It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections.

November 2.

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. 

November 2, 2015

Row up Assabet as far as the Pokelogan, thence on foot. 

It is very pleasant and cheerful nowadays, when the brown and withered leaves strew the ground and almost every plant is fallen or withered, to come upon a patch of polypody on some rocky hillside in the woods, —as in abundance on hillside between Calla Swamp and Bateman’s Pond, and still more same hillside east of the callas, —where, in the midst of the dry and rustling leaves, defying frost, it stands so freshly green and full of life.  The mere greenness, which was not remarkable in the summer, is positively interesting now. 

polypody

November 2, 2023

My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed. 

The brakes, the sarsaparilla, the osmundas, the Solomon’s-seals, the lady's slippers have long since withered and fallen. The huckleberries and blueberries, too, have lost their leaves. The forest floor is covered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves. 

But what is that perennial and spring like verdure that clothes the rocks, of small green plumes pointing various ways? It is the cheerful community of the polypody. It survives at least as the type of vegetation, to remind us of the spring which shall not fail. These are the green pastures where I browse now. 

Why is not this form copied by our sculptors instead of the foreign acanthus leaves and bays? The sight of this unwithering green leaf excites me like red at some seasons.  I don’t care for acanthus leaves; they are far-fetched. I do love this form, however, and would like to see it painted or sculptured, whether on your marble or my butter. How fit for a tuft about the base of a column! 

Are not the wood frogs the philosophers who walk (?) in these groves? Methinks I imbibe a cool, composed, frog-like philosophy when I behold them. 

I come to a black snake in the wood-path, with its crushed head resting on a stone and its uninjured body trailing thence. How often I see where thus some heel has bruised the serpent's head! I think it an unnatural antipathy. 

Crossed over that high, flat-backed rocky hill, where the rocks, as usual thereabouts, stand on their edges, and the grain, though usually running northeasterly and southwesterly, — by compass east-northeast, west southwest, — is frequently kinked up in a curious manner, reminding me of a curly head. Call the hill Curly-pate. 

Bateman's Pond is agitated by the strong wind, – a slate-colored surface under the cloudy sky. 

I find some good blue pearmains under their tree in a swamp, amid the huckleberry bushes, etc., all fallen. They lie with a rich bloom on them still, though half of them are gnawed by squirrels or rabbits; low in the sedge, with decayed leaves adhering to them. 

How contagious are boys' games! A short time ago they were spinning tops, as I saw and heard, all the country over. Now every boy has a stick curved at the end, a hawkie (?), in his hand, whether in yards or in distant lanes I meet them. 

The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums now have their day; now is the flower of their age, and their greenness is appreciated. They are much the clearest and most liquid green in the woods, more yellow and brown specked in the open places. 

The form of the polypody is strangely interesting; it is even outlandish. Some forms, though common in our midst, are thus perennially foreign as the growths of other latitudes; there being a greater interval between us and their kind than usual. We all feel the ferns to be further from us, essentially and sympathetically, than the phaenogamous plants, the roses and weeds, for instance. It needs no geology nor botany to assure us of that. We feel it, and told them of it first. The bare outline of the polypody thrills me strangely. It is a strange type which I cannot read. It only piques me. Simple as it is, it is as strange as an Oriental character. It is quite independent of my race, and of the Indian, and all mankind. It is a fabulous, mythological form, such as prevailed when the earth and air and water were inhabited by those extinct fossil creatures that we find. It is contemporary with them, and affects as the sight of them. 

As I stood on Curly-pate, the air had become gradually thick with mist in the southwest. The sky was overcast, and a cool, strong wind blew from the same quarter, and in the mist I perceived the strong scent of smoke from some burning. Standing on one of those curly-headed rocks, whose strata are vertical, gives me a sense of elevation like a mountain-top. In fact, they are on the axis of elevation. 

There are no fresh — or blue — fringed gentians by the swamp-side by Bateman’s now. 

Wild apples have lost some of their brilliancy now and are chiefly fallen. 

Returning, I see the red oak on R. W. E.'s shore reflected in the bright sky water. In the reflection the tree is black against the clear whitish sky, though as I see it against the opposite woods it is a warm greenish yellow. But the river sees it against the bright sky, and hence the reflection is like ink. The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below. 

November 2, 2017

I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections. Their minds are not abstracted from the surface, from surfaces generally. It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most glorious reflections, though exactly in the line of my vision. 

If the fisherman was looking at the reflection, he would not know when he had a nibble! I know from my own experience that he may cast his line right over the most elysian landscape and sky, and not catch the slightest notion of them. 

You must be in an abstract mood to see reflections however distinct. I was even startled by the sight of that reflected red oak as if it were a black water-spirit. 

When we are enough abstracted, the opaque earth itself reflects images to us; i. e., we are imaginative, see visions, etc. Such a reflection, this inky, leafy tree, against the white sky, can only be seen at this season. 

November 2, 2017

The water is falling fast, and I push direct over the meadow this evening, probably for the last time this fall, scraping the cranberry vines and hummocks from time to time with my flat-bottomed boat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1857

A black snake in the wood-path, with its crushed head resting on a stone. See May 4, 1857 ("Wyman told Minott that he used to see black snakes crossing Walden and would wait till they came ashore and then kill them."); October 11, 1856 ("In the path, as I go up the hill beyond the springs, on the edge of Stow's sprout-land, I find a little snake which somebody has killed with his heel."); and note to April 26, 1857 ("I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one.")

The form of the polypody is strangely interesting ... there being a greater interval between us and their kind than usual. ... It is a strange type which I cannot read. ... such as prevailed when the earth and air and water were inhabited by those extinct fossil creatures that we find. See June 5, 1857 ([Wild] as those strange fossil plants whose impressions I see on my coal. . .[W]hat ages between me and the tree whose shade I enjoy! It is as if it stood substantially in a remote geological period.")

It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. See November 2, 1854 ("At length I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. "); October 7, 1857 ("Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them.")