As long as the sun is out, it is warm and pleasant.

November 11.

P.M. — Up Assabet. 

As long as the sun is out, it is warm and pleasant.

The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the bare button-bush, with its brown balls beginning to crumble and show the lighter inside, and the brittle light-brown twigs of the black willow, and the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering), and the brown and yellowish sparganium blades curving over like well-tempered steel, and the gray cottony mikania. 

The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. 

The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off. I see many small collections of shells already left along the river’s brink. Thither they resort with their clam to open and eat it. 

But if it is the edge of a meadow which is being overflowed, they must raise it and make a permanent dry stool there, for they cannot afford to swim far with each clam. I see where one has left half a peek of shells on perhaps the foundation of an old stool or a harder clod, which the water is just about to cover, and he has begun his stool by laying two or three fresh wads upon the shells, the foundation of his house. 

Thus their cabin is first apparently intended merely for a stool, and afterward, when it is large, is perforated as if it were the bank! 

There is no cabin for a long way above the Hemlocks, where there is no low meadow bordering the stream. The clamshells freshly opened are handsomest this month (or rather are most observable, before the ice and snow conceal them) and in the spring. 

I am surprised to see quite a number of painted tortoises out on logs and stones and to hear the wood tortoise rustling down the bank. 

Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. 

At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, eight inches above the present surface, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise. 

The North Branch must have risen suddenly before the South, for I see much pail-stuff from the Fort Pond Brook, which has been carried eighteen rods up the latter stream above the Rock, or as far as it extends immediately due west there. 

By “pail-stuff ” I mean the curved and grooved pieces which form the sides and the flat ones for the bottom and their trimmings. 

High blueberry leaves still conspicuous bright scarlet; also duller and darker green-briar leaves hold on on the Island. 

I hear gray squirrels coursing about on the dry leaves, pursuing one another, and now they come in sight, coursing from pine to pine on their winding way, on their unweariable legs, on their undulating and winding course. It is a motion intermediate between running and flying. 

I hear but a tree sparrow and a chickadee this voyage.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1855

The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet. See note to November 5, 1853 ("What exactly are they for? . . . so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams[?]")

At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level. See April 1, 1859 ("The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . .”) See also November 23, 1853 ("What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level . . . an obvious piece of geometry in nature.");

This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed. See October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain.”); October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river."); October 15, 1856 ("A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen."); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”);  October 28, 1858 (The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain."); October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)