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.
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
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.").
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