It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature

November 13. 

8.30 A. M. — To Hill. 

I notice of late the darker green (livid ?) of the arbor vitae and other evergreens, the effect of cold. So they are never so purely bright a green as immediately after their fall. They are not perfectly ever-green. 

I hear go over, not far from the house, goldfinches, as I think, — their mewing note and ricochet flight, -— I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. Also hear a robin’s note. 

Last night was quite cold, and the ground is white with frost. Thus gradually, but steadily, winter approaches. First there is the bleached grass, then the frost, then snow, the fields growing more and more hoary. There is frost not only on all the withered grass and stubble, but it is particularly thick and white and handsome around the throat of every hole and chink in the earth’s surface, the congealed breath of the earth as it were, so that you would think at first it was the entry to some woodchuck’s, or squirrel’s, or mouse’s, retreat. But it is the great dormant earth gone into winter quarters here, the earth letting off steam after the summer’s work is over. 

As I stand on the hill at 9 A. M., it looks like snow; the sky is overcast; smokes go up thickly from the village, answering to the frost in the chinks; and there is a remarkable stillness, as if it were earlier, the effect of the colder weather merely, as it were stiffening things. Leaves, twigs, birds (except the chickadee, and its feeble note seems to enhance the stillness), and insects are hushed. The few tinkling sounds — the chopping, or the like — are heard far and distinctly. It is like the calm before a hurricane or an earthquake, this stillness which precedes the winter’s setting in. 


Larches now look dark or brownish yellow. Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare, and the few leaves left here and there on the indigenous shrubs named on the 9th are being rapidly killed by the same cause, and are falling. 

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. 

One hickory at least (on the hill) has not lost its leaves yet, i. e., has a good many left. So they are a month falling. 

I see some feathers of a blue jay scattered along a wood-path, and at length come to the body of the bird. What a neat and delicately ornamented creature, finer than any work of art in a lady’s boudoir, with its soft light purplish-blue crest and its dark-blue or purplish secondaries (the narrow half) finely barred with dusky. It is the more glorious to live in Concord because the jay is so splendidly painted.

A large flock of geese go over just before night. 

After expecting snow all day, —'though we did not know but it would prove rain,—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. 

Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs. 

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season — i. e., since they began to be bare, in the latter part of October — is not only like that from gossamer, but like that which will ere long be reflected from the ice that will incrust them. So the bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and frost like snow, and one prepares for the other.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1858

I think not redpolls, for I hear no rattling notes. See November 13, 1852 ("When startled, they went off with a jingling sound somewhat like emptying a bag of coin. Is it the yellow redpoll?"); September 19, 1854 ("Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? "); November 21, 1852 ("The commonest bird I see and hear nowadays is that little red crowned or fronted bird I described the 13th. I hear now more music from them. They have a mewing note which reminds me of a canary-bird. They make very good forerunners of winter. Is it not the {lesser redpoll}?”); December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.")


Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves. See October 25, 1858 ("Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare"); October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén."); November 10, 1853 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.")

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. See November 17, 1858 ("The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. “)

A large flock of geese go over just before night. See November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 14, 1858 ('The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.") ; November 18, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”); November 30, 1857 (“You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. . . . According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.”)

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. See Walden ("Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."): January 26, 1858 (" Nature loves gradation")