How speedily the night comes on now!

November 13. 

Some rain in the night. 

I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves, probably using those on the tree before they fell. Now that the top of the oak is bare, this is a dark round mass against the sky, as big as a peck measure, very conspicuous. There are considerable many still hanging on the lower parts. I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest. 

I observed on the 7th, between the site of Paul Adams's and Bateman's Pond, in quite open land, some very prominent Indian corn-hills. I should say that they were higher above the intermediate surface than when they were first made. It was a pasture, and they were thickly covered with grass and lichens. Perhaps the grass had grown better on the hillocks, and so they had grown while the intermediate spaces had been more trodden by the cows. These very regular round grassy hillocks, extending in straight rows over the swells and valleys, had a singular effect, like the burial-ground of some creatures. 

I find that I can see the sun set from almost any hill in Concord, and some within the confines of the neighboring towns, and though this takes place at just about 5 P.M., when the cows come in, get to the post-office by the time the mail is distributed. 

See the sun rise or 

set if possible each day. 

Let that be your pill. 

How speedily the night comes on now! There is some duskiness in the afternoon light before you are aware of it, the cows have gathered about the bars, waiting to be let out, and, in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. It remains only to get home again. 

Who is weary? Why do we cease work and go to bed? Who taught men thus to spend their nights and days? Yet I must confess that I am surprised when I find that particular wise and independent persons conform so far as regularly to go to bed and get up about the same time with their neighbors. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1857

I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.  See March 6, 1856 (“ [A](probably) gray squirrel’s nest high in a pitch pine, and acorn shells about on it. ”); January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”);  November 5, 1860 ("[T]here are the nests of several gray squirrels in the trees.")

See the sun rise or set if possible each day. See December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset.") January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever, — so to relate ourselves, for our mind's and body's health, to a universal fact.”);  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day.")

How speedily the night comes on now!. . .in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. See November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, . . ."); November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”); December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight. . . The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened."); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night") December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); Compare January 20, 1852 (“ The days are now sensibly longer,”); January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); J