Circle round the moon.

October 30

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day.

P. M. — Near the island, in my boat, I scare up a bittern (Ardea minor), and afterward half a dozen ducks, probably summer ducks.

Saw a large flock of blackbirds yesterday. 

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky. You see no mist within it, large as it is, nor even a star. 

I find thousands of ants now apparently gone into winter quarters in my stumps, large black ones, red in the middle, partly dormant even this warm weather, yet with white grubs or young. Some are winged. . . . 

The clintonia was perfectly at home there [in the Maine woods]. Its leaves were just as handsomely formed and green and disposed commonly in triangles about its stem, and its berries were just as blue and glossy as if they grew by some botanist's favorite walk in Concord. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1857

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening. . . See February 27, 1852 ("To-night a circle round the moon.”)

This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness.

October 29

P. M. — Down river in boat. 

Though it did not rain yesterday, as I remember, it was overcast all day, — didn’t clear up, — and this forenoon it has rained again. The sun only comes out once or twice for a moment this afternoon. [This is the fall storm.]

Accordingly, this being the seventh day of cloud and the fourth of rain (skipping yesterday), the river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash. 

I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus), driven out of the grass of the meadow by the flood. Its head is raised to the surface for air, and it appears sluggish and enfeebled by the water. Putting out my paddle, it immediately coils about it and is raised into the boat. 

It has a distinct pale-pink abdomen, slightly bluish forward. Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back, on each side of which is a line of dark-brown spots about an eighth of an inch apart, as the two lines are also an eighth of an inch apart. This snake is about one foot long. I hold it in my hand, and it is quite inoffensive. 

The sun comes out once or twice, the water is smooth, and the cocks crow as in spring. 

As I am picking cranberries below Flint's Bridge, they being drifted against the shore together with much loose meadow wreck, I notice many crickets wrecked with them and half drowned, as well as snails’ shells. Spiders, however, are in their element. 

A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. 

I meet Goodwin and afterward Melvin. They are musquash shooting. The latter has killed nineteen to-day down stream, thirty-one yesterday up the Assabet. 

He has also a coot, which he calls a little black dipper! It has some clear white under its tail. Is this, then, the name of that dipper? and are the young dippers of Moosehead different? The latter were in flocks and had some white in front, I have said.

Melvin asked if I had seen “Pink-eye,” meaning Goodwin. 

There is a large square-sided black rock, say five or six feet high, eight long, and five wide, on Mrs. Ripley's shore, wedged close between two small elms, and your first thought on seeing it is that it has according to some law occupied that space between the trees, not reflecting that it is more ancient than the trees by a geological period, and that the latter have but recently sprung up under its protection. I thought the rock had been accurately fitted into that space. 

There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real; as if they were just, perchance, establishing, or else losing, a real basis in my world. This is especially the case in the early morning hours, when there is a gradual transition from dreams to waking thoughts, from illusions to actualities, as from darkness, or perchance moon and star light, to sunlight. 

Dreams are real, as is the light of the stars and moon, and theirs is said to be a dreamy light. Such early morning thoughts as I speak of occupy a debatable ground between dreams and waking thoughts. They are a sort of permanent dream in my mind. At least, until we have for some time changed our position from prostrate to erect, and commenced or faced some of the duties of the day, we cannot tell what we have dreamed from what we have actually experienced. 

This morning, for instance, for the twentieth time at least, I thought of that mountain in the easterly part of our town (where no high hill actually is) which once or twice I had ascended, and often allowed my thoughts alone to climb. I now contemplate it in my mind as a familiar thought which I have surely had for many years from time to time, but whether anything could have reminded me of it in the middle of yesterday, whether I ever before remembered it in broad daylight, I doubt. I can now eke out the vision I had of it this morning with my old and yesterday forgotten.

My way up used to lie through a dark and unfrequented wood at its base, - I cannot now tell exactly, it was so long ago, under what circumstances I first ascended, only that I shuddered as I went along (I have an indistinct remembrance of having been out overnight alone), — and then I steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees, where wild beasts haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a mountain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What distinguishes that summit above the earthy line, is that it is unhandselled, awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set foot there. You know no path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire. 

This is a business we can partly understand. The perfect mountain height is already thoroughly purified. It is as if you trod with awe the face of a god turned up, unwittingly but helplessly, yielding to the laws of gravity. And are there not such mountains, east or west, from which you may look down on Concord in your thought, and on all the world? In dreams I am shown this height from time to time, and I seem to have asked my fellow once to climb there with me, and yet I am constrained to believe that I never actually ascended it. It chances, now I think of it, that which makes it rises in my mind where lies the Burying-Hill. You might go through its gate to enter that dark wood, but that hill and its graves are so concealed and obliterated by the awful mountain that I never thought of them as underlying it. Might not the graveyards of the just always be hills, ways by which we ascend and overlook the plain? 

But my old way down was different, and, indeed, this was another way up, though I never so ascended. I came out, as I descended, breathing the thicker air. I came out the belt of wood into a familiar pasture, and along down by a wall. Often, as I go along the low side of this pasture, I let my thoughts ascend toward the mount, gradually entering the stinted wood (Nature subdued) and the thinner air, and drape them selves with mists. There are ever two ways up: one is through the dark wood, the other through the sunny pasture. That is, I reach and discover the mountain only through the dark wood, but I see to my surprise, when I look ofl’ between the mists from its summit, how it is ever adjacent to my native fields, nay, imminent over them, and accessible through a sunny pasture. Why is it that in the lives of men we hear more of the dark wood than of the sunny pasture? A hard-featured god reposing, whose breath hangs about his forehead. 

Though the pleasure of ascending the mountain is largely mixed with awe, my thoughts are purified and sublimed by it, as if I had been translated. 

I see that men may be well-mannered or conventionally polite toward men, but skeptical toward God. 

Forever in my dream and in my morning thought, Eastward a mount ascends; But when in the sunbeam its hard outline is sought, It all dissolves and ends. The woods that way are gates; the pastures too slope up To an unearthly ground; But when I ask my mates to take the staff and cup, It can no more be found. Perhaps I have no shoes fit for the lofty soil Where my thoughts graze, No properly spun clues, nor well-strained mid-day oil, Or must I mend my ways? It is a promised land which I have not yet earned. I have not made beginning With consecrated hand, nor have I ever learned To lay the underpinning. The mountain sinks by day, as do my lofty thoughts, Because I’m not high-minded. If I could think alway above these hills and warts, I should see it, though blinded. It is a spiral path within the pilgrim’s soul Leads to this mountain's brow; Commencing at his hearth he climbs up to this goal

We see mankind generally either (from ignorance or avarice) toiling too hard and becoming mere machines in order to acquire wealth, or perhaps inheriting it or getting it by other accident, having recourse, for relaxation after excessive toil or as a mere relief to their idle ennui, to artificial amusements, rarely elevating and often debasing. I think that men generally are mistaken with regard to amusements. 

Every one who deserves to be regarded as higher than the brute may be supposed to have an earnest purpose, to accomplish which is the object of his existence, and this is at once his work and his supremest pleasure; and for diversion and relaxation, for suggestion and education and strength, there is offered the never-failing amusement of getting a living, — never-failing, I mean, when temperately indulged in. 

I know of no such amusement, — so wholesome and in every sense profitable, —for instance, as to spend an hour or two in a day picking some berries or other fruits which will be food for the winter, or collecting driftwood from the river for fuel, or cultivating the few beans or potatoes which I want. Theatres and operas, which intoxicate for a season, are as nothing compared to these pursuits. And so it is with all the true arts of life. 

Farming and building and manufacturing and sailing are the greatest and wholesomest amusements that were ever invented (for God invented them), and I suppose that the farmers and mechanics know it, only I think they indulge to excess generally, and so what was meant for a joy becomes the sweat of the brow. Gambling, horse-racing, loafing, and rowdyism generally, after all tempt but few. 

The mass are tempted by those other amusements, of farming, etc. It is a great amusement, and more profitable than I could have invented, to go and spend an afternoon hour picking cranberries. By these various pursuits your experience becomes singularly complete and rounded. 

The novelty and significance of such pursuits are remarkable. Such is the path by which we climb to the heights of our being; and compare the poetry which such simple pursuits have inspired with the unreadable volumes which have been written about art. 

Who is the most profitable companion? He who has been picking cranberries and chopping wood, or he who has been attending the opera all his days? I find when I have been building a fence or surveying a farm, or even collecting simples, that these were the true paths to perception and enjoyment. My being seems to have put forth new roots and to be more strongly planted. This is the true way to crack the nut of happiness. 

If, as a poet or naturalist, you wish to explore a given neighborhood, go and live in it, i. e. get your living in it. Fish in its streams, hunt in its forests, gather fuel from its water, its woods, cultivate the ground, and pluck the wild fruits, etc., etc. This will be the surest and speediest way to those perceptions you covet. No amusement has worn better than farming. It tempts men just as strongly to-day as in the day of Cincinnatus. Healthily and properly pursued, it is not a whit more grave than huckleberrying, and if it takes any airs on itself as superior there's something wrong about it. 

I have aspired to practice in succession all the honest arts of life, that I may gather all their fruits. But then, if you are intemperate, if you toil to raise an unnecessary amount of corn, even the large crop of wheat be comes as a small crop of chaff. 

If our living were once honestly got, then it would be time to invent other amusements. 

After reading Ruskin on the love of Nature, I think, “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” He there, to my surprise, expresses the common infidelity of his age and race. He has not implicitly surrendered himself to her. And what does he substitute for that Nature? I do not know, unless it be the Church of England. Questioning whether that relation to Nature was of so much value, after all! It is sour grapes! He does not speak to the condition of foxes that have more spring in their legs. 

The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1857

A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. See October 29,1855 (“As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.”); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived.

October 28. 

October 28, 2017

P. M. — To Conantum. 

To-day it does not rain, but is cloudy all the day. 

Large oak leaves have been falling for a week at least, but the oaks are not yet reduced to their winter state. 

On the causeway I see fox-colored sparrows flitting along in the willows and alders, uttering a faint cheep, and tree sparrows with them. 

On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright irls. (I doubt if some of the brown-headed blackbirds I have seen within three weeks were grackles.) 

As I sat at the wall-corner, high on Conantum, the sky generally covered with continuous cheerless-looking slate-colored clouds, except in the west, I saw, through the hollows of the clouds, here and there the blue appearing. 

All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. 

It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive, like a halo, a glory in which only the just deserved to live. 

It was as if the air, purified by the long storm, reflected these few rays from side to side with a complete illumination, like a perfectly polished mirror, while the effect was greatly enhanced by the contrast with the dull dark clouds and sombre earth. As if Nature did not dare at once to let in the full blaze of the sun to this combustible atmosphere. 

It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might have been performed. 

At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived. 

No perfectly fair weather ever offered such an arena for noble acts. It was such a light as we behold but dwell not in! In each case, every recess was filled and lit up with this pure white light. The maples were Potter’s, far down stream, but I dreamed I walked like a liberated spirit in their maze. The withered meadow-grass was as soft and glorious as paradise. And then it was remarkable that the light-giver should have revealed to me, for all life, the heaving white breasts of those two ducks within this glade of light. It was extinguished and relit as it travelled. 

Tell me precisely the value and significance of these transient gleams which come sometimes at the end of the day, before the close of the storm, final dispersion of the clouds, too late to be of any service to the works of man for the day, and notwithstanding the whole night after may be overcast! Is not this a language to be heard and understood? 

There is, in the brown and gray earth and rocks, and the withered leaves and bare twigs at this season, a purity more correspondent to the light itself than summer offers. 

These two ducks, as near as I could see with my glass, were all dark above, back and wings, but had bright white breasts and necks. They were swimming and tacking about in the midst of the pond, with their heads half the time plunged beneath the surface. Were they grebes? or young sheldrakes? Even at this distance they warily withdraw still further off till I am gone. 

Both aspleniums and the small botrychium are still fresh, as if they were evergreen. The latter sheds pollen. The former are most fresh under the shelter of rocks. 

I look up and see a male marsh hawk with his clean cut wings, that has just skimmed past above my head, – not at all disturbed, only tilting his body a little, now twenty rods off, with demi-semi-quaver of his wings. He is a very neat flyer. 

Again, I hear the scream of a hen-hawk, soaring and circling onward. I do not often see the marsh hawk thus. What a regular figure this fellow makes on high, with his broad tail and broad wings! Does he perceive me, that he rises higher and circles to one side? He goes round now one full circle without a flap, tilting his wing a little; then flaps three or four times and rises higher. Now he comes on like a billow, screaming. 

Steady as a planet in its orbit, with his head bent down, but on second thought that small sprout-land seems worthy of a longer scrutiny, and he gives one circle backward over it. His scream is somewhat like the whinnering of a horse, if it is not rather a split squeal. It is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? Is it to scare his prey, that he may see by its motion where it is, or to inform its mate or companion of its where about? 

Now he crosses the at present broad river steadily, deserving to have one or two rabbits at least to swing about him. What majesty there is in this small bird's flight! The hawks are large-souled. 

Those late grapes on Blackberry Steep are now as ripe as ever they will be. They are sweet and shrivelled but on the whole poor. They ripen there the latter part of October. 

The white pine needles on the ground are already turned considerably redder. The pitch pines, which are yellower than the white when they fall, are three quarters fallen. I see some which look exactly like bamboo, very prettily barred with brown every tenth of an inch or so. 

Going up the cliffy hillside, just north of the witch hazel, I see a vigorous young apple tree, which, planted by birds or cows, has shot up amid the rocks and woods, and has much fruit on it and more beneath it, unin jured by the frosts, now when all other fruits are gathered. It is of a rank, wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and makes an impression, at least, of thorni ness. The fruit is hard and green, but looks like palatable winter fruit; some dangling on the twigs, but more half buried in the wet leaves, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner, Lee, knows no thing of it. There is no hand to pluck its fruit; it is only gnawed by squirrels, I perceive. It has done double duty, – not only borne this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this is such a fruit! Bigger than many berries, and carried home will be sound and palatable, perchance, next spring. Who knows but this chance wild fruit may be equal to those kinds which the Romans and the English have so prized, – may yet become the favorite of the nations? When I go by this shrub, thus late and hardy, and its dangling fruit strikes me, I respect the tree and am grateful for Nature's bounty. 

Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it [is] so noble a fruit. Planted by a bird on a wild and rocky hillside, it bears a fruit, perchance, which foreign potentates shall hear of and send for, though the virtues of the owner of the soil may never be heard of beyond the limits of his village. It may be the choicest fruit of its kind. Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus. It is a prince in disguise, perhaps.” 

There is, apparently, limestone just above this apple tree.

I see pignuts which squirrels have industriously gnawed, the thick rind closely adhering, so that at last they are left brown and very rough; but in no case is the shell cut quite through, for, as I find, they con tain no meat, but, under a shell of double thickness, a mere dry brown skin, and it seems the squirrels knew this!

Is that small fern (still partly green) Aspidium cristatum, at Lee's Cliff, northwest of the witch hazel? 

Suppose I see a single green apple, brought to perfection on some thorny shrub, far in a wild pasture where no cow has plucked it. It is an agreeable surprise. What chemistry has been at work there? It affects me somewhat like a work of art. 

I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit! 

What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate, and only the most persistent and strongest genius prevails, defends itself, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth; and that fruit, though somewhat smaller, perchance, is essentially the same in flavor and quality as if it had grown in a garden. 

That fruit seems all the sweeter and more palatable even for the very difficulties it has contended with. 

Here, on this rugged and woody hillside, has grown an apple tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth like the pines and oaks. Most fruits we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches (here), and melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting, but the apple emulates man's independence and enterprise. 

Like him to some extent, it has migrated to this new world and is ever here and there making its way amid the aboriginal trees. It accompanies man like the ox and dog and horse, which also sometimes run wild and maintain themselves. 

Spite of wandering kine and other adverse circumstance, that scorned shrub, valued only by small birds as a covert, a shelter from hawks, has its blossom week, and in course its harvest, sincere, though small. 

’T was thirty years ago,  

In a rocky pasture field  

Sprang an infant apple grove  

Unplanted and concealed.  

I sing the wild apple, theme enough for me.  

I love the racy fruit and I reverence the tree. 

In that small family there was one that loved the sun, which sent its root down deep and took fast hold on life, while the others went to sleep.    

In two years’ time ’t had thus 

Reached the level of the rocks, 

Admired the stretching world, 

Nor feared the wandering flocks.  

But at this tender age  

Its sufferings began:  

There came a browsing ox 

And cut it down a span.  

Its heart did bleed all day, 

And when the birds were hushed, –

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 28, 1857

At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived. See August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit? The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life.”); April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything. Let the season rule us. . . .There is no other life but this, or the like of this. Nothing must be postponed. Launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Live in the present. On any other course life is a succession of regrets.”)

All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight . . .lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light. See October 28, 1852 (“Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.”) See also August 28, 1860 (" Just before setting, the sun comes out into a clear space in the horizon and a sudden blaze of light falls on east end of the pond and the hillside. At this angle a double amount of bright sunlight reflects from the water up to the underside of the still very fresh green leaves of the bushes and trees on the shore and on Pine Hill, revealing the most vivid and varied shades of green."); November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine. . . .After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire.")

I hear the scream of a hen-hawk, soaring and circling onward.. . It is a hoarse, tremulous breathing forth of his winged energy. But why is it so regularly repeated at that height? See March 2, 1855 ("Hear two hawks scream. There is something truly March-like in it, like a prolonged blast or whistling of the wind  through a crevice in the sky. . .”); March 6, 1858 ("I see the first hen-hawk, or hawk of any kind, methinks, since the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is inspiring as the voice of a spring bird.") April 30, 1855 (“I hear from far the scream of a hawk circling over the Holden woods and swamp. This accounts for those two men with guns just entering it. What a dry, shrill, angry scream! . . . It must have a nest there.”); May 7, 1855 (“In the meanwhile, the crows are making a great cawing amid and over the pine-tops beyond the swamp, and at intervals I hear the scream of a hawk, . . . whom they were pestering”); June 8, 1853 (“I hear a hawk scream, and, looking up, see, a pretty large one circling not far off and incessantly screaming, as I at first suppose to scare and so discover its prey, but its screaming is so incessant and it circles from time to time so near me, as I move southward, that I begin to think it has a nest near by and is angry at my intrusion into its domains. As I move, the bird still follows and screams, coming sometimes quite near. . . At length I detect the nest . . .”); July 31, 1856 (“Near Well Meadow, hear the distant scream of a hawk, apparently anxious about her young, . . .This a sound of the season when they probably are taking their first (?) flights.”);  September 14, 1855 (“I scare from an oak by the side of the Close a young hen-hawk, which, launching off with a scream and a heavy flight, alights on the topmost plume of a large pitch pine. . .”)

Those late grapes on Blackberry Steep are now as ripe as ever they will be. See October 18, 1857 (“I find an abundance of those small, densely clustered grapes, – not the smallest quite, – still quite fresh . . . These are not yet ripe and may fairly be called frost grapes. Half-way up Blackberry Steep, above the rock.”); November 2, 1852 (“About the 10th of November, I first noticed long bunches of very small dark-purple or black grapes fallen on the dry leaves in the ravine east of Spring's house. . . .they had a very agreeably spicy acid taste, evidently not acquired till after the frosts. I thought them quite a discovery and ate many from day to day, . . . It is a true frost grape, but apparently answers to Vitis aestivates”); September 29, 1856 (“I am late for grapes; most have fallen. The fruit of what I have called Vitis aestivalis has partly fallen. . . . . Should not this be called frost grape,”)

I see some shrubs which cattle have browsed for twenty years, keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they are so broad they become their own fence and some interior shoot darts upward and bears its fruit. See May 22, 1853 ("The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree")

To feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me.

October 27

October 27, 2017

P. M. — Up river. 

The third day of steady rain; wind northeast. The river has now risen so far over the meadows that I can just cross Hubbard's Great Meadow in my boat. 

Stedman Buttrick tells me that a great many ducks and large yellow-legs have been killed within a day or two. It is rather late for ducks generally. 

He says that the spruce swamp beyond Farmer's is called Fox Castle Swamp and has been a great place for foxes. 

Some days ago he was passing under a black oak on his land, when he saw the dust of acorn shells (or cups?) falling about him. Looking up, he saw as many as twenty (!) striped squirrels busily running out to ends of the twigs, biting off the nuts, running back and taking off the shells (cups?) and stowing the nuts away in their cheeks. 

I go up the river as far as Hubbard's Second Grove, in order to share the general commotion and excitement of the elements, – wind and waves and rain. A half-dozen boats at the landing were full, and the waves beating over them. It was hard work getting at and hauling up and emptying mine. It was a rod and a half from the water's edge. 

Now look out for your rails and other fencing-stuff and loose lumber, lest it be floated off. 

I sail swiftly, standing up and tipping my boat to make a keel of its side, though at first it is hard to keep off a lee-shore. I look for cranberries drifted up on the lee side of the meadows, but see few. It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. 

The reign of water now begins, and how it gambols and revels! Waves are its leaves, foam its blossoms. How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other! Schools of porpoises and blackfish are only more animated waves and have acquired the gait and game of the sea itself. The high wind and the dashing waves are very inspiriting. 

The clumps of that “west of rock” willow and a discolor are still thinly leaved, with peculiar silvery-yellow leaves in this light. 

The rising water is now rolling and washing up the river wreck of sparganium, etc., etc. Wool-grass tops appear thickly above the flood. 

When I turn about, it requires all my strength and skill to push the boat back again. I must keep it pointed directly in the teeth of the wind. If it turns a little, the wind gets the advantage of me and I lose ground. The wind being against the stream makes it rise the faster, and also prevents the driftwood from coming down. How many a meadow my boat’s bottom has rubbed over! I might perhaps consult with it respecting cranberry vines, cut-grass, pitcher-plant, etc., etc. 

I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts. 

The Indians, it is said, did not look for winter till the springs were full. Long-continued rain and wind come to settle the accounts of the year, filling the springs for winter. The ducks and other fowl, reminded of the lateness thus, go by. The few remaining leaves come fluttering down. 

The snow-flea (as to-day) is washed out of the bark of meadow trees and covers the surface of the flood. The winter's wood is bargained for and being hauled. This storm reminds men to put things on a winter footing. There is not much more for the farmer to do in the fields. 

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. I mean that the very scheme and form of his poetry (so called) is adopted at a sacrifice of vital truth and poetry. Shakespeare has left us his fancies and imaginings, but the truth of his life, with its becoming circumstances, we know nothing about. The writer is reported, the liver not at all. Shakespeare's house! how hollow it is! No man can conceive of Shakespeare in that house. But we want the basis of fact, of an actual life, to complete our Shakespeare, as much as a statue wants its pedestal. A poet's life with this broad actual basis would be as superior to Shakespeare's as a lichen, with its base or thallus, is superior in the order of being to a fungus. 

The Littleton Giant brought us a load of coal within the week. He appears deformed and weakly, though naturally well formed. He does not nearly stand up straight. His knees knock together; they touch when he is standing most upright, and so reduce his height at least three inches. He is also very round-shouldered and stooping, probably from the habit of crouching to conceal his height. He wears a low hat for the same purpose. The tallest man looks like a boy beside him. He has a seat to his wagon made on purpose for him. He habitually stops before all doors. You wonder what his horses think of him, —that a strange horse is not afraid of him. His voice is deep and full, but mild, for he is quite modest and retiring, —really a worthy man, ’t is said. 

Pity he couldn’t have been undertaken by a committee in season and put through, like the boy Safford, been well developed bodily and also mentally, taught to hold up his head and not mind people’s eyes or remarks. It is remarkable that the giants have never correspondingly great hearts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1857

Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day . . . in this probably annual northeast storm. See October 24, 1858 ("A northeast storm. . .as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over . . This weather warns of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. See April 22, 1857 (“to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests.”) and note to May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”) and A Season for Sailing

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. See October 27, 1857 ("Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day.")

The Littleton Giant. See January 17, 1852 ("Saw a teamster coming up the Boston road this after noon, sitting on his load, which was bags of corn or salt, apparently, behind two horses and beating his hands for warmth. He finally got off and walked be hind, to make his blood circulate faster, and I saw that he was a large man. But when I came near him, I found that he was a monstrous man and dwarfed all whom he stood by, so that I did not know whether he was large or they were small. Yet, though he stood so high, he stooped considerably, more than anybody I think of, and he wore a flat glazed cap to conceal his height, and when he got into the village he sat down on his bags again. I heard him remark to a boy that it was a cold day, and it was; but I wondered that he should feel the cold so sensibly, for I thought it must take a long time to cool so large a body. I learned that it was Kimball of Littleton, that probably he was not twenty. The family was not large. Wild, who took the census, said so, and that his sister said he couldn't do much, — health and strength not much. It troubled him that he was so large, for people looked at him. There is at once something monstrous, in the bad sense, suggested by the sight of such a man. Great size is inhuman. It is as if a man should be born with the earth attached to him. I saw him standing up on a sled, talking with the driver, while his own team went on ahead; and I supposed from their comparative height that his companion was sit ting, but he proved to be standing. Such a man is so much less human; that is what may make him sad.")

The seasons and all their changes are in me.

October 26

October 26, 2018

Hard rain in the night and almost steady rain through the day, the second day. Wind still easterly or northeasterly. 

P. M. – Round by Puffer's via Clamshell. 

A driving east or northeast storm. I can see through the drisk only a mile. The river is getting partly over the meadows at last, and my spirits rise with it. Me thinks this rise of the waters must affect every thought and deed in the town. It qualifies my sentence and life. I trust there will appear in this Journal some flow, some gradual filling of the springs and raising of the streams, that the accumulating grists may be ground. 

A storm is a new, and in some respects more active, life in nature. Larger migrating birds make their appearance. They, at least, sympathize with the movements of the watery element and the winds. 

I see two great fish hawks (possibly blue herons) slowly beating northeast against the storm, by what a curious tie circling ever near each other and in the same direction, as if you might expect to find the very motes in the air to be paired; two long undulating wings conveying a feathered body through the misty atmosphere, and this inseparably associated with another planet of the same species. I can just glimpse their undulating lines. Damon and Pythias they must be. The waves beneath, which are of kindred form, are still more social, multitudinous, dvip6aov. 

Where is my mate, beating against the storm with me? They fly according to the valley of the river, northeast or southwest. 

I start up snipes also at Clamshell Meadow. This weather sets the migratory birds in motion and also makes them bolder. 

These regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be — they were at first, of course — simply and plainly phenomena or phases of my life. The seasons and all their changes are in me.  I see not a dead eel or floating snake, or a gull, but it rounds my life and is like a line or accent in its poem. Almost I believe the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks again, were I not here. After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are. I would have nothing subtracted. I can imagine nothing added. My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! 

Going along the road toward the baeomyces, I see, as I think, a space a yard or two square where the bank has been [burnt] over by accident, by some traveller or sportsman. Even as I stand within four or five feet I take it to be so. It was the fallen leaves of the Salix tristis, thickly covering the ground, so black, with an ashy reflection, that they look exactly like cinders of leaves. And the small twigs were also blackened and inconspicuous; I could hardly detect them. Just the right mingling of black and ash-color. It was a wet day, which made them look blacker.

Mere evergreen mossy banks, as that by this road in the woods, now more attract us when greenness is so rare. 

At the hewing-place on the flat above, many sparrows are flitting past amid the birches and sallows. They are chiefly Fringilla hyemalis. How often they may be  thus flitting along in a straggling manner from bush to bush, so that the hedgerow will be all alive with them, each uttering a faint chip from time to time, as if to keep together, bewildering you so that you know not if the greater part are gone by or still to come. One rests but a moment on the tree before you and is gone again. You wonder if they know whither they are bound, and how their leader is appointed. 

The pitch pine leaves not yet quite fallen. 

Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches. 

Those sparrows, too, are thoughts I have. They come and go; they flit by quickly on their migrations, uttering only a faint chip, I know not whither or why exactly. One will not rest upon its twig for me to scrutinize it. The whole copse will be alive with my rambling thoughts, bewildering me by their very multitude, but they will be all gone directly without leaving me a feather. 

My loftiest thought is somewhat like an eagle that suddenly comes into the field of view, suggesting great things and thrilling the beholder, as if it were bound hitherward with a message for me; but it comes no nearer, but circles and soars away, growing dimmer, disappointing me, till it is lost behind a cliff or a cloud. 

Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1857

Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches. See note to October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.”)

The seasons and all their changes are in me . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

The seasons 

and all their changes 

are in me –

 my moods periodical 

not two days alike.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

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

The vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep.

October 25.

Rain in night. 

P. M. – By boat to Battle-Ground. 

A rainy day and easterly wind, - an easterly storm.

October 25, 2023

I see flying very high over the meadow, from the east, eleven large birds, leisurely circling a little by the way, surveying the bare meadow. I think they must be fish hawks. 

I am amused to see that Varro tells us that the Latin e represents the vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep (Bee). If he had said in any word pronounced by the Romans we should be not the wiser, but we do not doubt that sheep bleat to-day as they did then. 

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1857

I think they must be fish hawks. See October 9, 1853 ("Did we not see a fish hawk? "); November 6, 1854 ("Was that a fish hawk I saw flying over the Assabet, or a goshawk? "); November 17, 1854 ( I think it must have been a fish hawk which I saw ); November 21, 1850 ("I saw 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.") See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous. See October 25, 1855 ("The muskrats must now prepare for winter in earnest. I see many places where they have left clamshells recently. ") see also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

https://tinyurl.com/HDT571025

Absorbed in picking chestnuts humming a thought of more significance.

October 24. 

P. M. — To Smith's chestnut grove. 

Rain last night, raising the springs a little. To-day and yesterday still, gray days, but not cold. 

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. 

I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; more than half under one tree. I believe I get more by resolving, where they are reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the leaves with your right hand in toward the stump, while your left holds the basket, and so go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about all then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. 

I find on a chestnut tree, while shaking it, fifteen or twenty feet high, on the bark of the trunk, a singular green kind of slug nearly half an inch long . . . and about three sixteenths high from the paper up, narrower on back . . .; a brown mark across middle of back and near tail . . .. It can elongate itself and also run out its head a little from beneath this soft kind of shell. Beneath, quite flat and fleshy-ribbed. Climbs up glass slowly but easily. Reminds me of a green beechnut, but flat-backed. Would hardly suspect it to have life at first sight. Sticks very firmly to the bark or glass; hard to be pushed aside. 

I find one of those small, hard, dark-brown millipede worms partly crawled into a hole in a chestnut. 

I read of an apple tree in this neighborhood that had blossomed again about a week ago. 

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, – turn over a new leaf. 

I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1857

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. See October 24, 1855  ("The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses."); October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")

Brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile . . . I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. See
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")


I hear the dull thump of heavy stones ...far through the rustling wood where boys are ranging for nuts.  See October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.")

The evergreen ferns stand out all at once.

October 23

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Aspidium spinulosum

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.

I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. 

Witch hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. 

See by the droppings in the woods where small migrating birds have roosted. 

I see a squirrel's nest in a white pine, recently made, on the hillside near the witch-hazels. 

The high bank-side is mostly covered with fallen leaves of pines and hemlocks, etc. 

Marginal Woodfern

Mt. Pritchard, October 23, 2024

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. 

The fallen pine-needles, as well as other leaves, now actually paint the surface of the earth brown in the woods, covering the green and other colors, and the few evergreen plants on the forest floor stand out distinct and have a rare preeminence. 

Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries, calls the soapwort gentian “blue vengeance,” mistaking the word. A masculine wild eyed woman of the fields. Somebody has her daguerreotype. When Mr. — was to lecture on Kansas, she was sure “she wa'n't going to hear him. None of her folks had ever had any.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1857

Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. See October 31, 1857 ("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 . . . In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves."); November 17, 1858 ("Aspidium spinulosum (?), large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister's Spring, on 16th"); September 25, 1859 ("The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody."); September 30, 1859 ("The most decidedly evergreen are the [terminal shield fern ], polypody, Aspidium marginale, and Aspidium spinulosum of Woodis Swamp and Brister's."); May 18, 1860 ("That large fern (is it Aspidium spinulosum? ) of Brister Spring Swamp is a foot or more high. It is partly evergreen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum

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. See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."); November 17, 1858 ("As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody  [Polypodium virginianum — rock polypody] (though shrivelled by cold where exposed)
• Asplenium trichomanes [maidenhair spleenwort].
• A. ebeneum [or Asplenium platyneuron – ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort].
• Aspidium spinulosum (?) [or Dryopteris carthusiana or Polypodium spinulosum, –  spinulose shield fern, spinulose woodfern or toothed wood fern] large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?) [or Dryopteris cristata – crested wood fern], Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common) [or Dryopteris marginalis, – marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern]
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield) [or Polystichum acrostichoides, – Christmas fern].")

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum;  

I begin now to

notice the evergreen ferns –

when others wither.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries' See October 5, 1856 ("Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts. Do they not rather belong to such children of nature than to those who have merely bought them with their money?")

October 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 23

The evergreen ferns 

are seen to be evergreen – 

stand out all at once. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  evergreen ferns stand out all at once.

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-571023