they are beginning to freeze. The apple season is well-nigh over. Such, however, as are frozen while sound are not unpleasant to eat when the spring sun thaws them. I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself and live a life of prudence and com mon sense, but to see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he not do?

A November day

November 22.

This is a very beautiful November day, - a cool but clear, crystalline air. It is a day to behold and to ramble over the hard (stiffening) and withered surface of the tawny earth. Every plant's down glitters with a silvery light along the Marlborough road.  A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. 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.

Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.


Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out.

November 17, 2017

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1860

This is a very beautiful November day . . . See May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today."); May 18, 1852 ("The world can never be more beautiful than now."); August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day."); September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.")

Visions Illuminations Inspirations

November 21.

For a month past the grass under the pines has been covered with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. 

Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes I have seen, as well on account of the closeness of their branches as of their thorns, have been wild apples. Its branches as stiff as those of the black spruce on the tops of mountains.

I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and frisking in unwieldy sport like huge rats. Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. They even played like kittens, in their way; shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down the hill.

Seeing the sun falling on a distant white pinewood with mingled gray and green, in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. 

It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. 

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. 

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. Yet I do not see what these things can be. I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. 

How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow and an island! What are these things? Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved! I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.

As I looked on the Walden woods eastward across the pond, I saw suddenly a white cloud rising above their tops, now here, now there, marking the progress of the cars which were rolling toward Boston far below, behind many hills and woods.

October must be the month of ripe and tinted leaves.

Throughout November they are almost entirely withered and sombre, the few that remain. In this month the sun is valued. When it shines warmer or brighter we are sure to observe it. There are not so many colors to attract the eye. We begin to remember the summer.

We walk fast to keep warm. For a month past I have sat by a fire.

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.

I get nothing to eat in my walks now but wild apples, sometimes some cranberries, and some walnuts. The squirrels have got the hazelnuts and chestnuts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1850

see May 1850 ("In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it . . See February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we 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. . . See April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all . . . "); May 1850 ("...I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is. . . .")

I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek name for the world,- Kosmos, or beauty. We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower."); April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? ");June 25, 1852 ("What were the firefly's light, if it were not for darkness? The one implies the other.");  August 3, 1852 (" I hear the sound of a distant piano. . . . By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe."); June 5, 1853("The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla. ");February 19, 1854("Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?”); Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?");September 4, 1854("Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her."); September 9, 1854 (" Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures."); January 12, 1855 (" It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls."); December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature. Here is no imperfection. The winter, with its snow and ice, is as it was designed and made to be.");December 5, 1856 ('I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too.") February 20, 1857 ("What is the relation between a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, to whom, perchance, it is more charming and significant than to any else? Certainly they are intimately related, and the one was made for the other."); November 22, 1860 ( 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. Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.").

November 21

 Very cold & windy.


EDK, November 21, 1860

Pulling turnips in cold weather

November 21.

Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips - the usual amusement of such weather - before they shall be frozen in. It is worth the while to see how green and lusty they are yet, still adding to their stock of nutriment for another year; and between the green and also withering leaves it does me good to see their great crimson round tops, sometimes quite above ground, they are so bold. They remind me of rosy cheeks in cool weather, and indeed there is a relationship. 

All kinds of harvestry, even pulling turnips when the first cold weather numbs your fingers, are interesting, if you have been the sower, and have not sown too many.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1860

Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips . . . before they shall be frozen in. See November 13, 1851 ("A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground! What do the thoughts find to live on?"); November 24, 1855 ("[I]tis time to put them [apples] in the cellar, and the turnips. "); November 14, 1855 ("Mr. Rice . . . remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way . . .")

Finger cold .

November 20.

Decidedly finger cold tonight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1860

See October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”); October 26, 1858 ("One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens by his door, foreseeing what his customers will want as soon as it is finger-cold,") November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); November 21, 1860 ("Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips”);November 22, 1860 ("Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out.”); November 23, 1850 ("To-day it has been finger-cold. Unexpectedly I found ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick."); May 8, 1855 ("Still finger-cold.")

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022

November 20

 Bot a knife for            .50

____ Dearborn & Miss Neuers in my room. Dont forget the Brandy &c &c &c


EDK, November 20, 1860

Collecting the Little Auk II

November 19.

My rule of small white pines under pitch pines is so true of E. Hoar's land that he very easily got a hundred white pines there to set by his house. 

Mr. Bradshaw says that he got a little auk in Wayland last week, and heard of two more, one in Weston and the other in Natick. Thinks they came with the storm of the 10th and 11th.

He tells me of a small oak wood of old trees called More's, half a mile east of Wayland, behind the grave-yard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1860

My rule of small white pines under pitch pines. See note to  November 13, 1860 ("J. Baker’s pitch pines south of upper wood-path north of his house abundantly confirm the rule of young white pines under pitch pines. That fine young white pine wood west of this is partly of these which were left when the pitch pines were cut.")

they came with the storm . See July 25, 1860 ("Nuttall says its appearance here is always solitary; driven here by stress of weather ”)

More’s oak wood. See also October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.”); November 2, 1860 ("Wetherbee's oak wood ... The trees would average probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Such a wood has got to be very rare in this neighborhood.”); November 5, 1860 (Blood's oak lot.. . .This wood is a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old.); ( November 10, 1860 ("Inches Wood . . .as fine an oak wood as there is in New England.").

November 19

Cold Windy & Fall like.  Bot a neck tie for which I paid   .50





EDK, November 19, 1860

November 18

Down to Wallaces nearly all day. Called on Josie Redding in the Eve.

EDK, November 18, 1860

The country of the Iroquois.

November 17.


In a map of New Belgium in Ogilby's "America," 1670, east of Lake Champlain, called in Dutch "Meer der Irocoise", is a chain of mountains answering to the Green Mountains of Vermont and between the mountains and the lake, "Irocoisia," or the country of the Iroquois.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1850

In Yankee in Canada (1866) Thoreau repeats Champlain’s  1609 report that the country east of the lake was inhabited by the Iroquois:

The oldest reference to these waters that I have yet seen is in the account of Cartier's discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in 1535. Samuel Champlain actually discovered and paddled up the Lake in July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth, accompanying a war-party of the Canadian Indians against the Iroquois. He describes the islands in it as not inhabited, although they are pleasant,—on account of the continual wars of the Indians, in consequence of which they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into the depths of the land, that they may not be surprised. "Continuing our course," says he, "in this lake, on the western side, viewing the country, I saw on the eastern side very high mountains, where there was snow on the summit. I inquired of the savages if those places were inhabited. They replied that they were, and that they were Iroquois, and that in those places there were beautiful valleys and plains fertile in corn, such as I have eaten in this country, with an infinity of other fruits." This is the earliest account of what is now Vermont.

However, another early map of Lake Champlain, by the Jesuit Pierre Raffeix, gives Abenaki place-names on the eastern shore and indicates Abenaki occupation there. Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People 59 (1994). The Vermont Legislature repeatedly rejected Iroquois land claims on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, in 1798, 1800, 1812, 1826, 1854, 1855, 1874, and 1953.

On September 25,1850, Thoreau and Ellery Channing had started on a week's tour in Canada, first by railroad to Bulringon:

In Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain scenery, not rugged and stupendous, but such as you could easily ramble over,—long narrow mountain vales through which to see the horizon.

You are in the midst of the Green Mountains.

A few more elevated blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly, perhaps Killington Peak is one.

Sometimes, as on the Western Railroad, you are whirled over mountainous embankments, from which the scared horses in the valleys appear diminished to hounds.

All the hills blush; I think that autumn must be the best season to journey over even the Green Mountains.

You frequently exclaim to yourself, what red maples!

 The sugar-maple is not so red. You see some of the latter with rosy spots or cheeks only, blushing on one side like fruit, while all the rest of the tree is green, proving either some partiality in the light or frosts, or some prematurity in particular branches.

Tall and slender ash-trees, whose foliage is turned to a dark mulberry color, are frequent.

The butternut, which is a remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus proving its relation to the hickories.

I was also struck by the bright yellow tints of the yellow-birch.

The sugar-maple is remarkable for its clean ankle.

The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.

As you approach Lake Champlain you begin to see the New York mountains.

The first view of the Lake at Vergennes is impressive, but rather from association than from any peculiarity in the scenery.

It lies there so small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of the State that it does on the map), but beautifully quiet, like a picture of the Lake of Lucerne on a music-box, where you trace the name of Lucerne among the foliage; far more ideal than ever it looked on the map.

It does not say, "Here I am, Lake Champlain," as the conductor might for it, but having studied the geography thirty years, you crossed over a hill one afternoon and beheld it.

But it is only a glimpse that you get here.

At Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on board a steamboat, two hundred and thirty-two miles from Boston.

We left Concord at twenty minutes before eight in the morning, and were in Burlington about six at night, but too late to see the lake.

We got our first fair view of the lake at dawn, just before reaching Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains on either hand, in New York and in Vermont, the former especially grand.

A few white schooners, like gulls, were seen in the distance, for it is not waste and solitary like a lake in Tartary; but it was such a view as leaves not much to be said; indeed, I have postponed Lake Champlain to another day.

 Yankee in Canada (1866)