The snow has taken all the November out of the sky.

November 29. 

P. M. — To Hill.

About three inches of snow fell last evening, and a few cows on the hillside have wandered about in vain to come at the grass. They have at length found that place high on the south side where the snow is thinnest. 

How bright and light the day now! Methinks it is as good as half an hour added to the day. 

White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape. The pine woods snowed up look more like the bare oak woods with their gray boughs. The river meadows show now far off a dull straw-color or pale brown amid the general white, where the coarse sedge rises above the snow; and distant oak woods are now more distinctly reddish. 

It is a clear and pleasant winter day. The snow has taken all the November out of the sky. Now blue shadows, green rivers, — both which I see, — and still winter life. I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks, and crows sit silent on a bare oak-top. 

I see a living shrike caught to-day in the barn of the Middlesex House.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1858 

White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape. Compare November 25, 1853 ("The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near."); June 12, 1852 ("Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house."); June 24, 1852 ("I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one's eyes ache.")

The snow has taken all the November out of the sky. See November 13, 1858 (“Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”); November 28, 1858 (“ Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change? ”)

I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks. See January 7, 1858 ("I notice only one squirrel, and a fox, and perhaps partridge track, into which the snow has blown . . .The mice have not been forth since the snow, or perhaps in some places where they have, their tracks are obliterated.")

The snow has taken 

November out of the sky -- 

I see winter life. 

Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change?

November 28. 

A gray, overcast, still day, and more small birds —tree sparrows and chickadees — than usual about the house. 

November 28, 2023

There have been a very few fine snowflakes falling for many hours, and now, by 2 P. M., a regular snow-storm has commenced, fine flakes falling steadily, and rapidly whitening all the landscape. In half an hour the russet earth is painted white even to the horizon. Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change? 

I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me; that is one peculiarity of winter walking. Anybody may follow my trail. I have walked, perhaps, a particular wild path along some swamp-side all summer, and thought to myself, I am the only villager that ever comes here. 

But I go out shortly after the first snow has fallen, and lo, here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well. Yet my hour is not his, and I may never meet him! 

I asked Coombs the other night if he had been a-hunting lately. He said he had not been out but once this fall. He went out the other day with a companion, and they came near getting a fox. They broke his leg. He has evidently been looking forward to some such success all summer. Having done thus much, he can afford to sit awhile by the stove at the post-office. He is plotting now how to break his head. 

Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery. 

And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge! How many new thoughts, then, may I have?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1858


A regular snow-storm has commenced, fine flakes falling steadily, and rapidly whitening all the landscape. See December 14, 1859 ("Snow-storms might be classified. This is a fine, dry snow"}

Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change? See November 13, 1858 (“Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”); November 29, 1858 ("The snow has taken all the November out of the sky."); January 26, 1855 ("This morning it snows again,—a fine dry snow with no wind to speak of, giving a wintry aspect to the landscape . . . What changes in the aspect of the earth! ")

I cannot now walk without leaving a track behind me.  See  November 15, 1858 ("You are now reminded occasionally in your walks that you have contemporaries, and perchance predecessors. I see the track of a fox . . . and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog."); December 12, 1859 ("[In the winter] you see the tracks of those who had preceded you, and so are more reminded of them than in summer."); compare January 19, 1852 ("It is pleasant to make the first tracks in this road through the woods . . . the fine, dry snow blowing and drifting still.");

Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery. See November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot."); See also October 22, 1853 ("One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart . . ., — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably. . . .Goodwin stands on the solid earth"); See November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season.")

These striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge! See November 26, 1858
("Looking more attentively, I detected also a great many minnows . . .shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch . . . They have about seven transverse dusky bars like a perch! Yet, from their form and single dorsal fin, I think they are breams. Are they not a new species? "); November 27, 1858 ("I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. “); November 30, 1858 ("How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it! For more than two centuries men have fished here and have not distinguished this permanent settler of the township. When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it. But there it dwells and has dwelt permanently, who can tell how long?")

November 28. A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 28

So sudden a change –

the russet earth painted white

to the horizon. 

I cannot now walk

without leaving tracks behind.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

Do we know of any other so silent and sudden a change? 

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-581128

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected.

November 27. 

Those barren hollows and plains in the neighborhood of Walden are singular places. I see many which were heavily wooded fifteen or thirty years ago now covered only with fine sedge, sweet-fern, or a few birches, willows, poplars, small wild cherries, panicled cornels, etc. 

They need not amount to hollows at all: many of them are glades merely, and all that region is elevated, but the surrounding higher ground, though it may be only five or ten feet higher, will be covered with a good growth. 

One should think twice before he cut off such places. Perhaps they had better never be laid bare, but merely thinned out. We do not begin to understand the treatment of woodland yet. 

On such spots you will see various young trees—and some of them which I have named —dead as if a fire had run through them, killed apparently by frost. 

I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base, and Emerson represents but one form of the fruit. The leaf of this was not very deeply cut, was broad for its length. 

I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. As I now count, the dorsal fin-rays are 9-10 (Girard says 9-11), caudal 17 (with apparently 4 short on each side), anal 3-11, pectoral 11, ventral 1-5. They have about seven transverse dark bars, a vertical dark mark under eye, and a dark spot on edge of operculum. They appear to be the young of the Pomotis obesus, described by Charles Girard to the Natural History Society in April, ’54, obtained by Baird in fresh water about Hingham and Charles River in Holliston. 

I got more perfect specimens than the bream drawn above. They are exceedingly pretty seen floating dead on their sides in a bowl of water, with all their fins spread out. From their size and form and position they cannot fail to remind you of coins in the basin.

The conspicuous transverse bars distinguish them at once. The dorsal fin consists of two parts, the foremost of shorter stiff, spiny rays, the other eleven at least half as long again and quite flexible and waving, falling together like a wet rag out of water. So, with the anal fin, the three foremost rays are short (and spiny, as I see, and one of each of the ventral (according to Girard, and to me). These foremost rays in each case look like slender raking masts, and their points project beyond the thin web of the fin, whose edge looks like the ropes which stretch from masthead to masthead, loopwise. 

The stiff and spiny foremost part of the fins evidently serves for a cut-water which bears the brunt of any concussion and perhaps may serve for weapons of offense, while the more ample and gently waving flexible after part more especially guides the motions of the fish. 

The transverse bars are continued across these parts of the dorsal and anal fins, as the markings of a turtle across its feet or flippers; methinks the fins of the minnows are peculiarly beautiful. 

How much more remote the newly discovered species seems to dwell than the old and familiar ones, though both inhabit the same pond! Where the Pomotis obesus swims must be a new country, unexplored by science. The seashore may be settled, but aborigines dwell unseen only thus far inland. This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. The water which such a fish swims in must still have a primitive forest decaying in it.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1858

I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch.")

So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base. See September 12, 1854 ("[White oak acorns] are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them"); January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or  rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.");  September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately. [The black oak acorns also slightly marked thus.]") also  September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. See September 9, 1856 ("The skin and skull of a panther (Felis concolor) (cougar, catamount, painter, American lion, puma) . . . gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here.").

A new species?

November 26. 

The various evergreens, large and small, may be said generally to turn green or to have turned reddish about the middle of November. 

Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual). 

A good many leaves of the sweet-fern, though withered now, still hold on; so that this shrub may be put with the oaks in this respect. So far as I remember, it is peculiar among shrubs in this.

Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. The bar between pond and Hubbard’s pond hole is four feet wide, but the main bar is not bare. There is a shore at least six feet wide inside the alders at my old shore, and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. 

I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers, though in their case it may be more difficult to detect. Even around Little Goose Pond the shore is laid bare for a space even wider than at Walden, it being less abrupt. The Pout’s Nest, also, has lost ten feet on all sides. 

Those pouts’ nests which I discovered in the spring are high and dry six feet from the water. I overhauled one, ripping up the frozen roof with my hands. The roof was only three inches thick, then a cavity and a bottom of wet mud. In this mud I found two small frogs, one apparently a Rana palustris less than an inch long, the other apparently a young R. pipiens an inch and a half long. They were quite sluggish and had evidently gone into winter quarters there, but probably some mink would have got them. 

The Pout’s Nest was frozen just enough to bear, with two or three breathing-places left. The principal of these was a narrow opening about a rod long by eighteen inches wide within six feet of the southwest side of the pond-hole, and the immediately adjacent ice was darker and thinner than the rest, having formed quite recently. 

I observed that the water at this breathing-chink was all alive with pollywogs, mostly of large size, though some were small, which apparently had collected there chiefly, as the water-surface was steadily contracted, for the sake of the air (?). There [were] more than a hundred of them there, or ten or a dozen in a square foot, and many more under the ice. 

I saw one firmly frozen in and dead. One had legs, and his tail was half eaten off by some creature, yet he was alive. There were also one or two frogs stirring among them. Here was evidently warmer water, probably a spring, and they had crowded to it. 

Looking more attentively, I detected also a great many minnows about one inch long either floating dead there or frozen into the ice,—at least fifty of them. They were shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch. 

There were more pollywogs in other parts of the pond-hole, and at the north end I saw two perch about seven inches long, dead, close to the shore, and turned a bright green,— which are commonly yellow, — as if poisoned by the water or something they had eaten. Perhaps the fishes had suffered by the falling of this pond-hole and consequent isolation from the main pond, which has left this part still more shallow and stagnant than before. It is full of the target-weed. 

If the pond continues to fall, undoubtedly all the fishes thus landlocked will die. I noticed at the above-named chink tracks which looked like those of an otter, where some animal had entered and come out of the water, leaving weeds and fragments of ice at the edge of the hole. No doubt several creatures, like otter and mink and foxes, know where to resort for their food at this season. This is now a perfect otter’s or mink’s preserve. 

Perhaps such a mass of decaying weeds is fatal to the fishes here. It is evident that those frogs would have been frozen stiff the first colder night in such a shallow retreat. It is very likely that that hole (i. e. pout’s hole) was under water when they took refuge there, and, the water going down, they were chilled. In such cases, then, pollywogs and fishes, and even frogs, resort to the last part to freeze, the warmest water, where it is open longest. 

Examining those minnows by day, I find that they are one and one sixth inches long by two fifths of an inch wide (this my largest); in form like a bream; of a very pale golden like a perch, or more bluish. Have but one dorsal fin and, as near as I can count, rays, dorsal 19 (first, 9 stouter and stiff and more distinctly pointed, then 10 longer and flexible, whole fin about three times as long as average height), caudal 17 [?], anal 13 or 14, ventral 6, pectoral 10 (?). They have about seven transverse dusky bars like a perch! Yet, from their form and single dorsal fin, I think they are breams. Are they not a new species? Have young breams transverse bars? A little narrower than this.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1858

Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual). See note to November 26, 1857 (“Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in. ”)

I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes. See December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. “)

The Pout’s Nest was frozen just enough to bear, with two or three breathing-places left. "Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. See note to July 26, 1860 (I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. . . So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest."); also June 7, 1858 ("Where do the Walden pouts breed when they have not access to this meadow?")

If the pond continues to fall, undoubtedly all the fishes thus landlocked will die. See August 28, 1854 (“The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up. The breams, from one to two and a half inches long, lying on the sides and quirking from time to time, a dozen together where there is but a pint of water on the mud, are a handsome but sad sight, — pretty green jewels, dying in the sun. I saved a dozen or more by putting them in deeper pools.”)

A new species? See November 30, 1858 ("When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it...I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star...The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own."). The fish shaped like a bream but with markings like a perch.is presented at the next meeting of the Boston Natural History Society an later ridentified as the Pomotis obesus Girard 1854 (banded sunfish).

The sunny south side of this swamp.

November 25. 


P. M. —To Ministerial Swamp. 

I go through the Dennis Swamp by railroad. See a few high blueberry buds which have fairly started, expanded into small red leaves, apparently within a few weeks. 

The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves; also the gold-thread.

The prinos berries on their light-brown twigs are quite abundant and handsome. 

While most keep close to their parlor fires this cold and blustering Thanksgiving afternoon, and think with compassion of those who are abroad, I find the sunny south side of this swamp as warm as their parlors, and warmer to my spirit. Aye, there is a serenity and warmth here which the parlor does not suggest, enhanced by the sound of the wind roaring on the northwest side of the swamp a dozen or so rods off. What a wholesome and inspiring warmth is this! 

Bigtooth aspen, November 25, 2018

I see aspen (tremuliformis) leaves, which have long since fallen, turned black, which also shows the relation of this tree to the willow, many species of which also turn black. 

Pass Tarbell’s behind. The farmer, now on the downhill of life, at length gets his new barn and barn cellar built, far away in some unfrequented vale. This for twoscore years he has struggled for. This is his poem done at last, — to get the means to dig that cavity and rear those timbers aloft. How many millions have done just like him!—or failed to do it! There is so little originality, and just so little, and just as much, fate, so to call it, in literature. With steady struggle, with alternate failure and success, he at length gets a barn cellar completed, and then a tomb. You would say that there was a tariff on thinking and originality.

I pass through the Ministerial Swamp and ascend the steep hill on the south cut off last winter. In the barren poplar hollow just north of the old mountain cranberry is another, the largest, patch of it (i. e. bear-berry) that I remember in Concord. 

How often I see these aspens standing dead in barren, perhaps frosty, valleys in the woods! Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground. 

You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, after walking in the shade or on looking round from a height, to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines, especially pitch pines, or the withered oak leaves, through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest. Sunlight in summer falling on green woods is not, methinks, such a noticeable phenomenon. I stand on that high hill south of the swamp cut off by C. (?) Wheeler last winter, and when I look round northeast I am greatly surprised by the very brilliant sunlight of which I speak, surpassing the glare of any noontide, it seems to me.

November 25, 2018

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1858

See a few high blueberry buds which have fairly started, expanded into small red leaves. See November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”); November 23, 1857 (“You distinguish it by its gray spreading mass; its light-gray bark, rather roughened; its thickish shoots, often crimson; and its plump, roundish red buds.”)


The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves. See February 18, 1858 (“The Rubus hispidus (sempervirens of Bigelow) is truly evergreen.”);  August 4, 1854 (“The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two.”); August 6, 1856 (“Rubus hispidus ripe.”); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins.”); August 23, 1856 (“ At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid.”); November 16, 1858 (“Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish”); November 20, 1858 (“the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen”)

 Rubus hispidus is a small, herb-like shrub up to 8 inches tall. with the common names swamp dewberry, bristly dewberry, bristly groundberry, groundberry, hispid swamp blackberry or running swamp blackberry. It is a species of dewberry in the rose family, closely related to the blackberries.The twigs are red and have bristles. Flowers in small clumps, each with five white rounded petals. The berries, dark purple, almost black, are rather bitter for culinary use, and so this plant is generally not cultivated. ~wkipedia

I find the sunny south side of this swamp as warm as their parlors, and warmer to my spirit. See November 25, 1850 ("Tthere was a finer and purer warmth than in summer; a wholesome, intellectual warmth, in which the body was warmed by the mind's contentment. The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence."); see also January 7, 1857 (“I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. ”)

Snow sugars the ground to reveal a cow-path in the distant landscape.

November 24

November 24, 2018

November 24, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. On grass ground there is much the less, and that is barely perceptible, while plowed ground is quite white, and I can thus distinguish such fields even to the horizon. It is dark, drizzling still from time to time, sprinkling or snowing a little. I see more snow in the north and north west horizon. I can not only distinguish plowed fields — regular white squares in the midst of russet — but even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long, as I look across to Conantum. It is pleasant to see thus revealed as a feature, even in the distant landscape, a cow-path leading from far inland down to the river. 

The young oaks on the plain under the Cliffs are of a more uniform color than a fortnight ago, — a reddish brown. 

Fair Haven Pond is closed still.

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling. The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks, — strange that there should be none on the pines close by, —and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light. That side of the trunk on which the lichens are thickest is the side on which the snow lodges in long ridges. 

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. 

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. 

Saw a scarlet oak some sixteen inches in diameter at three feet from ground blown down evidently in that southeast wind some months ago. It stood on the southerly edge of Wheeler’s wood, and had fallen north-north west, breaking off a white oak nine inches in diameter and a small white pine in its fall. It was a perfectly sound oak. I was surprised to see how little root it had. Very few roots reached deeper than two feet, — the thickness of the crust of earth turned up by its fall,— and those that did were not bigger than one’s finger; and there was not a root bigger than your finger at four feet from the centre on any side of the more than semi circle exposed. No wonder it was uprooted! 

Here is an author who contrasts love for “the beauties of the person” with that for “excellences of the mind,” as if these were the alternatives. I must say that it is for neither of these that I should feel the strongest afiection. I love that one with whom I sympathize, be she “beautiful” or otherwise, of excellent mind or not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1858

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight . . . it had lodged on every twig See November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

Plowed ground is quite white. See November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”) See also  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.") December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”);

Even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long. See February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”)

It is lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”);January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”); January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”)  January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);


Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. See January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); December 26, 1853 ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig”); December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”); March 2, 1858 (“ the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad. See September 23, 1855 (" I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.”) August 14, 1854 (“I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods.”); June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”); June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

A northeaster.

November 23. 

A northeasterly storm, with occasional sugarings of snow.

November 23, 2018

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 23, 1858

November 23rd was the median date of the first snow in Henry’s Journal. Compare November 23, 1857 (“In the evening heavy rain and some thunder and lightning, and rain in the night.”); November 23, 1852 ("It is, in some degree, warmer after the first snow has come and banked up the houses and filled the crevices in the roof. There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness. Men, too, are disposed to give thanks for the bounties of the year all over the land.”) and see note to November 29, 1856 ("Begins to snow this morning and snows slowly and interruptedly with a little fine hail all day till it is several inches deep. This the first snow I have seen...")

An old stump by the wall.

November 22. 

In surveying Mr. Bigelow’s wood-lot to day I found at the northeasterly angle what in the deed from the Thayers in ’38 was called “an old stump by the wall.” It is still quite plain and may last twenty years longer. It is oak. 

This is quite a pleasant day, but hardly amounting to Indian summer. 

I see swarms of large mosquito-like insects dancing in the garden. They may be a large kind of Tipulidoe. Had slender ringed abdomens and no plumes. 

The river is quite low, — about as low as it has been, for it has not been very low. 

About the first of November a wild pig from the West, said to weigh three hundred pounds, jumped out of a car at the depot and made for the woods. The owner had to give up the chase at once, not to lose his passage, while some railroad employees pursued the pig even into the woods a mile and a half off, but there the pig turned and pursued them so resolutely that they ran for their lives and one climbed a tree. The next day being Sunday, they turned out in force with a gun and a large mastiff, but still the pig had the best of it, — fairly frightened the men by his fierce charges, — and the dog was so wearied and injured by the pig that the men were obliged to carry him in their arms. The pig stood it better than the dog. Ran between the gun man’s legs, threw him over, and hurt his shoulder, though pierced in many places by a pitchfork. At the last accounts, he had been driven or baited into a barn in Lincoln, but no one durst enter, and they were preparing to shoot him. Such pork might be called venison.[Caught him at last in a snare, and so conveyed him to Brighton.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1858

I see swarms of large mosquito-like insects dancing in the garden. See October 20, 1858 (“It is so warm that even the tipulidae appear to prefer the shade. There they continue their dance, balancing to partners, as it seems, and by a fine hum remind me of summer still, when now the air generally is rather empty of insect sounds.”)

A wild pig from the Westjumped out of a car at the depot and made for the woods. See February 15, 1857 (“How to catch a pig”)

Two little dippers, one up-stream, the other down,

November 21.

P. M. — To Hubbard’s place. 

November 21, 2018

See small water-bugs in Nut Meadow Brook in one place. Probably they were not to be found in the late cold weather, 12th, 13th, etc. 

See from Clamshell apparently two little dippers, one up-stream, the other down, swimming and diving in the perfectly smooth river this still, overcast day. 

Probably the bulk of the scarlet oak leaves are fallen. I find very handsome ones strewn over the floor of Potter’s maple swamp. They are brown above, but still purple beneath. 

These are so deeply cut and the middle and lobes of the leaf so narrow that they look like the remnant of leafy stuff out of which leaves have been cut, or like scrap-tin. The lobes are remarkably sharp pointed and armed with long bristles. Yes, they lie one above another like masses of scrap-tin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1858

See small water-bugs in Nut Meadow Brook. See November 15, 1857 ("The water of the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, where it spreads out a little, though not frozen, is clear, cold, and deserted of life. There are no water-bugs nor skaters on it. Rennie, in “ Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” says they are seen all winter on some pools in England, i. e. the Gyrinus natator. . . . There is but little insect-life abroad now. . . . This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools."); January 24, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer.")

See from Clamshell apparently two little dippers. See March 27, 1858 ("At length I detect two little dippers, as I have called them, though I am not sure that I have ever seen the male before. They are male and female close together, the common size of what I have called the little dipper.")

These are so deeply cut and the middle and lobes of the leaf so narrow. See November 11, 1858 ("The scarlet oak leaf! What a graceful and pleasing outline! a combination of graceful curves and angles. . . . If I were a drawing master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully. ")

Two little dippers

one up-stream, the other down –

still overcast day.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Two little dippers

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 glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights.

November 20

P. M. - To Ministerial Swamp. 

I have seen more gray squirrels of late (as well as musquash); I think not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc. 

Martial Miles tells me of a snapping turtle caught in the river at Waltham, about October 1st, he thinks, which weighed fifty-five pounds (?). He saw it. There were two fighting. 

He says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate. He often watched these birds, and saw that the female could tell when the male was coming a long way off. He thought that he fed her and the young all together (?). She would utter a scream when she perceived him, and, rising into the_air (before or after the scream ?), she turned over with her talons uppermost, while he passed some three rods above, and caught without fail the prey which he let drop, and then carried it to her young. He had seen her do this many times, and always without failing. 

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. 

I go across the great Tony Wheeler pasture. It is a cool but pleasant November afternoon. 

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights. I think it is peculiar among the months for the amount [of] sparkling white light reflected from a myriad of surfaces. The air is so clear, and there are so many bare, polished, bleached or hoary surfaces to reflect the light. Few things are more exhilarating, if it is only moderately cold, than to walk over bare pastures and see the abundant sheeny light like a universal halo, reflected from the russet and bleached earth. The earth shines perhaps more than in spring, for the reflecting surfaces are less dimmed now. It is not a red but a white light. 

In the woods and about swamps, as Ministerial, also, there are several kinds of twigs, this year’s shoots of shrubs, which have a slight down or hairiness, hardly perceptible in ordinary lights though held in the hand, but which, seen toward the sun, reflect a cheering silvery light. Such are not only the sweet-fern, but the hazel in a less degree, alder twigs, and even the short huckleberry twigs, also lespedeza stems. It is as if they were covered with a myriad fine spiculae which reflect a dazzling white light, exceedingly warming to the spirits and imagination. This gives a character of snug warmth and cheerfulness to the swamp, as if it were a place where the sun consorted with rabbits and partridges. Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. 

The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields. It may be put with the now paler brown'of hardhack heads and the now darker brown of the dicksonia fern by walls.

I notice this afternoon that the pasture white oaks have commonly a few leaves left on the lower limbs and also next the trunk. 

Winter rye is another conspicuous green amid the withered grass fields. 

The rubuses are particularly hardy to retain their leaves. Not only low blackberry and high blackberry leaves linger still fresh, but the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen. The great round-leaved pyrola, dwarf cornel, checkerberry, and lambkill have a lake or purplish tinge on the under side at present, and these last two are red or purplish above. It is singular that a blush should suffuse the under side of the thick leaved pyrola while it is still quite green above. 

When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up. 

As I returned over Conantum summit yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, which seemed to me more wholesome and remarkable, as more permanent, than their late brilliant colors, I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. 

 

Quaker colors

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye. The richness and variety are the same as before, the colors different, more incorruptible and lasting. 

Sprague Of Cohasset states to the Natural History Society, September 1st, ’58, that the light under the tail of the common glow-worm “remained for 15 minutes after death.” 

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large because they don’t want their ill will, -- are afraid to anger them. They are abettors of the ill-doers. 

Who are the religious? They who do not differ much from mankind generally, except that they are more conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conversation and correspondence talk about kindness of Heavenly Father. Instead of going bravely about their business, trusting God ever, they do like him who says “Good sir” to the one he fears, or whistles to the dog that is rushing at him. And because they take His name in vain so often they presume that they are better than you. Oh, their religion is a rotten squash.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1858

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces. See October 25, 1858 ("The light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.");  November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); ; November 17, 1858 (“We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us . . . “November Lights" would be a theme for me.”); November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 28, 1856 ("The sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . . It is a true November phenomenon.")

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. See  October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free"); see also September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting.");  October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting.");

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside. . . Quaker colors.  See October 25, 1858 ("Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak] (if it can be called brown at all . . . but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors");   November 29, 1857 ("I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak,. . . clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner . . .Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter."); December 21, 1856 ("The red oak leaves look thinner and flatter, and therefore perhaps show the lobes more, than those of the black. The white oak leaves are the palest and most shrivelled, the lightest, perhaps a shade of buff, but they are of various shades, some pretty dark with a salmon tinge. The swamp white oak leaves . . .are very much like the shrub oak . . . Both remarkable for their thick, leathery, sound leaves, uninjured by insects, and their very light downy under sides. The black oak leaves are the darkest brown, with clear or deep yellowish-brown undersides . . .The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides . . .The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Colors of March-- Brown Season

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large are abettors of the ill-doers. See October 12, 1858 ("This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles. He never knew the complainant to get his case if the defendant were a-mind to contend. However, the cattle were kept out several days, till a Sunday came, and then they were all in my grounds again, as I heard, but all my neighbors tell me that I cannot have them impounded on that day. Indeed, I observe that very many of my neighbors do for this reason regularly turn their cattle loose on Sundays.")

November 20. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

The withered oak leaves 

of various hues of brown

 mottling a hillside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The glory of November 

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

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