Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass.

November 7. 

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. 

November 7,, 2018

It cleared up this forenoon. I leave my boat opposite the Hemlocks. I see the cold sunlight from some glade between the clouds falling on distant oak woods, now nearly bare, and as I glance up the hill between them. seeing the bare but bright hillside beyond, I think, Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass. 

The very rocks and stones in the rocky roads (that beyond Farmer’s) look white in the clear November light, especially after the rain. We are left to the chickadee’s familiar notes, and the jay for trumpeter. What struck me was a certain emptiness beyond, between the hemlocks and the hill, in the cool, washed air, as if I appreciated even here the absence of insects from it. It suggested agreeably to me a mere space in which to walk briskly. The fields are bleak, and they are, as it were, vacated. 

The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter. All that is evergreen in me revived at once.

The very moss, the little pine-tree moss, in Hosmer’s meadow is revealed by its greenness amid the withered grass and stubble.

Hard frosts have turned the cranberry vines to a dark purple. 

I hear one faint cricket’s chirp this afternoon. 

Going up the lane beyond Farmer’s, I was surprised to see fly up from the white, stony road, two snow buntings, which alighted again close by, one on a large rock, the other on the stony ground. They had pale-brown or tawny touches on the white breast, on each side of the head, and on the top of the head, in the last place with some darker color. Had light-yellowish bills. They sat quite motionless within two rods, and allowed me to approach within a rod, as if conscious that the white rocks,  etc., concealed them. It seemed as if they were attracted to surfaces of the same color with themselves, — white and black (or quite dark) and tawny. One squatted flat, if not both. Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment.

I find in a swamp witch-hazel buds still opening, for here they are sheltered, but I can find no fringed gentian, blue, near Bateman’s Pond. But Aster undulatus and several golden rods, at least, may be found yet. I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen. 

In and about Fox Castle Swamp, lambkill is reddened about as much as ever. Round-leaved cornel is bare.

The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up. 

The Cornus florida by the pond is quite bare; how long? (That at Island still thickly leaved.) So that I can only say that the sheltered C. florida change much later than the scarlet oak generally, and perhaps the former is to be considered later on the whole.

Methinks those scarlet oaks, those burning bushes, begin to be rare in the landscape. They are about Bateman’s Pond, at any rate.

My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandman and the cows, or to gather the crop of those wild trees far away on the edges of swamps which have es caped their notice. Now, when it is generally all fallen, if indeed any is left, though you would not suppose there were any on the first survey, nevertheless with experienced eyes I explore amid the clumps of alder (now bare) and in the crevices of the rocks full of leaves, and prying under the fallen and decaying ferns which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. From amid the leaves anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, but still with the bloom on it and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels, while those which lay exposed are quite brown and rotten. Showing only a blooming cheek here and there between the wet leaves, or fallen into hollows long since and covered up with the leaves of the tree,— a proper kind of packing. I fill my pockets on each side, and as I retrace my steps, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, in order to preserve my balance. And here and there is one lodged as it fell between the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from a horizontal limb. In the midst of an alder clump, covered by leaves, there it lies, safe from cows which might smell it out and unobserved by the husbandman; reserved for me.

It is too late, generally, to look for the handsome ones now. The exposed are decayed or decaying.

Looking southwest toward the pond just before sunset, I saw against the light what I took to be a shad-bush in full bloom, but without a leafet. I was prepared for this sight after this very warm autumn, because this tree frequently puts forth new leaves in October. Or it might be a young wild apple. Hastening to it, I found it was only the feathery seeds of the virgin’s-bower, whose vine, so close to the branches, was not noticeable. They looked just like dense umbels of white flowers, and in this light, three or four rods off, were fully as white as white apple blossoms. 

It is singular how one thing thus puts on the semblance of another. I thought at first I had made a discovery more interesting than the blossoming of apple trees in the fall. This, I thought, which I never saw nor heard of before, must be the result of that wonderfully warm weather about the 19th and 20th of October. It carried me round to spring again, when the shad-bush, almost leafless, is seen waving its white blossoms amid the yet bare trees. The feathery masses at intervals along the twigs, just like umbels of apple bloom, so caught and reflected the western light.

The small beeches are still covered with withered leaves, but the larger are three-quarters bare. 

The Diplopappus linariifolius, which was yellow in the shade, in open and sunny places is purple.

I see the small botrychium leaf in Hosmer’s meadow still firm, but a reddish brown or leather-color. 

Rounding the Island just after sunset, I see not only the houses nearest the river but our own reflected in the river by the Island. From what various points of view and in what unsuspected lights and relations we sooner or later see the most familiar objects! I see houses reflected in the river which stand a mile from it, and whose inhabitants do not consider themselves near the shore.

I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night. The first mouthfuls of weeds were placed between some small button-bush stems which stood amid the pads and pontederia, for a support and to prevent their being washed away. Opposite, I see some half concealed amid the bleached phalaris grass (a tall coarse grass), or, in some places, the blue-joint.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1858


Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass. We are left to the chickadee’s familiar notes. See November 7, 1853 (" The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil.")

Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment. See January 2, 1856 ("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather "); December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm.”) and note to November 29, 1859 ("Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.") . Also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

My apple harvest! See November 4, 1855 ("The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct.");  November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples")